I honestly believe that the GOP needs move closer to Libertarians. Stop electing centrist. Also work on the “cool” factor of being part of the GOP. Become the party of civil liberties and individual freedom…and stick to your FREE MARKET PRINCIPALS!!!

I wholeheartedly agree that we need to build out infrastructure for the conservative cause. My natural inclination this week is to start volunteering with my county GOP office, but for the reasons described in this article I’m hesitant to do so. How do we build this infrastructure? How can we get the conversation going? Is there anything we can build on? I think you have a great idea here and I want to get involved/contribute, but I don’t know where to begin. I’m in the DC area and I’m happy to go to/host a meeting. Who’s with me?

I think there is a huge amount of stereotyping in your first graf. Regardless of how young Obama voters were, their turnout was dwarfed by the typical Dem base constituency of the poor, stupid, and illiterate.

On your second and third points you are right. Though the technology needed to manage GOTV wouldn’t challenge even a mediocre software engineer.

Our real problem is that our consultants have no affinity for our politics or candidates. They are in it to score big bucks.

opensecrets is a great resource for anyone interested in tracking money in politics. I use it all the time.

The one whose household income is at about $170k and i live in a metro area. Perhaps if republicans moderated on some things (like higher taxes on the rich, women’s rights, sensible use of military force, and gay rights), i’d give the GOP a look, but not in their current form.

This, of course, really depends on the old fogies in your party dying off so it’ll take a while.

Nothing will make you change your mind. You don’t know the party. You see it as some monolithic groupthinking knuckledraggers. We’ve heard that line before.

All of this is based in your rather narrow world view. These stereotypes are so old hat. You really should talk to people outside your liberal circles.

David Frum? The guy that is obsessed with Obama’s pants crease?

They only tend to skew liberal because they are, like most youth, weak-minded (I believe the term is ‘impressionable’) and the mind-molestation of left-wing ‘education’ and ‘media’ takes its toll.
And that’s what needs to be addressed in this discussion of infrastructure – institutional change.

That would be David Brooks. But you’re close.

Mark him down as young fool, racist and traitor, with a whiff of union thug wannabe.

I like this articel and I disagree with the condemnation of the Self labeled liberal by the conservatives This is the conversation we need to have, instead of condemnation why not common ground??
I also agree we need to reach out to the minorities of which the Republican party has helped more than the Democracts I read a article from the Neice of MLK that She voted for Romney because of biblical issues and she could not understand why the Republicans did not pick up this issue with the minorites they for the most part are conservative on issues dealing with the family and the Bible. That I think is agreat place to start. Minorites used to vote Conversative then they changed let get them to change back.

Nicely done!!!! I agree with your analysis. We need to all be proactive and start from the ground up. Whether it is uploading memes to counter and expose liberal hypocrisy or to organize mobilizing events in our schools and communities. We also need to unite. We need strength in numbers that can only be achieved through coordination unity of PAC’s and platforms. We need to be sharp. Here are some goals I want to see.

1) Jon Stewart losing viewers and ratings

2) MSM to be exposed en masse and so that all can see.

3) Conservatives in Hollywood coming out of their shells and speaking out and making works that glorify Conservative values and make it “cool.”

This is only the beginning, but in many ways, there is a culture war that we have been losing…

I gotta disagree, and the polls don’t support your assertions. What you are saying is, basically, REPs need to do a better job targeting their message, rather than consider that the message itself is at odds with the beliefs/needs of the targeted. Certainly, there is a message problem that needs to be addressed. Do you think the problem is that Mitt Romney should have attended Latino luncheons and talk about self-reliance, when everyone in the room remembers “self-deportation,” and everyone in the room both considers themselves hard-working, and knows plenty of people like them who did get a leg up with Gov assistance? A perfect audio system, with perfectly aligned speakers, are of no use if the singer’s catalog is not what people want to hear. You just have a beautifully amplified awful singer.

Infrastructure is key, that is beyond all doubt. But we must also get a handle on the rampant voter fraud going on. I intially thought this was conspiracy-theory/sore loser syndrome. But some of the facts coming out of the swings states have numbers that are unexplainable. How do you receive 141% turnout or that some precincts in Philly show zero Romney votes?

This type of voter fraud should not happen in the United States. It is shameful and criminal.

pardon,
‘you just Made my case…’

“Our real problem is that our consultants have no affinity for our politics or candidates. They are in it to score big bucks.”

Dead on bullseye, Streiff. And, sad to say, Stu Stevens leads the pack. Look for his next book.

Don’t do that. Some of his ideas are worth listening to.

