Category: Politics and Grassroots

Hunting Demon Sheep

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

The Chuck DeVore for Senate campaign has declared open season on Demon Sheep.  Visitors to demonsheep.org can squish, shear, crisp, or mock the ill-conceived star of a Carly Fiorina campaign video:

Aside from being a fun concept, the microsite does all the right things – it lets users share their demon sheep hunting with friends, and hits hunters up for small donations.

The original “Demon Sheep” web video was designed to distinguish Fiorina from GOP primary opponent Tom Campbell – casting Campbell as a FCINO, or “Fiscal Conservative in Name Only.”  The campy quasi-religious imagery a low-budget sheep costume that looks like it was a pilfered sample from a carpet store made for internet mockery.  But it also made for viral viewing, giving an audience for the negative points the video makes about Campbell.

Though the Demon Sheep video doesn’t mention DeVore, he’s doing his best to capitalize – and as Matt Lewis and I discussed weeks ago, DeVore’s campaign stands to gain the most if Fiorina and Campbell descend into a harshly negative campaign that damages both.

This effort can be successful in targeting conservative activists nationwide for support and donations.  The drawback for the DeVore folks is timing.  Demon Sheep is a month old, and while bizarre, the opportunity to latch onto the initial wave of coverage has long passed.

More about the health care-waves

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

TechPresident has an intriguing behind-the-scenes look at technology behind “On the Air,” the DNC/Organizing for America talk radio call-in project.  OFA compiled the data the site needed (dial-in information for all those shows) from volunteers thanks to a program that emerged from their Innovation Labs division.  The program itself is impressive enough, but the idea of a creative division spitballing ideas is a bold step.

Organizations funded by other people’s donations have to be able to show results, or else the gravy train stops.  A labs division, which may produce one tangible product for every 25 they conceive, seems like a poor investment.  Considering the usefulness of that 4% yield, it’s usually worth the investment.

To use OFA’s example, they now have a database of talk radio programs across the country.  In addition to national programs like the Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs, they also have good, current information for regional and local shows.  And don’t forget, OFA still has a massive list of email addresses and – especially important – mobile numbers, which they can filter for voters in a certain state or Congressional district.  So if you live in a district with a competitive House race in September, you could easily get a text message asking you to dial in to your local talk radio show, with the number included.

On the Air is a good innovation, but the underlying technology could have even great applications down the road.  For DNC/OFA donors, this should prove the labs experiment is a successful one.

What can Brown do for you?

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

If you’re a Massachusetts Republican, he might be able to convince you to run for office.  The Bay State GOP is reporting an increase in candidate recruitment and town committee organizing.  That’s no small task.  While statewide Republican candidates have been successful in Massachusetts, the party has not been able to make a dent in Democratic infrastructure on a local level.  They haven’t had enough votes in the state legislature to maintain a governor’s veto since 1992, and they haven’t held a Congressional seat since 1998.  Many of those races were unopposed – after all, why would someone take a leave of absence from their job and flush months of time down the toilet just to lose by nine points to John Olver?

For the Mass GOP, Scott Brown’s victory has already been more promising than William Weld’s, Paul Cellucci’s, and even Mitt Romney’s.

On the air for government health care

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

With Congressional Republicans and President Obama putting on a meeting that could make Bill Lumbergh ask you to go ahead and drop hemlock in his coffee, Organizing for America is pushing its supporters to talk radio to advocate the expanded government control of health care.

OFA’s radio site gives users everything they need to be good soldiers  the government health care army.   The site provides a link so advocates can listen into various programs and phone numbers to call in.  If they are having trouble getting through, the advocates can click through to another show’s information quickly.  A “Calling Tips” section prepares them for what to expect and how to deal with hosts that challenge their views; and a clear list of talking points helps them stay on message.

The site – and the tactic of calling in to radio shows – will likely not change a single person’s mind about government health care.  After all, most of the folks  listening to Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, or even news radio probably have their mind made up.  But there are two important possible results that could come of this:

  1. It’s important for any side in a political debate to have voices that come from outside of Washington.  If Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama are the voices of government health care, it is hard for the average voter to identify with their side.  It’s much easier to identify with someone who calls into a news show; for government health care advocates, injecting their views into the debate through the grassroots is vital.
  2. Making the case for personal ownership of health care is not hard, but it’s much more difficult to make that case to someone who has a personal story to tell.  Further, a bombastic conservative talk radio host – with no electorate to answer to in pursuing the goal of entertaining radio – may slip up and insult an opposing caller.  Whether a conservative host is flummoxed by a personal testimonial or overly aggressive, it’s a clip of a voice from the right sounding stupid on health care.  Enough of those clips can indeed change people’s minds.

The key to the site’s success is the “Report your Call” function – something which allows OFA to at once track progress and people.  Remember, the next campaign is just around the corner.

Palin vs. Family Guy: IT’S A TRAP!

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

It’s old news, but the Sarah Palin v. Family Guy flap shows the danger of dabbling in pop culture references without doing some homework.

