A GOP district captain's lament

The reasons for Republican losses this year and the steps we need to take to rebuild are extensive. Start with the average voter. He or she does not care about (or honestly understand) ideology. Trying to appeal to the average voter with arguments about Adam Smith’s view of government and socialism etc. will likely get a blank stare. The average voter can tell you all the stats about the Denver Broncos but couldn’t tell you the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah, couldn’t tell you if Al Qaeda is a Sunni or Shia organization, and has no understanding of the ramifications of Georgia being invaded by Russia. The average voter wants to be able to feed his family, have healthcare, have a house with a big flat screen TV, and make sure his kids have a chance to get the same. The average voter (aside from the base on each side) doesn’t care if it is a Democrat or Republican who gives this to him.

Now with that as a backdrop, let’s look at this election. There were two broad issues that came into play…

1) Contextual Issues: Unpopular war, economic crisis, unpopular president, misadventures in the Minneapolis bathroom, etc.

2) Internal Party Issues: things that the GOP did and didn’t do which shot us in the foot.

As far as the contextual issues, this was a tough year for the GOP. You all know the details so I won’t repeat them here. What I would like to focus on is issues related to the GOP. In terms of pure strategy and tactics the matchup between the Dems and the GOP was like watching a football game between the Michigan Wolverines and Cherry Creek High School. They ran circles around us. A few cases in point…

Lack of Infrastructure

The Dems were incredibly well organized on a local level. They have a well run District and Precinct system with appropriate delegation of authority and support from the higher echelons of command. In Denver County we have essentially no infrastructure and we have completely let the precinct system fall into disrepair. I started as a precinct captain early this year and several weeks ago got promoted to District co-Captain. My other co-Captain, Paul Linton, also assumed his position relatively recently and he inherited a district that was in disarray. I have spoken with several other District Captains in Denver and they are experiencing the same thing. Part of the reason for this problem will be explained below.

Lack of Leadership

I have been rather unimpressed by the leadership that I see in the Colorado GOP. I won’t name any names here but too many people are “looking up” and focusing on how they can advance their own careers and get cabinet positions etc. They are not spending enough time “looking down” and making sure that the components of the Party over which they have jurisdiction gets developed. I spoke with several of the candidates who ran for either State House or State Senate and none of them received anything (money or training/advice) from the County or State Party. I understand that the Party may have decided that it would be better for them to put all their money into the Senate and National race.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that ignoring all of your local candidates is a good idea (I do not agree with this position). Ok then how about having a few candidate trainings at GOP HQ? I know there are some smart people in the party who know a lot about political strategy. It would not cost much to have an all-day “boot camp” for candidates to teach them about running for office. It would also cost very little for a county GOP chairperson to have the candidates in the county over to his/her house once a month to talk strategy and give them moral support.

It would not be difficult for the State Chairman to call each of the candidates in the state and say “stay motivated…keep up the good work!” It would not be difficult for the State Chairman to create an email list for all the local candidates and send them updates and strategy ideas. None of these things would be difficult unless hypothetically the State Chairman was trying to run a major Senate campaign at the same time he/she was trying to be State Chairman.

With the complete failure of our infrastructure that I described above, every Republican who is in a leadership position needs to be focused on rebuilding the infrastructure. I know it is a lot more fun to socialize and attend parties with powerful people but the stables need to be cleaned out and our leaders need to put their boots on and do some work.

Lack of Innovation

The Democrats utilized the internet and electronic media very well and we completely dropped the ball. This is very frustrating. Here in Denver County there are a number of people in the local GOP who fail to comprehend the importance of this. The Denver Democrat website is an order of magnitude better than the Denver GOP website. This is a critical problem that needs to be addressed NOW.

Here in District 3 we just set up a web page (www.ColoGOPhd3.com) and we are setting up Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace pages. We are going to be sending out post cards to every Republican on the Denver side of the district over the next 6 months trying to get them on our email list and trying to get them to connect with our web site. The GOP needs to make a real push to utilize technology as a force multiplier.

