Why Mitt Lost and it Wasn’t Very Close

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.

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.”

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.

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.

The progressive activists worked for it, while GOP worked their top-down magic and expected to ride the wave.

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.”

There was an interesting thread discussing the same themes HERE.

The poster shares an email he got from a Republican friend living in Germany. The friend relates how dems got US citizens living in Germany to participate in the elections and what he found out about about their operations in the states, eg,

"1.That the Democrats clearly have a more effective team operating in the field. For example, my debate opponent from Democrats Abroad had been to many, many Democrat Party training events in DC and had a direct line to vast numbers of not only politicians but also access to an entire administrative support network at party headquarters. All during the night, he knew in real time from party HQ specific exit poll data for strategic zip codes and indicated that the local leaders were reacting in real time to rush in any potential reserves of voters who may not have already voted in those precincts. In other words, they have "troops" in the voting field with multiple levels of leaders and a powerful admin support. If need be, these "troops" will hand carry a voter in to secure the vote.

2) They have an incredible amount of specific data about not only their own constituents but about the demographics of their voters, potential voters, where they live, their occupations (note I didn't say work) , their affiliations (ie churches, unions, social clubs)---and how to get them to actually commit the act of voting. All of this on a house to house basis for strategic precincts. Here I don't mean general data like X% are in the union but specifics like which specific churches in Cleveland will help organize car pools to get voters in specific neighborhoods into the voting booth. Or making sure that specific local union offices are coordinating their efforts with other union halls, social clubs and church groups in specific areas to achieve a huge turnout in their precincts. Or what powerful local community leaders can be counted on to bring their flock into the voting booth. And all of it is gamed out well in advance of the election. In their world, they are very, very, very close to their voters and handle them directly just like their vision of the Nanny State handling citizens. The data is provided by their field operations and continually updated at all times---not only at election times. And furthermore, they seem to have a surprising amount of specific demographic data about Republican voters--or at least about strategic concentrations of them. On one level, this capability could be comparable to the depth of market data that a route salesman would be expected to know about his territory and customers. On another level, this deep capability covers at least all strategically important geographic areas and is strategically managed with the professionalism of military intelligence resources.

3) They have a very effective communications system which coordinates efforts of Nr 1 and Nr2 from the head of the snake all the way down to street level "troops". It works reliably and their team knows how to use it

4) SInce the 2000 election, I have been aware that their team routinely takes advantage of vast pro democrat sentiments overseas to gain a) fundraising from abroad through donations to groups like Democrats Abroad , b) foreign citizens who volunteer to operate programs like phone banks, websites, social media, mailings which can be managed from Europe for example but used to back up the election effort stateside, and c) large armies of energetic Europeans (ie students but also sometimes retirees) who take "vacations" to the USA during vote season and "volunteer" as free manpower to help field operations of democrats.

All very relevant observations about how the other side gets the job done (and get a load of that point number 4!)

Our side needs to realize that the American electorate does NOT just automatically lean conservative anymore, and won't as matter of sheer habit go to the polls and vote republican. We can laugh at the deadbeats and druggies in the ghettos all we want, but it seems the other side figured out a way to get them to the polls and vote. And they did it, for the most part, legally. The lethargy and lack of imagination on our side is just as dangerous as Obama's radicalism.

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