The former Governor of Alaska made headlines by smacking Family Guy for a Down Syndrome-afflicted character who claimed her mother was “the former governor of Alaska.”  And all of a sudden, it’s the early 1990s again, when Dan Quayle (a Republican who was named as a Vice Presidential candidate despite doubts about his readiness for prime time) took a swipe at the TV show Murphy Brown when the title character had a child out of wedlock.

Family Guy is a poor target for Palin’s ire, featuring frequent jokes about a wheelchair-bound main character and occasional cameos from a Greased-up Deaf Guy.  Why start hammering Seth MacFarlane and Company for making fun of the handicapped now?

Compounding the issue for Palin is the fact that the actress who claimed to be Palin’s daughter was voiced by an actor with Down syndrome.  Suddenly, the actress is in the position of authority on how to handle the issue and Palin is an outsider to the Down syndrome community.  If MacFarlane was looking to bait Palin into looking foolish, he could not have planned it better.

This also makes for another early 1990s parallel: one of the Fox Network’s first hits, In Living Color, featured a handicapped superhero played by Damon Wayans.  Wayans escaped criticism because he had, as a child, suffered from a club foot.

Tea leaves and straw polls

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Ron Paul won’t win a Republican primary, but he took the CPAC straw poll this weekend.  Mitt Romney came in second with 22% to Paul’s 31%, and Sarah Palin was a distant third, with only 7%.

Paul is a bit of an odd duck as far as candidates go.  He can raise money and gin up excited activist, he appeals to thinkers and rabblerousers alike, but the CPAC straw poll will likely be the most significant election he ever wins.  Yet Ron Paul is not entirely a kook.  His small government ideas – including a very detailed monetary policy speak volumes about the same electoral sentiment that bristles at stimulus spending and bailouts.

Good candidates and campaigns understand that you must win both activists and voters.  Paul can do the former but not the latter, but his CPAC victory does provide a roadmap for Republicans eyeing the 2012 presidential nomination.  The trick is to understand the ideas Paul and other policy wonks talk about so much that they can take another step: explain what those ideas and policies mean to the American voter.

This is the missing ingredient in many of the conservative movement manifestos that have been making the rounds in recent weeks.  Honestly, no one gets excited about the idea of returning to the founding, or creating less government.  People get excited by a path forward that takes them to a better place.

This isn’t a call to nominate professors who can use charts and powerpoints to prove their correctness.  I like slogans and catch phrases.  But to really distill an issue into a meaningful sound bite, catch phrase, or slogan, one has to understand that issue.  Otherwise, the catchprase doesn’t translate meaningfully.

Ron Paul has bold new ideas about the direction the country ought to follow – and it’s an exciting vision to the Republicans at CPAC.  The ideal 2012 Republican nominee will talk about why those ideas will look like as national governing policy – and, more importantly, why they will help American citizens more.

Three reasons the Mount Vernon Statement misses the mark

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Finally, someone put pen to paper and defined what it means to be “conservative.”  Authorities on the subject released the “Mount Vernon Statement” to define conservatism this week on the eve of CPAC.

Even viewed through the lens of skepticism, the document is unsurprisingly disappointing.

1.  It’s off-message.

From the document:

Some insist that America must change, cast off the old and put on the new. But where would this lead — forward or backward, up or down? Isn’t this idea of change an empty promise or even a dangerous deception?

What the hell does that even mean? (I think they ripped that line off from the Kang vs. Kodos debate on the Simpsons.)  The statement alternates between calls for  the “change we need” and “movement… toward our founding principles.”

To gain real traction, political movements must think forward, not backward.  Framing debates in terms of “founding principles” might work in a debating society, but that’s not where political battles are fought.  People do remember that the principles of the founders included an Al Jolson-esque tap-dance around slavery, and that our history includes bigotry, racism, oppression, and discrimination.  They also know that our ability to progress and evolve based on the ideas of liberty have helped us overcome and continue to help us overcome those challenges.

The use of the word “change” in and of itself appears to be a nod to the Obama presidential campaign, but that is as misguided as it is dated.  The liberal use of “change” underscores the main problem with the Mount Vernon Statement’s message: it defines conservatism in the other side’s terms, and talks more about what it is against than what it is for.

2.  It’s anachronistic.

The Mount Vernon Statement is subtitled, “Constitutional Conservatism: A Statement for the 21st Century.”  Since we’re already done with about 10% of the 21st century, it’s a good thing they got this thing out.

The statement’s web presence betrays the old-school thinking behind it.  The site is geared to look like the U.S. Constitution – a 222-year-old document written by hand on parchment.  It’s a great document, but graphic design has advanced since then.

Thousands have signed on to add their support, but there is no Facebook group (at least not linked on the site).  The “news room” has a press release announcing the signing of the document, but nothing else.  After the likes of Adolph Hitler and Joe Dufus “signed” the document the organizers simply shut down user involvement.  There’s no links to Facebook, no invitation for users to post video reactions on YouTube, and no places to click to share the statement on social news services like Digg.

