This forum is titled "How to be a Good Conservative." There's a number of panelists that plan to tell about things that conservative citizens in North Carolina can do to help advance the conservative cause in North Carolina.

Ryan Francis DeLuca, NC State Director of Americans for Prosperity is the moderator (and a U.S. Marine). To speak are Steve Noble, Chairman of Called2Action; Ryan Irisik, Representative of the NC Grassroots NRA; Dan Page, former NC Legislator; and Frank Rouse, former NC GOP Chairman.

This forum has a full house, with almost 100 people in attendance. Ryan Francis, a retired Marine, describes that until government actually shrinks, we need to work with the politicians that we elect. You have to evaluate the politicians for their character.

Ask them what they do for a living. If they cannot live without being in the elected office, they will often do whatever they can to get elected.

We need to find people who don't need to be a politician. We need to find people who do not view it as a career.

I am a father, I am a homeschooler, a private business owner, a member of the "religious right," and will remain private and just withdraw from everyone else. Then he realized that he would have to send his children out into the world that is left for everyone else.

10 Steps that you can take:
1. Pursue what is in your heart. You must work with whatever you are passionate about.
2. Then you must decide your role. Are you a leadership person or a ground troops person?
3. Be a laser, not a shotgun.
4. Identify and link up with like-minded people.
5. Determine your strategy.
6. Don't ruin your witness. "A zealot without wisdom is simply a madman."
7. Be as gentle as doves but wise as serpent.
8. Don't give up - be relentless.
9. When it's over, send a word of thanks to those who you have tried to influence.
10. Take the time to be a normal person from time to time. But be an activist at home first.

Next up is Ryan Irisik, from the NRA. He points out that power is in the numbers. He works throughout 13 states in the southeast and really pushes voter registration. He's amazed that the number of people who are still around that have never registered to vote.

Talk to people and convince people that their votes really do matter. Every single vote really, really does matter.

Write letters to the editor -- and keep writing them, even if you don't get published, quite often it takes more than a couple times to get noticed.

Bumper stickers really work -- each one is worth about $300 in free advertising. Reach out to like-minded people in places that you go.

Dan Page, a former NC Legislator described his ideas on grassroots politics and being a conservative.

Just wanted to fix some of the problems. Never wanted to be involved, but when starting a business, found that there are an enormous number of government problems that stop businessess.

Found that if something needed to get done, someone had to step up to lead it, so he did. Still believes that the best vehicle to be used to advance the conservative position is still the Republican party. It was just a matter of helping the candidates, putting up signs, and doing what needs to be done.

He won with a simple grassroots campaign by making phone calls and getting the message out. He won by only 7 votes. He did it by turning out the voters. "Everyone" said that the Democrats could turn out the votes, but he never would. They called every registered voter in the district to determine where the potential voter base was. Many people want to help, they just need to be contacted and told what to do to help.

Last up is Frank Rouse, former NCGOP Chairman. He starts out that there's no such thing as a "good" or a "bad" conservative. When they cease to be a conservative, they become other things...like grave robbers, Democrats, or Richard Morgans. A conservative believes that government should never do anything for us that we can better do for ourselves.

Less government, less taxes equals better government, more freedom, and more prosperity.

I'm opposed to the lottery because it gives the liberal democrats in Raleigh more money to spend. The ONLY way to combat them is to starve the beast -- if you don't give them money, they simply cannot spend it.

The biggest thing wrong with our schools is not money, it's the administration -- they cannot administrate. The administrators are simply not trained on how to actually administrate.

A social conservative rejects the secular direction our society is going -- the secular Democrats who are trying to take God out of everything in our country.

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