Mr.NoSmile
03-28-2013, 05:38 PM
Time to beat a dead horse and tell you things you already know. What fun.
So the Republican Party is currently in shambles, trying to pick up the pieces from what some of the higher-ups believed to be a surefire election. We know how wrong they were, we know how those of us we backed were not just wronged, but silenced at Tampa and prior. We know where some of us would like to go and the people who we believe can steer the Party in the right direction.
The question I have is, how do we get there on a national level, as far as the ground work? I know the power of social media is very critical, as evidenced by the filibuster and efforts prior to that. But we have to accept the fact that a lot of people hate the Republican Party, and rightly so. Many of the bigger, more boisterous voices who seem to be mouthpieces give the vibe that the Party is strictly for those who are rich, well off White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Sure, they’ll make attempts to appeal to minorities by throwing in the token Black/Hispanic/Woman- CPAC and the RNC 2012 being blatant examples of this- but with the popular perception that the GOP:
-Has declared war on women
-That they’re intolerant of gays and unwilling to allow them to marry,
-That they’re war-hungry
-That they’re the party of No
-That one of their leader’s top priorities is to make the sitting President a one-term President (and have that blow up in your face)
-That you get outlandish statements like Todd Akin’s. Or any ridiculous spur of the comment related to gender, race, sexuality and so on.
All that in mind, it’s easy to understand how skeptical one could be when it comes to the idea that the Republican Party can be seen not only as credible but trustworthy in the public’s eyes when many people are growing increasingly liberal. Now don’t get me wrong. The Democrats are just as capable of this, but when the Republican Party of today claims to stand up for moral, family values, it’s much easier to see them as a target when they say or do something completely contradictory, like get caught in how many sex scandals now? They set themselves to be seen as irrelevant because they claim to stand for something so big, but do not live up to those same ideals or standards.
So a lot of folks are putting their chips in folks like Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Justin Amash, Thomas Massie, so on and so forth, you know the familiar names . No need to rattle them all off. My ultimate question is ground work. Now regardless of what you think of Obama, I do believe he had a strong campaign on the ground in 2008. It helps that by that time, many people would have taken anyone in the White House that was not a Republican and Obama’s message felt like a breath of fresh air, but look at voter turnout and enthusiasm. I agree that campaign Obama is different from President Obama, but his campaign was still very much like lightning in a bottle as far as sending a message.
Not until the Legacy Report was put up did this crystallize my idea to talk about winning on the ground first. We await and hear both good and bad news from Republican Parties across the nation about how we’ve either ‘taken over’ (as some news outlets put it) the ranks of a county or state GOP, been thwarted, managed to infiltrate, won positions, but we are still very much splintered. Making inroads is always a plus, no doubt about that. Do I believe in returning fire with fire when the establishment screws you over? Sometimes. After all, it does no good to be complacent when you’re not being met halfway. Say what you will about the Democrats, but they at least appear to be more united than the Republican Party.
So how do you a. get people interested in the Republican Party? And b. How do you convince them that the Party is relevant and worth paying attention to? I’m pretty sure that unless the Democratic Party underwent some radical change for the worst, many of the people who voted for them in 2008 and 2012 would vote for them again in 2014 and 2016. Both parties focus their attention on battleground states, but if they went blue now, if Obama ends both terms looking like he’s done a decent job in the eyes of average Americans, those states will remain blue- no question. So everything has to be organizational building. How do we, as people trying to rebrand the Republican Party from the stale, moss-covered brand that Rand Paul spoke of at CPAC? How do you educate either current Democrats or would be Republicans or undecided voters to see that the GOP can change? I ask myself whether this can be accomplished either by the midterm elections or even the next Presidential election.
I post this to encourage conversation, because I do believe that change has to start small before it can grow. Those of us who only sit at our computers or are in solidly blue states or can’t make it to county, state or national conventions can only do so much, but Tweeting showed that alone can produce great results. I mean, eve if there were some compilation of all the county and state GOP conventions in a database, each of us has ways of using social media to connect to those groups with any advice or tps to give. We talk a lot about how the folks fighting in the local GOP are very splintered and not unified, so I'm sure there's some way we could bridge that gap, small as the effort may be. I’d strongly encourage people to take a look at the Legacy Report the Obama camp sent out, as their talk of organizational planning and voter registration looks interesting. Even a possible blueprint.
Unnecessarily long rant over.