Excluding Voters

The Democrats have made great efforts to reach out to African Americans and Hispanics. In my humble opinion, we have to connect with these folks too or we will continue to lose.

Conclusion

We need to adopt a business mindset. Quite simply we are losing market share. When you really boil it down, we sell red widgets and the other party sells blue widgets. If the red widgets aren’t selling then one of three things might be going on…

1) People just don’t want red widgets anymore because they don’t offer what they want. (We need to change our widget)

2) People just don’t know about the red widgets and don’t realize that they really are a good product. (We need better advertising)

3) The red widgets do not actually deliver the features that they are advertised to be able to do. (We need to walk the talk)

In the first case perhaps our “product” needs to be changed, in the second case we need to do a better job of getting our message out in an understandable way, and in the third case we need to actually do what we claim we can/should do. I don’t claim to know exactly to what extent each of these plays a role but I think that they all contribute to the problem.

In business, if a company doesn’t innovate and compete effectively it goes out of business. In politics, we become irrelevant. Politics will always have two competing sides. Even the European countries that have multiple parties tend to create coalitions that divide up into two opposing sides.

The question is, will the Republicans continue to be a viable opposing force or will the natural polarity develop within the Democrat party causing the direction of our country to be decided every year in the Democratic primaries?

New habits for the GOP

(Denver Post, Nov. 9) “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Did I hear that from Hallmark, my mom, or in Sunday school? Turns out the words are from Stephen R. Covey’s self-help classic on good habits. They hit me on election night. My Republican party needs self-help if anyone ever did. Some of our gripe sessions about this year’s Democratic sweep feel like a sales meeting where everyone blames the customer. There are echoes of the East German party boss who said if the people didn’t like his regime, they needed to be straightened out. I mean serious denial. Having been a highly ineffective party since 2004 in Colorado, and since 2006 nationally, drunk on excuses and worse yet in 2008, maybe the GOP should check into detox. Supervising our rehab could be the stern Dr. Covey with his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Bad habits such as credit card binging, entitlement, victimhood, and not practicing what you preach can entrap groups as well as individuals. Republicans better do an intervention on ourselves after Obama’s blowout of McCain and state Dems’ pickup of two US Senate seats and three congressmen in four years. What would the Covey cure involve?

To maximize effectiveness, according to his 1989 bestseller, one should be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, think win-win, seek first to understand and then to be understood, synergize, and “sharpen the saw.” Let’s talk about how these might apply to the party of Lincoln and Reagan. Eavesdroppers from other parties can snicker all you want. We’re too desperate to care.

To be proactive, we’ll quit whining about Bush’s blunders, the Messiah’s millions, media bias, or anything else in the rearview mirror. GOP congressional leaders will roll out a 2009-2010 Contract with America before the new president names his cabinet. Colorado conservatives will forge a cash-rich, hydra-headed counterpart to the progressives’ amazing Democracy Alliance.

To begin with the end in mind, we’ll write a Republican president’s 2013 inaugural address and post it on the Web this coming January 1. We’ll map the states our ticket must carry to make Obama a one-termer, then target the issues to win those states. Next write a game plan for taking back Congress in 2010, as we did in 1994.

Putting first things first means a laser-focus at all levels of the party on economic recovery, abundant energy, healthy families, fiscal integrity, and national security, period. The American dream was co-opted this year by a smooth talker with a European agenda. We can unmask that ruse. Retake the high ground, team.

Win-win thinking isn’t easy for Republican individualists, the so-called “leave us alone coalition.” But without it we’re toast. Our ethic of responsibility and opportunity has much to offer women and youth, blacks and Hispanics. Get better at communicating that or prepare to be a permanent minority.

Seeking first to understand, then to be understood, is crucial as a habit-breaker for the refusal to listen that undid both the Bush presidency and the McCain campaign. This doesn’t just mean polling. It means listening with the heart. Millions more “felt heard” in 2008 by their side than ours – and voted accordingly.

