Tag: conservative movement

A very maverick-y negative ad

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

That John McCain, two years after being his party’s standard-bearer, is fighting for his political life in a primary against talk show host J.D. Hayworth is telling of how urgently many GOP activists want a cathartic cleansing of Republicans of recent vintage.  However, an online video released by the McCain camp makes an argument that the conservative movement needs effective messengers as much as effective messages.

The message is subtle even if the delivery is not: the GOP has a message problem that goes beyond government policy, and the elevation of a voice like Hayworth’s would add to the stereotype.   One would assume that McCain’s campaign has internal poling numbers which show this is a strong field for them to play on, and that Republican primary voters are vulnerable to fears that Hayworth will be perceived as a joke.

The McCain folks are certainly careful to tread cautiously to avoid offending activists – they use extreme-sounding quotes from Hayworth, but on selective issues.  For instance, the video doesn’t take a stand on gay marriage, but it does quote Hayworth’s hyperbolic comparison of gay marriage to bestiality.  This is followed by Hayworth overreacting to an off-hand comment from a political opponent who promised to metaphorically drive a stake through Hayworth’s heart – echoing the over-the-top rhetoric of some Democrats after the recent health care debate.

With this video, McCain tries to tell conservatives that Hayworth is simply not strong enough to carry their flag.  It’s a pretty sophisticated message – and a good one for McCain to deliver, given his at-times-contentious relationship with conservative activists. And the video is funny, which always helps.

McCain does make one mistake in the presentation of his case that’s worth a chuckle or two.  A quick glance of the official John McCain YouTube channel offers potential for misunderstanding; the thumbnail for the video happens to be the screen frame reading “Expose Obama’s Secret Kenyan Birthplace” – and it looks more like a campaign promise than a joke.

Bringing the politics to you

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Minnesota Governor/2012 Presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty is holding a  town hall meeting tomorrow.  Last night, California Senate candidate Chuck DeVore held a fundraiser with Andrew Breitbart.

You can go to either of these events without being in Minnesota or California – both will be online.  (Though, if you want to attend the DeVore event, you’re going to have to also find a way to channel 1.21 gigawatts into the flux capacitor, which may cost more than the $50 minimum donation.)

In Pawlenty’s case, the two-term governor is attempting to build a national base in advance of his 2012 run for the White House.  For people nosing around and still feeling out the contenders, it’s a low barrier of entry.   With the first primaries still more than 20 months away, Pawlenty wisely doesn’t want to burn out his activists; at the same time he wants to start building a list of engaged supporters.  Some of his likely primary opponents (like Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and maybe Sarah Palin) already have exposure and campaign infrastructure from 2008.  The town hall could help Pawlenty catch up and – maybe even more important – allows him to build the perception of his candidacy being more firmly rooted in ideas than personality.

DeVore is trying to broaden his base, too – and continue extending his brand as one of the leaders among Republicans in the use of online tactics.  Thus far in the primary, DeVore has been the Martin Short of the Three Amigos running for the Republican nomination.  (If you’re wondering, Steve Martin was the best Amigo, followed closely by Chevy Chase.  Barbara Boxer is already El Guapo.)  The virtual pizza party may not put him on the Republican ticket to face Boxer in 2010, but it’s a good idea – one that could help other Republicans in 2010 or even DeVore himself in a future race.  After all, winning campaigns aren’t the only ones with good ideas.

Frum leaves AEI

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

Today, the American Enterprise Institute let go of David Frum.  Frum’s explanation:

I have been a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute since 2003. At lunch today, AEI President Arthur Brooks and I came to a termination of that relationship.

It sounds like Brooks was the Bob Sugar to Frum’s Jerry Maguire:

Now America loves health care reform

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

In a reversal not seen since Springfield decided they loved the Burlesque House, poll numbers on the health care bill have just about flipped since its passage, with a small edge favoring the bill.

Those numbers will likely go up in the next few months.  Americans are overwhelmingly satisfied with their own health care, and most of the provisions of the health care legislation will roll out slowly over the next decade.   President Obama’s oh-so-Presidential taunts about health care overhaul – calling on Republicans to “look around” in “two months, six months” – are backed up by the fact that very little will happen in that time.

