Posted on 11/08/2012 6:30:05 AM PST by Kaslin
Memorandum to the GOP: When running an election campaign it is often valuable to select a nominee who represents the rank and file of the Party. This is how other Parties do it. Perhaps you might get on board.
Who?
Well let’s start with who not to select.
There was George H.W. Bush, who, while a nice, honorable public servant, won primarily because of the record Reagan established. He lost because the rest of us thought that when he mouthed the words “Read my lips, go to Texas,” he meant “Read my lips, no new taxes.”
There was Bob Dole, a very honorable man too, but not exactly full of policies ideas. Or convictions. He’s the guy who thrilled us with the ringing cry: “I’ve never read the Republican platform.”
Then there was the other George Bush, W.
He also is a nice man; a man full of character, but he led the largest expansion of government power since Jimmy Carter and took us into a war that he stubbornly refused to win until he was all out of options. And while there remain good reasons to fight in Iraq, he also refused to tell the rest of the Party what they were. .
W squeaked out the election in 2000, with a Supreme Court ruling necessary to finally seal the deal. Then in 2004, he fought tooth and nail in a close election contest that in some respects the Party still pays for.
That brings us to McCain, who was decidedly not a nice guy. He was really grumpy. He was grumpy to everyone except his opponent. He was very grumpy to his VP choice, Sarah Palin. And did I tell you that he was really nice to his opponent? Because he was. Maybe that’s because many of his policy ideas fit better in the Democrat Party, than they did in the GOP.
Of course he went down to Barack Obama in 2008.
Which bring us to the next “next-guy-in-line,” Mitt Romney.
Mitt too represented the far left of the GOP. But at least he returned us to the tradition of making sure our guy was considered a “nice” guy.
In any election campaign, if you want to avoid it becoming just a popularity contest based simply on personality- note to Mitt, you wanted to avoid that- it’s very important to bring some real policy contrast to your campaign. For every Obama policy that was an equal or worse Romney policy. The animatronics that make up the Mitt Romney mechanism are good, but they aren’t gonna win too many popularity contests or act as a substitute for real conservative ideals.
Change needs to start happening at the state and local level where top-down party central committees have refused to create coalitions at the grass roots level.
Hence, in the ground game too the GOP is kind of old fashioned, missing critical components that allow the Party to drive the must win contests, like Allen West’s.
It’s great to the ride wave years, but you have to be able to win the close elections. The Democrats aren’t beating Republicans by virtue of ideology so much as mechanics and logistics.
There is a trend at the grassroots level with get-out-the-vote that demonstrates the Democrats’ ability to precisely micro target an additional 4-to-6 percent of the vote, some of which escapes the polling until late in the race.
Simply put, the models that the GOP relies upon, including those relied upon by myself, have failed to adequately account for this. Again, it makes no difference in a wave election, but we pay dearly for it in close contests.
The grassroots on the other side has spent ten years in community organizing, going door-to-door, creating coalitions of issues-driven, ideologically-funded third party groups that can do a lot of heavily lifting for GOTV. The GOP on the other hand has eschewed groups like the tea parties, seeing the grass roots as a hindrance to our chances at being the cool kids at school.
You saw it the results on Tuesday.
The progressive activists worked for it, while GOP worked their top-down magic and expected to ride the wave.
The results in too many cases have been disappointing.
As my friend Greg Graves once explained to me “You gotta win the ones you are supposed to win, and you have to pick off a few you weren’t supposed to.”
The GOP, as usual, picked off the one we were supposed to win.
Again.
ok, so what did johnson get?
mitt actually was about the most friendly republican presidential candidate yet to the idea of state by state policy on marijuana. somehow the paulheads forgot this.
Funny, the Democrats will do that too, but clumsily.
I agree. The MSM has been covering up the true state of the economy to get King O over the finish line. They are in for a rude awakening when the economy stays stagnant and worsens.
Beating the small b bushes would have helped greatly. But the conservatives who didn’t vote in the close-loss battleground states due to ennui are now getting Pandora’s box to thank them for it.
The Untied [sic] States Of America.
>> THIS. In spades.
Exactly.
Yep. There is an Obama for America office not too far from me. Three months or so ago, I saw a guy in 2012 Obama shirt and button in the grocery store at 9:00 at night. It was clear from his appearance, he was just wrapping up a long day. They had crews of workers in the trenches cranking it out months ago micro targeting each area. Obama won our county by a much larger margin than I would have expected. They won in the GOTV, and we need to quickly evolve there. The Romney campaign made massive improvements on the digital side over four years ago, and they did develop a much more advanced microtargeting database. They need to take that and evolve into our side’s version of OFA. The one thing in world I can give credit to the Obama era is that they have taken campaigning to a whole new level using technology and grassroots organization.
Yep.
That is why they are winning.
I just found this factoid. In Harris County, Texas (that’s the Houston area), Cruz ran far, far ahead of Romney:
“Romney lost the county by 600 votes. So what happened to the rest of our ticket? Ted Cruz won the county by around 18,000 votes totaling 581,197, but there was a drop off from there for the GOP in contested races with Democrats.”
In some respects, Harris County is a typical urban county in that minority politics/urban politics can sometimes cause libs to be elected. 2006 was a huge wipe out of the GOP.
County wide, most Republicans did sort of so-so in Harris County this cycle. And as just noted, Romney actually narrowly lost the county.
But Cruz carried it.
Cruz carries an arguably purple county BIG, while Romney loses it?
What does this tell us?
Caveat: it may only tell us something about Harris County, or about Texas. It may NOT tell us something about the US.
All I know is that for the life of me I can’t fathom that Romney ran behind McCain.
Romney ennui
Mitt lost because the Republicans control the House and prevented the Democrats from pushing through their agenda. Same reason Clinton won in 2006.
I wonder if the Mormon factor quietly dissuaded a lot of fundamentalists, too. So they did not vote for anybody for president.
Except that Obama is the Emperor of Executive Orders
For sure.
But I don’t know what propelled Cruz. Was it his intensity and messaging? Esp as compared to Romney?
Or Hispanic surname?
Or the fact that he hails from Harris County? (He knows a lot of people personally...but not 18,000).
Or none or all of the above? I don’t know. Yet.
He is right
I really don't understand how you can believe that the Paul campaign reinforced racist-Republican stereotypes.
22 Reasons Ron Paul Is Not A Racist
But then again, anything a Republican says or does reinforces Republicans-are-racist stereotypes in the eyes of the media and the left - just Google "Mitt Romney racist" - so even if Paul did, what's your point? How is it different from any other Republican in any other race against Democrat liars?
I honestly don’t think so. Ralph Reed says that evangelicals turned out in record numbers.
That is certainly my personal experience, though I recognie the limits of that.
It definitely was not a landslide
“GOP-E”
I have been seeing this GOP with the “e” added and have no clue what it means. Help. Thanks.
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