Posted on 06/13/2008 11:07:10 AM PDT by RatherBiased.com
John Ensign said a lot yesterday in a very small number of words:
The Senate Republicans' top fundraiser Thursday said he is telling colleagues this is a bad year for members of his party to be up for election.
"I'm telling them if you have an 'R' in front of your name, you better run scared," said Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). [...]
Mr. Ensign dismissed reports that contributions to the Republicans by disgruntled small donors are down this year. He maintained the party's contributor base is intact. The Republican Party long has boasted that it is the party of small donors while the Democratic Party has had to rely far more on wealthy contributors to finance election campaigns.
He said the Republican Party never suffered a loss in small donors, only a shrinkage in the net amount of money raised - a decline that he said was not the result of small donors being disgusted with excessive Republican spending in Congress but of the party having been mailing "bad" lists that had driven up fundraising costs. That problem has been eliminated, he said.
Well I for one am resting a lot easier now.
Ensign's strange remarks (quoted in the Washington Times above) speak volumes about what's wrong with the right. Ironically, it is not that we are behind technologically but rather that we've become obsessed with it.
That may seem a little off-kilter so let me explain.
In the world of conservative non-profits and Republican campaigns the wrong type of thinking has caught hold, a type of thought that says with enough voter demographic databases and precisely targeted email lists, we can do anything. This school of thought has a close relative which argues that if we just build blogs, create videos, and sync our Twitter and Facebook accounts enough, we'll win the public back to our side.
Unfortunately, politics doesn't work that way. Keeping up with the technological Joneses is actually the bare minimum of what the right should be doing. It takes little strategic vision to insist upon high-technology web sites, well-produced video, or precise mailing lists. All of these things are good things. What we desperately need more of is a return to the public square on the part of the right.
Instead of continually trying to refine Reagan-era political strategy, we ought instead to be creating post-Reagan conservatism, one that rejects the small-bore politics of photo-ops, earmarks (pro and con), and cowering before the press in favor of a 21st century conservatism that realizes politics is done less in the halls of Congress and more in the television and computer screens of the home. A conservatism that isn't silent on technology, the environment, and the global economy.
And how about a conservatism that actually tries to explain itself in language that makes sense to the average person?
That last point is especially critical. Most people don't really care at all about policy. Nor should they. What they do want is to hear today's issues addressed in a reasonable manner by someone who loves the country and its people. With that in place, victory follows. Even with a "bad" mailing list.
Matthew Sheffield is the creator of NewsBusters and executive producer of the fake news show "NewsBusted."
If I got postage due envelopes with pennies or little scoops of dirt , I would think I had a bigger problem than a defective mailing list .
Yeah, they stupidly had been using lists of conservatives.
I’m calling BS on this one.
I’ve been called TWICE by the RNC for a donation. BOTH times I told them I would return to donating when they ran a conservative on their ticket.
In the mean time, I’m donating to local conservative candidates and issues.
“In the world of conservative non-profits and Republican campaigns the wrong type of thinking has caught hold, a type of thought that says with enough voter demographic databases and precisely targeted email lists, we can do anything. This school of thought has a close relative which argues that if we just build blogs, create videos, and sync our Twitter and Facebook accounts enough, we’ll win the public back to our side. ....
Instead of continually trying to refine Reagan-era political strategy, we ought instead to be creating post-Reagan conservatism, one that rejects the small-bore politics of photo-ops, earmarks (pro and con), and cowering before the press in favor of a 21st century conservatism that realizes politics is done less in the halls of Congress and more in the television and computer screens of the home. A conservatism that isn’t silent on technology, the environment, and the global economy.”
CORRECT!
I have been telling candidates:
- The campaign is only as good as the candidate
- You cannot win without a winning message, that message has to have a positive conservative reform agenda
All those things are the technology of communication, but they dont win battles - WHAT you communicate is what really counts!
The one person who is out there hammering on the need for a winning message based on ‘Real Solutions’ is Newt Gingrich. He gets it.
