Category: Politics and Grassroots

Newt Gingrich, defined

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Friend of the Program Matt Lewis posted seven easy steps to follow if you’d like to talk like Newt Gingrich yesterday.  Here’s one that might be Number Eight: Allow others to define the conversation for you.

The latest news cycle on all things Gingrich revolved around his “rocky” entry into the Presidential race – which was “rocky” because of comments he made on policy ideas devised and proposed by others.

This isn’t the first time a Gingrich campaign has suffered a rough start.  Heck, this isn’t even the first time this year a Gingrich campaign has suffered a rough start – the same round of stories were written two months ago, when campaign subordinates couldn’t figure out whether or not Gingrich was actually officially “testing the waters.”

Even Gingrich’s campaign slogan – “Winning the Future Together” – was a phrase he used first, but which has been claimed for 2012 by the incumbent he hopes to defeat.

For another candidate, this might just be a run of bad luck.  Gingrich, on the other hand, has a track record of letting issues define him rather than getting out front and defining issues.  In fact, he has a 15-year track record, stretching back to the days when his Republican Revolutionaries of 1994 got their lunches eaten by Bill Clinton during the budget battles of 1995.

Gingrich has apologized to Paul Ryan and underscored his opposition to forcing people to buy health insurance.  Maybe his comments on both were misunderstood.  He’s still a bad candidate because he has to keep answering these distracting questions – and it’s his inability to drive messages that lead to these questions being asked in the first place.

Newt announces (with theme music by Mike Post)

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

If Newt Gingrich is trying to frame himself as the anti-Palin – intelligent and thoughtful rather than populist and excitable – this video does the trick.  Mustering all the enthusiasm one would expect from a commercial for reverse mortgages, Gingrich cites his two decades of experience, taking special care to drop the name of GOP saint Ronald Reagan.

This video looks like Newt and Co. were so enamored with the medium of YouTube that they forgot to make a video that was actually compelling.  The talking head presentation featuring no one but Gingrich is simply boring.  With the GOP primary field so often described as “crowded,” this is not the way to stand out.

The GOP Primary Presents: “Answering For Santino” Week

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The three front runners for the Republican nomination each have baggage, and since last week we’ve seen their strategies for dealing with it.  Tim Pawlenty is very sorry about signing a cap-and-trade bill while he governed Minnesota; Mitt Romney has some ‘splainin’ to do to get people to quit using the word “Romneycare”; and Newt Gingrich… well, Newt’s got kind of a Cee Lo Green thing going on with his previous support for aggressive environmental action:

“I’d do a commercial with Al Gore,” Gingrich said last May in an interview with the website Human Events. “My point is conservatives ought to be prepared to stand on the same stage and offer a conservative solution.”

Pawlenty’s strategy is probably the best for now (pending Romney’s speech).  It is, appropriately enough, safe and genuine, but Gingrich is at least sort of right, too.  This line of messaging does help to further the idea that he is the Thinking Republican’s Candidate to a degree.  But the audience shouldn’t be conservatives (at least, not quite so obviously).

The past five years are absolutely full of examples of grassroots activists demonstrating that they don’t like to be lectured to.  There was Marco Rubio besting Charlie Crist in Republican primary polls (and eventually the general election), Joe Miller over Lisa Murkowski, and Rand Paul over Trey Grayson in Kentucky’s Senate race.  If you feel like going back farther and crossing the aisle, ask Joe Lieberman how rank and file Democrats felt about him in 2006.

You don’t like being lectured to.  Do you hear me?  You don’t like it.  (You do, however, appreciate irony, I hope.)

The point is, that instead of scolding conservatives that they should be stewards of the environment, Gingrich should be more inclusive.  Consider how his second sentence above would sound with a slightly different perspective:

“My point is that we can stand on the same stage and offer better, more creative solutions that will protect our environment without putting people out of work.”

Wouldn’t that make you feel a little bit better about being on the same side as Gingrich – as if you’re both part of the same winning team?

RNC jumps right on the Ryan budget plan

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

On Friday, the RNC sent out an email calling for supporters to sign a petition in support of Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget proposal.  Quick, huh?

Speed kills, and this RNC email came over a month after Ryan uploaded his YouTube video outlining the problem with continuing government spending.  That gave the Democrats a month to complain that the GOP budget proposal would strip old people of their medicine like a starving robot.  The RNC is a little bit late to the party on this one.

