by Mark McKinnon
www.thedailybeast.com

In the second in a series of posts on the 2012 landscape, former Bush and McCain strategist Mark McKinnon names six GOP up-and-comers who could fill the party’s leadership vacuum—and make it likable again.

Republicans have a problem. Polls suggest the public does not care for our policies and they do not trust our politicians. Hell, even a third of Republicans in a recent poll don’t like the party. Recent elections have only confirmed the obvious, leaving Republicans virtually irrelevant in Washington, D.C.

But the problem goes further than that.

Read More

by Jim Carrier
Found at www.semotimes.com

To some, Sarah Steelman is a rogue politician who only cares about her own ambitions, even at the expense of her own party. However, after you are done canvassing the few hundred most rabidly patrician Republicans (which is being estimated at 300 is a bit high these days) and you get to visit with regular Missourians, you will find that most folks see Sarah Steelman as a maverick who has the courage to fight for working families and is not about to take orders from party bosses when they conflict with her conservative principles. We recently had a chance to sit down and interview Sarah Steelman, not in some stuffy government meeting room or high priced office tower, but instead in a mall around regular people like you and me, where she is the most comfortable. After the interview, we decided that no story we could write could be as informative or interesting as us removing the filter and allowing you to hear Sarah Steelman “in her own words.”

Reprinted from the
Springfield News-Leader

March 29, 2009

Sarah Steelman

I have tried to be good and keep my mouth shut, but it simply is not in my nature. I can't stand to watch what is going on in Washington and not comment. What is it that the whole lot of them is thinking? I keep going back to the same thought -- and, as a mother I know that other mothers will know exactly what I am talking about: I hope my kids never behave the way Congress and the administration are behaving. They remind me of school kids on a playground when a fight breaks out, the tough guys join in, the weak guys run and hide, the wimps point their fingers at each other and say, "well, he started it" and the cowards change their stories. I know that other mothers who have broken up fights on playgrounds will agree with me. And what do we hope and pray that our own child will do if he or she is involved? We hope that he will have the courage to tell the truth and say I am sorry or he will have the courage to say why he hit the guy or that at least if he provoked the fight will take responsibility for it -- right or wrong.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- The idea of "shareholder democracy" is today much bruited about, but whatever connotations that term has acquired, at bottom it means investors have a "vote" -- that is, they can choose where to put their money, and where not. That kind of democracy assumes a new urgency in the post-9/11 world, as tens of billions of dollars are currently surging into countries that sponsor terrorism.

According to the independent research provider Conflict Securities Advisory Group (CSAG), there are some 485 publicly traded companies doing business with four regimes designated by the State Department as sponsors of terror. The activities of these mostly foreign-owned companies -- such as Total, Sinopec and BNP Paribas -- in terrorist-sponsoring states generate billions in revenues for the governments of Iran, Sudan, North Korea and Syria.

The Wall Street Journal
POTOMAC WATCH
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
July 18, 2008; Page A11

The 11th commandment of politics is that elected officials shall not take sides in their party primaries. Then again, Missouri Republicans are burdened with so many sins, what’s one more?

For an insight as to why the GOP is down and out in Washington, take a look at Jefferson City. That’s where Sarah Steelman, the state treasurer, is running in an Aug. 5 primary for the Missouri governorship. And it’s where her reform campaign against earmarks and self-dealing is threatening the entrenched status quo, causing her own party to rise against her.

By Matthew Swibel

WASHINGTON, D.C. -

Local pols love to use their control of pension and investment funds to score political points and weigh in on the big issues. Boycott this. Invest in that. Now, Missouri State Treasurer Sarah Steelman, a Republican, is using the technique to wage her own war on terror. Her crusade should prompt some nail-biting from corporate interests worried about the interference of shareholder activism in a global marketplace.

By August, a $24 million portfolio within the Missouri Investment Trust--a state fund that taxes entertainers and athletes' income and makes earnings from investment of such monies available to state cultural organizations--will adopt an anti-terrorism screen developed by Conflict Securities Advisory Group (CSAG), an investment research firm in Washington, D.C.

(Read More)