The Great "HOW TO WIN ELECTIONS" Wars (tea party vs. insiders)

The Tea Party Tribune ^ | December 4, 2012 | Jonathon Moseley

[Moseley]

Almost every challenge facing the Republican Party boils down to one issue: How is it possible for Republicans to win elections? The GOP establishment fights, undermines, lies to, and betrays conservative Americans because GOP insiders do not believe it is possible to win elections on a tea party agenda.

We’re looking at everything all wrong. We want Republican leaders to champion our tea party issues. But they can’t. They don’t know how.

Conservatives believe that a properly-run campaign based on conservative values will win. More than that, we know it is the only way that a Republican candidate can win.

GOP insiders are convinced that the only way a Republican nominee can win is to become a bad photocopy of the Democrat. But that’s because moderates don’t remotely understand how to actually win an election. While conservatives can articulate detailed specifics about their strategy, Republican moderates, elites, and insiders offer only platitudes.

The establishment has a religious faith in the idea that to win, the Republican Party has to surrender everything it stands for and believes. GOP moderates believe it is just “obvious” that their strategy is right. But what is obvious is that moderates haven’t really thought any of it through.

The establishment tells us that the answer is nominating “better” candidates. First, this is a meaningless, superficial platitude, not a plan. Naturally, better is better than worse. Worse is worse than better. This sounds like a child’s nursery rhyme, not a strategy for winning elections.

Conservatives take action, while moderates simply throw rotten tomatoes from the peanut gallery. A “Future Candidates School” has been taught by the Leadership Institute, run by conservative godfather Morton Blackwell, for a couple of decades. Newt Gingrich’s GOPAC was created in the 1980’s in part to prepare conservatives to run for office or for higher office. Conservatives have been doing it for decades.

Second, of course, the most experienced Republican officials are all very experienced in wrecking the country. So if we look for candidates who are “better” in terms of their goals for saving the nation from – well, to be frank – the other Republicans who helped wreck it, we are necessarily going to have to look outside the ranks of self-congratulating, self-important, self-appointed leaders.

When Republican insiders call for “better” candidates they mean “me” (the insider). Unacceptable candidates are “anyone other than me.”

Third, however, by “better” the elites mean “Someone the news media won’t criticize.” However, that is a fantasy… a delusion. The news media will always criticize any Republican to further the liberal, big-government agenda. The liberal media will only praise, protect, or leave alone a Republican to the extent that it harms a different Republican or pushes a liberal theme. Then the same media will turn around and savage that same Republican later when it advances the liberal agenda. John McCain is a prime example. The darling of the media of years past suddenly became evil when the media wanted to elect Barack Obama.

And the reasons given today for the media to attack Republican candidates will change tomorrow. So if the media is attacking the GOP on issue X, and the GOP caves on X, the media will simply attack Republicans on Y later. These factors are obvious to conservatives, yet establishment Republicans remain totally blind to these realities.

But when it comes to running campaigns, conservatives and Republican moderates exist in entirely different universes. The Republican establishment has no idea what you are talking about when you criticize their atrocious election campaigns.

You argue “Let’s run a candidate who stands for something.” You are speaking a foreign language. They have no idea what that means.

Ronald Reagan showed the way. So the tea party and other conservatives believe it is overwhelmingly obvious: Do what Reagan did.

But this blueprint that seems so clear, simple, direct, and obvious to us, the Republican establishment has never understood. Those are the people who during the Reagan Administration kept trying to stop Reagan from everything he was doing. They didn’t ‘get’ Reagan then and they have no idea what we are talking about today.

Republican moderates and insiders differ radically from conservatives in many ways — not just on the issues. (1) on the entire reason for being involved in politics, (2) on how election campaigns work and should be run, (3) on whether and how to persuade voters instead of pandering to them, (4) on personal courage in taking a stand, (5) how to deal with the news media, and (6) how to respond to criticism and negative information in campaigns.

For us, there is no reason to win an election except to change things. We would rather spend our time with our families, our churches, our hobbies, and private lives.