On the plus side, the email does direct activists back to a petition, where they can register their support and send their own brief message.  If the RNC is doing things right, that means the folks on the email list who respond to this email will be tracked and identified for the upcoming Presidential races.  If those people live in some place like Ohio, they should be on the extra-special, “we need these people to go to the polls and I bet they’d drag four people” list.

The spending issue isn’t going away, and there’s plenty of time to re-frame the debate.  For the RNC it’s better late than never.

Wow, 13 million emails!

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The President’s re-election campaign sent out an email to supporters last week, linking to a video of campaign manager Jim Messina giving them a sneak peek at the plan for 2012.  With such ground-breaking strategy points as “get more votes than the other guy” and “keep track of our progress,” the video was clearly more about motivation than actual information, but it earned the campaign a round of earned media.

Politico got into the act early, chatting up the revived online effort – but like much of the coverage of the 2008 campaign, the real story isn’t what’s happening online but what’s happening offline:

The leadership of the field organization — with hundreds of employees, tens of thousands of volunteers and massive online assets (primarily, a giant email list) — is shifting from the Democratic National Committee to the new campaign in Chicago. And in mass emails and in a quiet series of one-on-one meetings with volunteer leaders, the group is resetting its relationship with its supporters.

Hundreds of employees?  Sooner rather than later, that number will grow even larger, and the field offices will multiply in critical states.  The real key is not the list of email addresses, but in the resources: with spending on the re-election campaign expected to top $1 billion, there will be plenty of people available to mobilize grassroots supporters.  And while there will likely be some folks turning away from the President, a well-funded field operation can help drag out the votes to put them over the top in the right states to get to 270 electoral votes.

At a time when much of the country is figuring out how to do more with less, the Obama campaign will have the opportunity to do less with more.

Trump, GOP ’12 hopefuls, and The Birth Certificate of Destiny

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Up until the last month or so, President Obama had no reason to release a birth certificate and every reason to let the conspiracy theorists opine that he was a secret Muslim born in Kenya.  Every time they did, established Republicans had to scramble to distance themselves from the so-called “birthers.”

Then came Donald Trump’s big mouth, and the birth certificate came soon after.   Why would the President engage on this issue now?  Without the birth certificate, the Republican 2012 primary debates would shape up with the more traditional candidates (Romney, Pawlenty, et. al.) distracted from their core issues.

It may be that the President has internal poll numbers which show that the issue is taking a solid foothold among the electorate (despite more public polls that demonstrate a collective “meh,” even among those who think Obama is from Mars).

But maybe the President wants the GOP to avoid the distractions after all and engage in spirited discussions on their core issues – namely, federal spending.  After watching the ever-more-moribund Republican messaging on smaller government over the past few weeks, the President may look at this as a fight he can win.

When he tunes into Fox news in a few months for the first primary debates, the President would rather have Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty argue over who will cut entitlement spending than have them both deny conspiracy theories.

Obama’s release also solidifies Trump’s candidacy.  A month ago Trump was a novelty; now there can be no denying that his campaign has had some sort of impact.  When the President of the United States reacts to your Today Show interview, you are no longer a complete joke.

And with the certificate released, Trump may have a chance to mouth off on other, more important important issues such as energy policy, health care, and the size of government.  A blunt, unapologetic voice countering the policies of the current administration is what makes Chris Christie and exciting candidate.  Since Christie remains firm that a 2012 shot is out of the question, that role is most likely filled by Trump.

The Obama campaign is probably delighted by the idea of Republicans having to deal with the Trump candidacy in the early primaries, betting that his loud, unfocused rhetoric will distract the rest of the field.  The best way for him to claim his share of attention is, ultimately, to talk about real issues rather than moot issues.  By taking the birth certificate conspiracy theory off the table, the White House made Trump a slightly more serious voice for the primaries.

Boeing learns there are strings attached

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The National Labor Relations Board is gently suggesting that Boeing should maintain a factory in Washington state instead of South Carolina.  When the NLRB “gently suggests” something, that tends to involve filing a complaint that alleges unfair labor practices.  In this case NLRB felt that Boeing’s relocation to the Palmetto State was retaliatory against the union that represents those who would work in the Washington plant.