More evidence that “repeal the deal” would be a loser as a political slogan this November.  But what if the slogan was “finish the job”?

Buried in the bill (and this story on CNN) are limitations on Flex Spending Accounts – personal savings accounts people can use to save money for their own health care.  Along with silly items like taxes on tanning beds and regulations on the McDonald’s dollar menu, there are plenty of gaps in the program administered by our new health overlords.  Why not attack those in the name of making people healthier?

Framing real health reform this way is a winner – after all, as the polls show, America loves to back the winning horse.

Why no ActRed?

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

While catching up on my reading, I ran across a TechPresident post on how left-wing groups may be funded in the future through small donations just as ActBlue has helped fund left-wing politicians.  One quote stood out:

It would, in theory, also work on the right side of the spectrum, though there’s no ActBlue equivalent in conservative circles.

True dat.  But the question is, “Why?”

ActBlue came along in 2004, when the model for online fundraising was John McCain’s 1999-2000 primary run against George W. Bush.  Outside of PayPal, there wasn’t much in the way of online infrastructure payments.  ActBlue was like a railroad, building tracks between excited online activists with cash and the candidates who needed it.

Six years later, there isn’t an ActRed, and with good reason.  Campaigns have become sufficiently sophisticated that there’s no mystery to internet fundraising.  (There are also lots of good consultants ready to help.) While internet fundraising in 2004 was like the railroad system, internet fundraising in 2010 is more like the interstate system, with individuals controlling their own destination more directly.

The Obama base

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

USA Today wonders about Barack Obama’s base being “disengaged” come 2012.  That may make the presidential election closer than it would have been otherwise, but it won’t tip the scales in favor of a Republican challenger.

George W. Bush had a similar problem in 2003.  Conservatives were grumbling about education reforms and the prescription drug benefit; there was even a healthy dose of disagreement on the Iraq war.  For many, it meant sitting on their hands – and one conservative writer even told me he voted for John Kerry because he felt anyone would be better than Bush.

Bush did, however, have a brilliant campaign apparatus in place and enough excited activists to overlook some specific policy disagreements.  Initially, it seems Obama can boast the same.

If Dick Cheney is to be turned into a prophet, it will not be due to former loyalists losing faith; more likely, it will be because independent voters don’t buy what those loyalists are selling, Obama may join the ranks of the unemployed.  A GOP version of John Kerry – or, to avoid crossing party lines, a re-enactment of Bob Dole’s uninspired 1996 campaign – will still run into a buzz saw.

Rove, Rove, Rove your boat

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Despite some stirrings on the right, there’s nothing wrong with Matt Lauer’s interview with Karl Rove, part of which aired yesterday morning.  The Today Show host was a bit combative, but journalists are supposed to be that way when talking with political figures.  (And sparring with a Republican is at least better than recycling the same five stories every morning and pretending like something is new.)

Matt Lewis had Rove on his podcast yesterday and came at the interview from a different angle.  If you are a politics junkie, it’s a good interview to listen to.  (For instance, Rove shares a hilarious story of a then-college-aged Lee Atwater’s first meeting with George H.W. Bush.)  It’s definitely worth a listen.

Coffee or Tea?

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

In an upcoming appearance on the Matt Lewis Show, Matt and I discuss the Coffee Party – the ragtag band advocating for the expansion of government in opposition to the Tea Party’s ragtag band advocating for less government.  The American electorate has therefore been delineated into two camps: “Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, I Need, I Need!” and “Relax, I Got This Under Control.”  “Democrat” and “Republican” have run their course.

I mistakenly thought the Coffee Party was a clever invention of DailyKos or some other established leftward organization, but the Washington Post proved me wrong – it was a clever invention of a grassroots activist.  But the main challenge they face is evident in their name.  They have defined themselves more through who they are not than who they are.

“The conservative answer to [BLANK]” has been the movement’s white whale for years.  “Conservative answers” to Facebook, YouTube, DailyKos, the Barack Obama Campaign, the New York Times, Digg, and countless other online and offline institutions have been launched and, at best, met with limited success.  In contrast, groups like the Tea Parties and Top Conservatives on Twitter have used existing infrastructure to accomplish something unique.

If the Coffee Party seeks to be the liberal answer to the Tea Party, they may be mimicking the conservative movement more than they know.

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.