Plus, what do I know? I'm no political scientist or expert on these things. Just ranting.
So the Republican Party is currently in shambles, trying to pick up the pieces from what some of the higher-ups believed to be a surefire election. We know how wrong they were, we know how those of us we backed were not just wronged, but silenced at Tampa and prior. We know where some of us would like to go and the people who we believe can steer the Party in the right direction.
The question I have is, how do we get there on a national level, as far as the ground work? I know the power of social media is very critical, as evidenced by the filibuster and efforts prior to that. But we have to accept the fact that a lot of people hate the Republican Party, and rightly so. Many of the bigger, more boisterous voices who seem to be mouthpieces give the vibe that the Party is strictly for those who are rich, well off White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Sure, they’ll make attempts to appeal to minorities by throwing in the token Black/Hispanic/Woman- CPAC and the RNC 2012 being blatant examples of this- but with the popular perception that the GOP:
-Has declared war on women
-That they’re intolerant of gays and unwilling to allow them to marry,
-That they’re war-hungry
-That they’re the party of No
-That one of their leader’s top priorities is to make the sitting President a one-term President (and have that blow up in your face)
-That you get outlandish statements like Todd Akin’s. Or any ridiculous spur of the comment related to gender, race, sexuality and so on.
All that in mind, it’s easy to understand how skeptical one could be when it comes to the idea that the Republican Party can be seen not only as credible but trustworthy in the public’s eyes when many people are growing increasingly liberal. Now don’t get me wrong. The Democrats are just as capable of this, but when the Republican Party of today claims to stand up for moral, family values, it’s much easier to see them as a target when they say or do something completely contradictory, like get caught in how many sex scandals now? They set themselves to be seen as irrelevant because they claim to stand for something so big, but do not live up to those same ideals or standards.
So a lot of folks are putting their chips in folks like Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Justin Amash, Thomas Massie, so on and so forth, you know the familiar names . No need to rattle them all off. My ultimate question is ground work. Now regardless of what you think of Obama, I do believe he had a strong campaign on the ground in 2008. It helps that by that time, many people would have taken anyone in the White House that was not a Republican and Obama’s message felt like a breath of fresh air, but look at voter turnout and enthusiasm. I agree that campaign Obama is different from President Obama, but his campaign was still very much like lightning in a bottle as far as sending a message.
Not until the Legacy Report was put up did this crystallize my idea to talk about winning on the ground first. We await and hear both good and bad news from Republican Parties across the nation about how we’ve either ‘taken over’ (as some news outlets put it) the ranks of a county or state GOP, been thwarted, managed to infiltrate, won positions, but we are still very much splintered. Making inroads is always a plus, no doubt about that. Do I believe in returning fire with fire when the establishment screws you over? Sometimes. After all, it does no good to be complacent when you’re not being met halfway. Say what you will about the Democrats, but they at least appear to be more united than the Republican Party.
So how do you a. get people interested in the Republican Party? And b. How do you convince them that the Party is relevant and worth paying attention to? I’m pretty sure that unless the Democratic Party underwent some radical change for the worst, many of the people who voted for them in 2008 and 2012 would vote for them again in 2014 and 2016. Both parties focus their attention on battleground states, but if they went blue now, if Obama ends both terms looking like he’s done a decent job in the eyes of average Americans, those states will remain blue- no question. So everything has to be organizational building. How do we, as people trying to rebrand the Republican Party from the stale, moss-covered brand that Rand Paul spoke of at CPAC? How do you educate either current Democrats or would be Republicans or undecided voters to see that the GOP can change? I ask myself whether this can be accomplished either by the midterm elections or even the next Presidential election.
I post this to encourage conversation, because I do believe that change has to start small before it can grow. Those of us who only sit at our computers or are in solidly blue states or can’t make it to county, state or national conventions can only do so much, but Tweeting showed that alone can produce great results. I mean, eve if there were some compilation of all the county and state GOP conventions in a database, each of us has ways of using social media to connect to those groups with any advice or tps to give. We talk a lot about how the folks fighting in the local GOP are very splintered and not unified, so I'm sure there's some way we could bridge that gap, small as the effort may be. I’d strongly encourage people to take a look at the Legacy Report the Obama camp sent out, as their talk of organizational planning and voter registration looks interesting. Even a possible blueprint.
Unnecessarily long rant over.
Plus, what do I know? I'm no political scientist or expert on these things. Just ranting.