As one would expect, conservatives roundly criticized the NLRB for bullying Boeing.  Government, the allies of Boeing would argue, should not direct business practice, nor pick winners and losers in business matters.

But Boeing is hardly a poster child for the ideals of the free market.

In 2010, Boeing spent almost $18 million lobbying the government and over $2.6 million in campaign donations to candidates and PACs.  In return for these efforts, Boeing rakes in over $16 billion in government contracts (second only to Lockheed Martin).  That’s a pretty good return on investment.

Boeing isn’t alone – many companies, especially those in line for large defense department contracts, play the same game.  But when a sizable chunk of any company’s business relies on the playing the political system, the company can’t be surprised when politics winds up getting in the way of business.

As Former President Gerald Ford put it, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”

Actually, it’s the Data AND Facebook…

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

President Obama’s first campaign event kicked off on Facebook this afternoon just a few hours after Micah Sifry at TechPresident did a basic overview of the online landscape of for the 2012 race thus far.

Sifry’s attention-getting headline – “It’s not Facebook, It’s the Data, Stupid” – seems to be an indictment of social networks.  But his key point is that knowing the audience is more important than having thousands (or even millions) of friends, followers, or likes.  It’s a point that many have made since 2008 repeatedly, yet it isn’t repetitive.  There are still folks who believe that online success is measured by the easiest metrics of Facebook and Twitter, and not in the more difficult (and final) measurement of votes on election day.  Ultimately, success or failure of the online campaign is tied to the success or failure of the overall campaign:

Facebook and other third-party social network platforms aren’t the central battlefield. It’s data and targeting and figuring out how to use online strategies to enable motivated volunteers to identify, persuade and get out the vote.

Sifry does miss an important shift in voter engagement, though.  He downplays Facebook, noting that the Obama 2012 effort still has the advantages of the MyBarackObama.com networking infrastructure left over from 2008 (with roots stretching back to the nascent Howard Dean effort in 2003).  But that campaign architecture is outdated if it doesn’t work with Facebook.

Consider that in the 2004 and 2008 election cycles, social networking was a varied market.  Friendster, MySpace, AIM, Friendfeed, Twitter, and of course Facebook all had significant shares of the market at one point or another.  Now, Facebook is the unquestioned market leader.  What’s more, Facebook is built as a platform for other services.  For instance, the biggest social network to gain traction since the Obama campaign, Foursquare, allows you to sign up for their service by using your Facebook log in.

There’s no room for MyBarackObama.com in the modern online media and networking environment unless it works seamlessly within the Facebook interface.  If the Obama campaign tries to copy 2008 tactics in 2012 they will fail.

Sifry talks glowingly about the Facebook apps deployed by the Pawlenty and Obama campaigns – and rightly so, because these little programs are monumentally important in bridging the gap between social networking success and data management.  Liking a page is a tangential connection, that can be severed easily and surrenders little information; running followers through an application that allows them to submit contact information and self-identify their interests and issue priorities is much more powerful.

The idea that activity on Facebook is separate from data management is a recipe for a losing campaign; the winner in 2012 will have both working together.  (And despite the attention-grabbing headline, Sifry seems to get that.)

Video killed the… uh… video star?

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

In 2007, the use of YouTube to announce exploratory committees (all by Democrats) was hailed as revolutionary.  In 2011, it’s par for the course.  Online video has cemented its place in the campaign communications toolkit.  In recent weeks, Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, and President Obama have all announced their 2012 campaigns or exploratory committees.

But all online videos are not created equal, and it’s interesting that this rash of announcement videos comes right around the release of Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity video.

Watching Ryan’s video again, it’s striking how well done it is, stylistically.  Between the appropriately serious music, the superimposed charts, and even the way shots are framed, the technical minds behind it clearly had an intelligent vision and the skill to carry it out.  Just as important, Ryan appears completely at ease.  He makes his points directly, yet his tone is conversational; if he is reading from a teleprompter he does a good job of making it seem like he isn’t.  He interacts well with the graphics – notable because they probably weren’t there during filming.

Ryan does such a good job explaining a complex issue in a concise and engaging way that it calls to mind previous media revolutions.  Other Presidents appeared on television, but John F. Kennedy was out first “TV President.”  Could Paul Ryan be America’s first made-for-YouTube politician?