And Now for Something Productive
Well, we had to get that little Gopal tirade off our chest, and of course give our appreciation to Krusty for leading the blogosphere on this issue. So now what?
Here's five things we suggest for the new RPI Chairman.
As always, we'd appreciate your input and suggestions, passengers.
Here's five things we suggest for the new RPI Chairman.
- Hire a good, professional E.D. Someone who will be loyal to the party as a whole, and who has the executive skills to manage a complicated enterprise like a state Republican party. It's a far more technical job than most people understand, akin to running a medium-sized small business. The right E.D. will need to be able to attract, retain and motivate a talented, new staff in leading a resurgent party. We hope that the new Chairman will pursue someone of top talent, and really invest in the right person. The position could use a new skillset, someone with managerial experience in the real world or the policy world. It could be current staff, former staff, or never before staff - the point is, cast the net widely and do a real search and make sure the person earns the job. If I was the new Chairman, I'd think seriously about making it a formal search. Find a headhunter who would either donate their services or help on the cheap. That process alone would draw out serious thought about what qualifications are needed to do it right. It's an important job that needs to be done at the highest level. Such a process would surely start the new E.D. off on the best possible terms.
- Get the technology right. My favorite quote of the week was Mike Duncan's (our current RNC Chairman that nobody has ever heard of). In the ATR debate, he said "we have to do it in the Facebook, with the Twittering." I'm not sure about you, but that comment should come with a PG-13 label. By getting the technology right, we mean the following: expanded party presence across the web with targeted online advertising in an effort to attract like-minded Internet users to a fresh, engaging suite of web properties with dynamic, changing content that is useful. We need to drive traffic, and drive it hard. The new Chairman should see weekly traffic reports, and get the full committee, the staff, volunteers, and everyone else who cares about the party to do their best thinking and work on how to engage more people through online applications/technology. We also need a serious effort to develop other campaign 2.0 technologies like text messaging. All you have to do is a little research into the Obama successes to find easy ideas. The rationale is here, the deeper dive is here, and a Republican discussion is here. We're getting our asses kicked, folks and it's time to stop talking and start trying things.
- Develop some policy chops. This might not be the best thing to handle from inside the party, but don't you think that Iowa could use a major upgrade in center/right policy analysis? So much bloviating and hot air is wasted on the fight between SoCo's and "Establishment" Republicans, we're getting tired of it. Even though we've been guilty of some of this (hell, even our little blogitorial board doesn't agree when it comes to this) it's time to stop and focus whatever intellectual firepower we can muster on offering serious policy options for voters. They care about issues. To be sure, our base cares about abortion and marriage and stem cell research far more than the average Iowan, so we recognize that and encourage it as a means to keep the activists motivated and happy. But we must dig deeper into issues like taxes, spending, regulation, job creation, education, government service delivery, health care, energy independence, and many others to begin attracting new voters (or old voters who have left our party). The only hope we have is to present a more attractive party on the issues than the Democrats.
- Recruit great candidates. This goes without saying, but does it? It's going to take more work than ever to find good candidates after two of the worst cycles most of us can remember. We should search out candidates with the full set of skills, and look for the intangibles like hard work, competitive drive, and fitness for the uniqueness of the district. Kent Sorenson comes to mind as someone who really just fit his district, and had the inner strength, conviction, and fortitude to do the heavy lifting necessary to win a tough race. On paper, he might not have been the best candidate until you met him, looked him in the eye and saw his desire to win and represent the district. Those candidates don't just walk through the door, usually you have to find them, and the Chairman should be more involved in this.
- Fix early/absentee voting. We'll probably touch off a debate here among a couple of points of view. One view is that early/absentee voting is simply spending extra money to get votes that you'll already get. The other view is that we're getting our asses kicked by the Democrats. Our view is the latter. You can't get away from the facts. We'll focus on those facts at a later time with some Ross Perot charts and trend analysis, because this topic deserves far more than a #5 mention on this post. The bottom line here is, we're not doing all we can to put these votes in the bank early, thereby allowing our candidates to focus late, precious resources on undecided and persuadable voters who may or may not vote. We recommend putting a serious task force together, including some people from the professional world (political and non-political) who have deep experience in direct response marketing and consumer motivation. American marketing companies have long experience moving people to action with integrated campaigns. Our new Chairman ought to do some research into finding those people and getting serious recommendations about how to play catch up with the Democrats.
As always, we'd appreciate your input and suggestions, passengers.
Matt Strawn would be an excellent ED
Reply to this
Good suggestions all.
To point #3, you might give this article a read.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/316nfdzw.asp
I have to chime in on #5 - failure to accomplish this objective, means time and resources have been wasted on everything else.
Election day is not 24 hours, it is 24 days. Different people hearing different messages with different voting behavior.
It is not as simple as you voted at 9am and I voted at 3pm. It is you voted on Oct 1 having heard one set of messages, and I voted on Nov 4 hearing a different set of messages.
There is a reason the Democrats have invested so many resources into early voting. We can't simply ignore it, nor think they are dumb or wrong to do so. It is working for them. Look at the ten closest races in the House. Look at the percentage of votes that came from early votes. Key in on HD 1, it stands out from all the rest.
Reply to this
Rants is right. This same point was outlined in Pate's plan for the party.
Reply to this
I'm truly amazed Chris that the Iowa GOP doesn't get it. Down here in union ruled Lee co 45% or more of our vote is absentee, we just take it as the lay of the land. We move our timeline up 6 months earlier just to deal with it.
Reply to this
From today's Gazette article:
"Carroll, a pumpkin farmer, was known for his advocacy for conservative social issues during his six terms in the Iowa House.
Carroll declined to talk about why he's running for the position, or what direction he thinks the party should take."
Are you kidding me? Declined to talk?!?
C'mon folks, is this really who should be our party's voice?
Reply to this
hey that was a great posting done by Captain Oveur , that is really the great one.
Reply to this
I guess when the unions set out to take more of our hard-earned money – whether through forced dues, prevailing wage, revamping collective bargaining, or more – they really mean it.
Reply to this
How about creating a “Completed Projects” folder, and when a project is done, move it to be a subfolder underneath this Completed Projects folder? That will remove it from view in your main folder list, and if you’re using ClearContext, will also remove it from showing in the Topics list with other active projects.
Reply to this