Beyond the online problems, the very idea of a manifesto hearkens back to a time – in truth, a fairly recent time – where political movements were centralized and relied on national leaders.

3.  It speaks to the wrong audience.

The Mount Vernon Statement counts as its signatories a who’s who of the “New Right” – the New Right being defined as the conservative organizational entrepreneurs who helped sweep into office a President who promised to get government out of the people’s way.  That was in 1980; the New Right is therefore no longer new.

The conservative movement – and the country – owe a debt of gratitude to these people.  But the grassroots energy that has marked recent conservative activism – town halls and tea parties – also includes a strong skepticism of inside-the-beltway voices of all political stripes.  Top-down attempts to “unite” activists under a single banner have met with mixed results.

The Mount Vernon Statement isn’t particularly harmful, but it isn’t helpful either.  As a mission statement for the conservative movement, it simply doesn’t fulfill its mission.

Buh-Bayh

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

Evan Bayh’s decision not to run for re-election this year not only hurts Democrat chances of retaining any clear Senate majority, but robs them  of one of their moderating influences. If the Democrats hold 51 seats in January 2011, what will that majority agenda look like?

Bayh has helped temper more liberal policies, from business regulation to health care.  Other retirees, like Chris Dodd, and troubled incumbents, like Blanche Lincoln and Harry Reid, have shared that role at various times in their careers.  Perhaps the likes of Mark Warner or Max Baucus can fill that void – or, perhaps the diminished moderate ranks are quieter in the gridlock that comes from having less than 60 votes.

But maybe the most telling story about the relationship between Democrats and the electorate comes from the curious primary challenger Bayh faced – a fringe candidate who claims to be closing in on the signature requirements which would make her an official candidate.  If true, Tamyra D’Ippolito – who claims the state party is an “old boys’ club” – would have a cakewalk to the nomination.  If she misses the cut (which happens at noon today), state party officials could hand-pick a better-funded, better-known candidate to run in Bayh’s place.

If you’re scoring at home, that means the state Democratic party would like to select their candidate with as little democracy as possible.  As Republicans in New York’s 23rd Congressional District can attest, that’s a recipe for disaster.

The Contract with America ain’t walkin’ through that door

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

Washington, D.C. is concluding a week under a blanket of snow with a promise of a new Contract With America… sort of.  Under the headline, “Conservative Manifesto coming soon,” Politico reports that leaders of the inside-the-beltway Conservarati are drafting a “mission statement for the right.”

There are two problems with this.  Just as Republican presidential candidates fell all over themselves to quote Ronald Reagan in last year’s primaries, Republicans hopeful that 2010 is the next 1994 are looking to resurrect the Contract with America.

There are two problems with this.

First, establishment conservatives are not the most appropriate voices for an anti-establishment message – and if anything is clear about the electorate, it’s the anti-establishment sentiment.

Second, and more important, the original contract was a political platform, a promise to voters that, if elected, Republicans would follow a certain policy course.  It was not a statement of principles, but a set of specific policy goals.  From tea party groups to conservative organizations, the institutions creating these new Contracts are asking for something from government.

The best “Contract with America 2.0” I’ve seen was written by Matt Lewis, who actually thought through policy ideas and has proposed laws which would roll back free speech restrictions, promote personal retirement savings, and promote national security.  But forward-thinking policies should not find themselves listed under a recycled term.

The Contract with America was a great idea in 1994.  Sixteen years later, conservatives should be looking forward to the next big thing – not the last.

REAL journalism on the right

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The Daily Beast’s list of the top 25 conservative journalists makes one thing obvious: the Daily Beast either has little concept of what journalism actually is or felt the need to create a list with 25 names rather than, say, a dozen.  The list ranks the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity highly – and while they are influential commentators and entertainers, they are not journalists.

The list has several good picks such as Andrew Breitbart, Matt Drudge, and Michael Barone.  Like Limbaugh and Friends, they have opinions; but unlike the typical radio show host they illustrate their views with information.

Good opinion journalism was best summed up in a seminar given by a reporter who should have been on the list, Tim Carney: “Nothing convinces people like facts they didn’t know before.”

Case in point: in a recent blog post, Carney explored the reaction of Sen. Chuck Schumer to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United vs. FEC decision.  Schumer bemoaned that the decision “open[ed] the floodgates” for “special interest money” from large companies.  With a little bit of research, Carney discovered that Schumer was the top recipient of funds from three of the top five industries in terms of campaign giving.  He also found about a dozen former Schumer staffers working as lobbyists.  In other words, when Schumer defends campaign finance regulations, he’s defending a system that he has found very lucrative.

A talk radio host may get laughs by calling Sen. Schumer “Chuck the Schmuck” or joking about the New York political machine functions so comfortably in – and there’s certainly a place for that.  But real journalists like Tim Carney are the ones who find the factual nuggets of truth necessary for commentary and satire.

And because that job is so important, it’s equally important to get the job description right.