Quite simply, Republican insiders stink at running election campaigns. Conservative campaigns, by contrast, stink only some of the time.

Nothing can change for the better until all Republicans of all types master the techniques of winning elections. Too many people think that it’s a do-it-yourself project of “Doin’ a-what comes naturally.”

The only way to haul the Republican insiders out of their pit of despair is to show them what is really possible. We can’t just talk about it. We have to demonstrate how successful campaigns can be run.

[left that other site]

I am in 100% agreement with you!!!!!

[Conservativegreatgrandma]

I couldn’t agree more. You’d be happy with our Republican SOS here in Iowa. He’s targeting voter fraud and I expect him to pay a price for it.

[Jack Black]

The establishment didn’t nominate McCain and Romney, GOP.primary voters, and caucus voters did.

People keep thinking if we explain it better we can ein? Possibly this is untrue. Its a welfare nation now, the Dems have created the unbeatable coalition. Reagan himself would lose

Read Ann Coulters must recent column.

[Jack Black]

The establishment didn’t nominate McCain and Romney, GOP.primary voters, and caucus voters did.

People keep thinking if we explain it better we can ein? Possibly this is untrue. Its a welfare nation now, the Dems have created the unbeatable coalition. Reagan himself would lose

Read Ann Coulters must recent column.

[ansel12]

Romney kept out big challengers in 2008 by pulling huge fund raising stunts very early, and letting it be known that he would self fund if needed and that he had a huge labor force behind him (many of them Mormons), he still lost to two unfunded light weights though.

Romney has shaped the primary field for 7 years.

[justiceseeker93]

What’s the point when the door is held open to fraud with weeks of voting?

I specifically indicated that early voting should be repealed wherever it exists. And yes, it aids and abets fraud, especially the schemes where the same useful idiots get bused around for days on end to vote at multiple locations during the early voting period.

[little jeremiah]

Open primaries. Any state with open primaries is ripe for Dems voting for the worst R candidate. Must be stopped. Probably too late, though. “Voting” is just a thing of the past, as far as any honesty to it.

[Jack Black]

Romney was able to raise the money he needed to compete at a national level. Not too many of the other candidates seemed able to do that. And, maybe he did have a big volunteer base of Mormons. So? That's a good thing, isn't it?

Neither of those qualify as "the GOP establishment picking our candidate", which was the theory I see put forward that I just don't agree with.

[ansel12]

My observation is that “”Romney has shaped the primary field for 7 years.””, it is also clear that the establishment always fully backed him against the actual republican rank and file, who clearly were revolted by the man.

Thank God that this weirdo lefty is gone, 7 years of squatting on the primary process is enough, he cost us at one election, and arguably two, yet he himself was never really a republican, nor did he ever have any value to the party that he abandoned during the Reagan years.

Romney was just a rich Mormon Bishop who wanted to be president for some internal, personal reason, and spent 55 million dollars of his own money in the effort, to what end? For what political agenda? What are his politics? Mitt has a political identity, a political history, but the 65 year old career politician denied all of it during his campaigning for the GOP nomination.

[Randy Larsen]

Amazing analysis!

I think you are right on the money so how do we get the moderates to understand this.

[Jack Black]

Presidential elections are really different than off-years. Off years are always good for Conservatives. Obama had a huge machine to get everyone to go vote for him on election day, no such single machine was hyping the off-years.

It’s like the difference between the NFC and AFC championships and the Superbowl. It’s only a small difference in importance, but a huge on in hype.

[Moseley]

I think you are right on the money so how do we get the moderates to understand this.

I feel like we (and I) have tried everything. I think the only way to get GOP moderates to understand is to SHOW THEM how it is done.

That means that conservatives need to study and become expert in winning elections. That is, not just a few key leaders but many conervatives throughout the grassroots.

Then we need to DEMONSTRATE what we are talking about. Otherwise, I think the moderates in the Party will never understand what we are trying to say