Synergizing sounds like Oprah babble, but we’ll be uncompetitive until we catch up with the Dems in using social networking and Facebook to make one plus one equal three. Sharpening the saw sounds like Huckabee cornpone, but we’ll be perennial losers until we commit to habitual self-improvement and the endless campaign ala the other Man from Hope, Bill Clinton.

The political pendulum has swung left. The right can either wait for it to swing back, or we can form new habits and pull it back. I’m for the Covey cure.

Straws in the wind from California

"Last night’s results give me encouragement that the next conservative resurgence is only one election away," writes Republican state assemblyman Chuck Devore from California, where I knew him as a Claremont Institute Lincoln Fellow. Devore's blog post on Wednesday morning highlighted the solid passage of Proposition 8, which annuls the recent state Supreme Court mandate for same-sex marriage; the likely passage of Proposition 11, which would set up competitive legislative districts in the Golden State after the next census for the first time in memory; the likely election to Congress of Tom McClintock, conservative hero who contested Schwarzenegger to the finish line in the 2003 recall election...

...and above all, the untenable contradiction between California voters' big margin for Obama, an apparent liberal affirmation, and the inherently conservative message sent by their approval of Prop 8.

Out there on the left coast, something clearly has to give.

The Romney road not taken

This was a great win for Barack Obama and a wonderful achievement for African-Americans. But I think the lesson for Republicans is they should have picked Mitt Romney. John McCain is a great patriot and I am very grateful for his service to our country, but he was not the right choice to beat Obama. Republicans were so worried about national security that they missed the most important issue in the election: the economy. They also failed to apprehend the threat of Obama's charisma.

McCain sounded too much like Bush on national security: stay the course, no fresh ideas. McCain didn't really have any message on the economy other than "I'm for change too". Romney is very sharp on the economy and I think he's the only one who could have beat Obama.

It will be interesting to watch how Romney reacts to the Obama presidency. Romney will be waiting in the wings. But is the GOP ready to nominate a Mormon candidate? And if not, who will they turn to next?

McInnis: Off message or on?

Poor timing, poor judgment, or something more Macchiavellian, would be the only labels a team-playing Republican could put on former congressman Scott McInnis's self-glorifying remarks in both Denver dailies yesterday, to the effect he would have done better against Mark Udall for US Senate than Bob Schaffer is doing. The Denver Post, a Democrat-leaning paper, was delighted to put the story on page one. "McInnis' admission comes a week before state voters go to the polls and with Schaffer trailing by double digits in several surveys," Michael Riley wrote with smirking understatement. "Republicans say it may mark the beginning of a ferocious debate about the direction of the party if next week's election goes badly."

To say "may mark" and "if... goes badly" is to slide past the glaring fact that the ex-congressman's trumpet blast, coming right now, does open the debate and will in some degree make things go worse for the GOP next Tuesday.

The weak and oblique protestations by McInnis in the Post story that this wasn't meant as a shot at Schaffer are more explicit in the Rocky story. "McInnis said Tuesday he was simply responding to a question from an online news site about whether he could have beaten Udall if he had stayed in the race.... 'This wasn't a "Hey, could you have done a better job than Schaffer?"... Not at all. It was how does this party rebuild after the election and where is it going to go.'" Sorry, not very convincing. A seasoned pro like him doesn't "simply respond" to any media question big or small. Scott McInnis -- a friend of mine and usually an ally -- is a very smart guy who always engages brain before mouth moves.

Either he wants Schaffer and the ticket to win and just got way off message, or he expects them to go down, maybe even figures it will serve his goals if they do, and decided to get on a new message of his own right now -- toward the goal of a far more centrist Colorado Republican Party after 2008, a party that looks less like Allard, Schaffer, Tancredo, and Owens, and more like... Scott McInnis.