They need a list of DEMOCRAT voters then for their fundraising since they are courting DEMOCRAT votes and not conservative Republicans.
They DO have bad lists.
They need to get the Hillary girls to make a new list that would weigh heavy on Democrat voters.
Maybe these people will contribute.
I see we were thinking along the same lines. You beat me. LOL!
Call ‘em and disabuse them of that sill notion:
(202) 675-6000
I love using their prepaid envelopes to send them my nasty reminders that I am a Conservative without a party!
Shaking my head at this sentence. Unless I'm wrong, Reagan's political strategy was lower taxes, smaller government, less regulation, greater freedom to its citizens, and a strong national defense to name just a few.
With the exception of lower taxes, Dubya has failed on the rest. Our military is strong, but our borders are not secure.
Ronald Reagan's message is quite simple, and remains powerful to this day. Why mess with it?
Anecdotally, I never had problems explaining it. For example, I was stationed in Germany during the 1980 campaign. I lived in a small town along the Mosel River, and my German neighbors were begging me to vote for Carter. They were sure that RR would start WWIII.
After 3 years in Germany, my German was proficient enough to explain Reagan conservatism in their native tongue. They understood "peace through strength", "lower taxes", "less government". The message was hammered home when the American hostages landed at Ramstein AB shortly before the inauguration.
Within a week, I was invited to sit at the stammtisch of a gasthaus I frequented, a table in German restaurants reserved for family members and close friends of the family. I cherish that honor to this day.
My rather pathetic U.S. Senator, Mel Martinez was head of the R.N.C.
I wrote to tell him I was firmly against his ardent support for amnesty.
He sent me a request for a donation to the R.N.C.
I wrote him back that he and his R.N.C. can kiss my rear.
And my attitude will remain thusly as long as the R.N.C. keeps sending up RINO turds.
I guess you can say that is an accurate statement. We havent gone anywhere, thus leaving us intact, we just arent giving them any of our money anymore.
BFPOTD!
(bump for post of the day!)
Judging by this article...the GOP doesnt get it. Judging by some of the responses in the thread, GOPers do not get it.
If GOP wants to regain power:
- Dump the Global Economy crap. Globalism is liberalism....concentrate on the American economy. You cant create a job in America by shipping it to Communist China or Mexico. If the DNC gets to limit or kill NAFTA...the GOP is in trouble.
- Quit pandering to illegal aliens...guest worker amnesty..and other non-American hiring schemes. Create jobs in America for Americans
- Dump the Global Warming crap. Get some nads and debunk the fraud. Unfortunately too many Business Socialists, even teleevangelists (Pat Robertson) have bought into the scam.
- Stop being DNC-Lite. Come up with original ideas, not try to be “less Democrat”
- Emphasize drilling for oil in the USA....and digging for coal and nuclear energy. Get some nads on this issue, too
How about a return to basic conservative values?
I won’t spend a ruddy dime to help the GOP as long as it promotes heavy spending and porous borders. This GOP tried to ram the Dubai ports deal and amnesty down our throats, and it was only because we rose up and screamed bloody murder that we stopped it from happening. This GOP was complicit in some of the largest wads of earmarks in human history, a bloated prescription bill, and other outrages.
Bad mailing lists? How about: you are off the rails, you betrayed your core principles, and your base is really really pissed off at you. And now I can add to this: you are IDIOTS, GOP. If you can’t see what the problem is after years of us screaming about what it is, I don’t know that there’s a lot of hope for you.
Right.
If we all know it is BS, then that serves to illustrate the problem.
Damn straight!
R for RINO
I used to do that too until I was reminded that fund raising operations pay people to open the envelopes, process the checks, make note of who sent the check for future fundraising, and throw the rest of that crap away. I get a kick out of the survey questions which always allows me to check the box that conforms with how I think. I try my best to target specific candidates with my largess.
Obviously, Ensign isn't a very good fundraiser if he is making these kinds of comments publicly. What a maroon.
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