What’s Wrong with the Conservative Movement?

I was recently having a drink and cigar in the office of a good friend who runs one of the conservative movement’s most powerful advocacy groups. I’m not going to name him because this problem is not unique to his group – nor, in fact, is it unique at all.

My friend showed me his group’s latest video. It needed a little work, but overall it was excellent. The only problem is no one who matters is ever going to see it.

It will be polished a bit, put on the Internet and sent to donors. And that’s about all that will be done with it.

What we conservatives don’t seem to realize is preaching to the choir, although important, doesn’t do any real good. Conservatives already are in our camp.

We also don’t seem to realize we’re dealing with a public that is not uninformed but misinformed. To be effective, we need not only a communications strategy that focuses on message, we need one that focuses on conveying that message.

The media isn’t our friend. Relying on it to convey our message in an honest way is both stupid and lazy. Most national “reporters” are so in bed with Democrats they want free birth control to keep themselves from getting pregnant.

Creating a web video seen by hundreds while progressives control national TV newscasts viewed by millions makes no sense and no progress.

Yet, I can’t tell you how many meetings I’ve been in where someone from some group talks about how they’re going to make “viral videos,” and those videos will make all the difference.

Only, if simply willing a video to go viral were all it took, we’d all be YouTube millionaires. In fact, most videos produced by our side reach no one new. They end up on Facebook pages of people already convinced, or – best-case scenario – they are discussed on cable news viewed overwhelmingly by an audience of true believers.

There’s something to be said for reinforcing the beliefs of people on your side, but it’s not exactly expanding the base. We have to think differently about messaging. We must speak around the media because our opponents control it.

We do good research, but we need to spread the results effectively. We’re great at raising money, but we need to spend it more effectively.

We spend way too much time and energy pushing the wrong buttons to spread our message even though, in most cases, we know it doesn’t work. We spend lavishly on lunch for reporters who attend our events, even though these well-fed reporters rarely make the expense worthwhile.

And if they do write about it, who cares? It’s a one-day shot, quickly done, quickly forgotten and drowned out when the MSM returns to regular programming.

What we need is someone with the money and guts to break the mold. Since most people don’t watch the news, we need to go where the most people are – prime-time television.

How much of the idiotic birth control debate could have been diffused if someone put funny, common-sense ads in primetime TV saying, “Democrats spend all their time demanding taxpayers cover the cost of birth control for all women when we already provide it for those who can’t afford it and it’s available to everyone for $9 a month. So why the focus on this? Because they haven’t passed a budget in more than 1,000 days? Because their economic policies have failed? Because gas prices and unemployment are through the roof?”

Yes, that message is conveyed by talking heads most people don’t watch, in op-eds most people don’t read and in “viral videos” no one sees. But you won’t find it on the TV programs most people watch. Why? Because it costs money.

Yet, instead of investing in getting the message where it truly needs to be, our side doubles down on building huge email lists, then renting them to other groups or candidates to still more money from the same committed conservative consumers.

All so these groups can say “We led the fight” or “We have X number of members” – as if that makes America a better place in any way.

All so they can continue to spend an inordinate amount of money to inform the choir just how effective they are as we lose battle after battle. Most of the big conservative “victories” of the last 15 years have amounted to stopping bad things from getting worse. Government hasn’t shrunk. Spending hasn’t been cut. Regulations haven’t been repealed. We’re losing liberty, and these groups pat themselves on the back for extending the game. Delaying loss does not equal victory.

Part of the problem is many of the “leaders” of the conservative movement have been around too long. Their mindset is still pre-1994. They still act as if they’ve been in the minority all their lives and probably always will be. They fight under the Marquis of Queensbury rules; the left employs a guerrilla warfare designed to win at all costs.

It’s time we dedicate our efforts to educating those who aren’t part of the base. It’s time we quit bragging about our effectiveness until we get some effectiveness to brag about – at which point, we won’t need to brag. It’s time for one of these “leading groups in the conservative movement” to actually lead.

We’ve spent enough time in the passenger seat as progressives drive the narrative and run the country into a ditch. It’s time we buy our own damn car.

morality vs. civil constitutionally guaranteed rights... you have the right to life (common sense here, not an issue of morality) liberty (see the bill of rights for those liberties guaranteed you) and the pursuit of happiness (that can and does include the items you work for and purchase)... murder, rape and theivery are not moral issues, they are civil rights issues.... you must have the ability to separate the two... give it a try (it is difficult to do)

Very good comment, thanks for posting.

Madison foresaw the problem of faction and lost a lot of sleep over it, and John Calhoun after him. Both were admirers of the "gentleman legislator" ideal of the 18th century, and both were long-lived enough to be disappointed to see the rise of the Albany Regency, Tammany Hall, and the Millocracy.

Nobody yet has found a solution for the "two-party problem", viz., the tendency of every issue to be coopted successfully by one of the two "established" parties. That's why the Bull Moosers failed in 1912, and why there hasn't been room for a new party in American politics since 1856, the year after the Whig Party finally came apart. But the Whigs only took 16 years to die, whereas the Republicans have been hanging around, their usefulness pretty well shot, since 1932, to serve mostly as a punching bag for the closet Stalinists who took over the Democratic Party.

All the "Bull Moose" Party managed to do was to get Wilson, a real left-wing SOB, elected.

Comparison time:
the by now universally despised Harding was actually a much better leader than the present Kenyan recumbent ... especially economically!

Harding got handed a genuine recession ... and his administration solved the problem in 18 months! The "Teapot Dome" scandal? Peanuts! BTW, gasoline was $0.19/gallon. No high-test!

Ok for the 15th million time, smoot hawley couldn't of had a devastating effect on the US economy in 1932. Why? Because we were a self sufficient country then and import-exports were on 4.2% of the economy. Even if ALL trade stopped 4.2 % is not going to cause a great depression.

Imports during 1929 were only 4.2% of the United States' GNP and exports were only 5.0%. Monetarists, such as Milton Friedman, who emphasize the central role of the money supply in causing the depression, note that the Smoot-Hawley Act only had a contributory effect on the entire U.S. economy

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Like Newt said, we are at a crossroads.

“The wild worship of lawlessness and the materialist worship of law end in the same void. Nietzsche scales staggering mountains, but he turns up ultimately in Tibet. He sits down beside Tolstoy in the land of nothing and Nirvana. They are both helpless—one because he must not grasp anything, and the other because he must not let go of anything. The Tolstoyan’s will is frozen by a Buddhist instinct that all special actions are evil. But the Nietzscheite’s will is quite equally frozen by his view that all special actions are good; for if all special actions are good, none of them are special. They stand at the crossroads, and one hates all the roads and the other likes all the roads. The result is—well, some things are not hard to calculate. They stand at the cross-roads.”
― G.K. Chesterton

What’s Wrong with the Conservative Movement?

There are a number of important answers to that question, but I'll just point out the most important one:

Constant compromise of principles that should never be compromised.

We don’t see a conservative message put across on the national debate because the so-called conservatives are themselves afraid of it. So long as the GOP establishment thinks elections are won by fielding centrist after centrist how can anyone expect them to all of a sudden deliver a conservative message? With what brain are they going to do that? The same that endorses Romney?

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