Kansas GOP Candidates: What's in Your Stump Speech?

Jeanette Pryor ^ | July 26, 2012 | Jeanette Pryor

[Jeanette Pryor]

Writing a stump speech is the single most important task of your campaign.

Even if you’re running uncontested in a district with three deaf Republicans and five dead Democrats, you must write a stump speech.

Why?

Because drafting a speech forces you to articulate the reasons you want to lead and the reasons why anyone should follow you. This question – your qualification as a leader – is the essence of your campaign. If you can’t justify your candidacy to yourself, you will not and should not be able to convince voters.

A common exercise used in the military for officer training involves dropping the most promising aspirants into a dire survival situation with insufficient equipment, an objective and no chain of command. Infallibly, even if the group is entirely comprised of officers, within minutes the group will have self-selected into followers and their leader. The same happens when the exercise is modified and implemented in upper-management training.

By what criteria do we humans triage one another to trust our fate, or assume responsibility for the fate of others?

Studies indicate that three skills and characteristics form the basis of our intuitive recognition of a leader:

1. Ability to accurately assess and prioritize the elements of a crisis or problem

2. Ability to rapidly provide efficient solutions for the problem or obtain the information needed to do so

3. Ability to organize available human and material resources to systematically resolve the hierarchy of obstacles

Filling that blank sheet of paper forces you to confront yourself, in the quiet of the empty internal stadium, and face how you truly measure up to the definition of a real leader.

1. Do I have a detailed, educated understanding of the problems facing Kansans in my district? Is this understanding the fruit of a superficial, vague musings, or did I actually speak at length with a representative sample of the population? Did I read extensively the opinions of local experts in the areas of concern voiced by potential constituents?

2. Do I honestly have a well thought-out plan for at least three specific problems I researched? Did I familiarize myself with the vision and plan in place now and its effectiveness? Do I have substantive data-based research from objective sources about the results of similar solutions implemented by others who held office and faced like challenges?

3. Do I know how to direct and coordinate the people and material means available to implement my targeted solution?

If your stump speech honestly answers these three questions, you could have the social charm of Napoleon Dynamite and still be worthy of office. Well, almost!

Voters are sick to death of vague platitudes and pre-packaged, pre-digested party lines; they are hungry for substance.

When you present a substance-packed speech, voters don’t need to be told your “values,” they can access them as the source of your clearly articulated proposed legislation. When you outline data-based legislative solutions for actual problems, they don’t need to be told you will to work hard for them because they see you already are. When you eschew “cheer-lines” and expose personal intellectual product to public criticism and potential rejection, they don’t need to be told you won’t fold under pressure because they recognize you have the courage to be honest while running for office.

Regardless of how close you are to the elections, you must take time now and confront the “trial by blank sheet of paper.” You owe this to the voters, the party you represent and all those working for you. You can only help the people of Kansas if you are a true leader. You begin to find out if you are a leader when you write a real stump speech.

[ziravan]

Bfl

[ozzymandus]

The elections in KS this year are between the conservative Republicans and the “moderate” (liberal) Republicans. Democrats can’t win many elections in KS, so many leftists have adopted the tactic of declaring themselves Republicans and attempting to poison the Republican party from within. They have the full support of the newspaper editors and political science profs who often print leftist editorials. KS Republicans have to watch out for these spies and traitors, particularly in the primaries.