Bob Bennett contemplating another term as OhioGOP chair

By Chad D. Baus

The Cleveland Plain Dealer is reporting that OhioGOP party chair Bob Bennett is considering carrying on as party chair, claiming to have learned a few things after voter anger left heavy Republican casualties at the polls.

From the story:

"In a very real sense, in some ways, we needed this," Bennett said in a conference call with reporters. "We need a reminder that our service to the people is at their discretion."

To gun owners still stinging after years of hearing anti-gun rhetoric from Bennett Republicans like Bob Taft, Betty Montgomery, George Voinovich and Mike Dewine, Bennett's realization about whom his party serves has come far too late. And comments about his inability to understand the source of Bob Taft's ultra-low approval ratings raise questions of just how much of a lesson Bennett has actually learned.

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Again from the story:

The inability of Gov. Bob Taft to emerge from the public doghouse also hurt and was mystifying, Bennett said. Voters apparently thought Taft's ethics violations were more serious than his failure to report the receipt of golf outings and other gifts and Taft was unable to "spin his way out" of these misperceptions, Bennett said.

Taft's ethical violations were nothing more than the icing on the cake. Having spent his first six years raising Ohioans' taxes and spending tax dollars like a drunken sailor, all the while going back on a campaign promise by fighting to destroy, delay and finally poison common sense concealed carry reform legislation, a few misdemeanors were the least of the reasons why Taft's approval ratings have remained in the low teens for so long.

Bennett, party chairman since 1988, runs out his current term in January. He wouldn't say if he will try to stay, but hinted that he is tempted.

"We need to unify the party behind a bold and aggressive plan for rebuilding," Bennett said.

As if the November elections weren't enough, the fact that Bob Bennett can't see the real causes for Taft's unpopularity is further evidence certainly IS time for him to move on.

During the years of the Bennett-orchestrated Republican dominance in Columbus, gun owners have spent far more time fighting with Republicans than Democrats, and all Ohio has to show for it is one of the worst concealed carry laws in the country. Even now, indications are that yet another Republican Senate President is collaborating with Taft (and the OSHP bureaucracy/ police unions who heavily supported their political opponents in the election!) to weaken yet another pro-gun bill to the point of being unsupportable.

There is indeed a need for rebuilding in the OhioGOP, and it is going to be all but impossible to make a case to hard-working, active volunteering, consistently-voting grassroots gun owners that Bob Bennett is the man for the job.

Chad D. Baus is the Northwest Ohio Chair of Buckeye Firearms Association, and a Fulton County Republican Central Committeeman.