IT has been (knock on wood) relatively unaffected by the recent economy. If you have skills you can write your own ticket wherever you want.

Good job Aaron, even though I don’t quite get all of the “infrastructure” parts. Filling in the details could turn it into a book. Some of us have taken umbrage at the liberal commenters, but I actually agree with a good deal of what phokus and bosco have written. Maybe not all the cause-and-effect stuff, but there are some workable ideas in there, too.

“This infrastructure should be fueled by causes, not policy, not white papers, not poll tested messaging meant to peel away small portions of your opponents base. Causes are what inspire people to act en masse, a candidate with no clear cause is bound to lose.”

I think you have a key concept here. What was the one thing that gave me some actual confidence that Romney would win (and I admit that I still think he was the best man we had to be President–I have no way of knowing whether he was our best candidate)? It was Chick-fil-A day. And why did all those people turn out to support a private enterprise that wasn’t giving away anything to them for their support? Because there was an inspirational cause at issue, free speech, freedom of religion, and a pushback against the too-big government. I thought those same people would turn the tide by voting for Romney because he believed the same way, but I may have been wrong.

Either they did support him but were already in his camp, or they didn’t see that he was calling for support for the same kind of cause. I could see the latter, because although I believe he was 100% with us on almost everything, he did a terrible job of getting that idea out, and instead gave us a 5 Point Plan, and repetitive messaging and I don’t know what else because we saw none of it in Arizona. But I would have gone with more “inspirational causes” rather than “I know how to fix things,” even though he WOULD HAVE AND DOES KNOW HOW TO FIX THINGS that need fixing very badly right now.

I’m still perplexed that so many young people seem to have voted against their own best interests (that is also something that the Left claims WE do all the time) by re-electing a man who is determined to put us deeply into debt, akin to Greece someday, has already reduced our standard of living, has no idea about how the private sector creates the jobs without which the public sector can’t survive, either, and has no compunction to blatantly lie about whatever he needs to to counter our statements, even though facts support us but not him.

Maybe the elections WERE all fixed. That’s only half a joke. Democrats from Gore through Obama have succeeded in doing what nobody has ever done before–they’ve made Americans suspicious of the honesty of their Presidential election system.

And it is no small thing that the Left controls 98% of the media read by non-committed partisans. Suggesting that we listen to the Four Davids (Frum, Plough, Axelrod, and Brooks) doesn’t help until we have something akin to a widely accepted press on our side that is believed to be impartial. Then IT can tell the public that we are telling the truth and the Democrats are wrong and some converts can be made. Without that backup, it has been our word against both the Democrats and the MSM, or SCUM as I prefer, and we get a little help from Fox, but I haven’t seen that they ever come out and report the news with a right-leaning slant like NBC does–they just report it like any other outlet: “He said, she said, now You Decide.”

Which is kind of stupid statement given that the higher the degree level the more likely a person is to vote Dem. I thought it was just that the GOP failed to turn out its low-information voters who believe the earth is 5000 years old and that FOX is true.

Keep thinking that way Streiff and let’s see how the GOP does in future elections. Those “illiterates” are dumb like a fox.

kindredsoul,
Call your county GOP committee and find out where your local legislative district committee meets. Then go to the meeting.

Go here to learn more: http://theprecinctproject.wordpress.com

Thank you.

CW

This is patently false. Go look up GDP per capita by state. Here’s the wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP

Now sort by the per capita column. Notice the top twenty states are very blue. They went to Obama by as much as 20% of the popular vote. The two exceptions (Alaska and Wyoming) have absolute GDPs an order of magnitude smaller.

So the productive engines of our society heavily blue.

Another example: Asians. They are now the wealthiest ethnic group by household, law-abiding, traditional, family oriented and business friendly. They went for Obama by 3 to 1.

So, if these people are “scums, bums, union thugs, perverts” etc. I suppose that leaves you in the role of stupid cracker?

It’s not just consultants. Consider Asians: you lost them 3 to 1.

I try, but they’re generally not as bright or interesting. There are three nobel prize winners in my neighborhood (bubble chamber, game theory and molecular genetics) – that I know of.

None of them voted GOP.

You guys keep talking about this loss as if it was a marketing problem.

I want to see a viable GOP that I could even vote for, but based on most of the commentary here, I have my doubts…

so there was coordinated fraud in 8 of the 9 swing states that Obama won? Folks, we have a winner! I see the epistemic closure is still intact…

Infrastructure is a easy and lazy fix. What exactly do you call moderation? If it is abandoning principles, then I agree. But if it means talking the same talk, then I disagree. I work with young people, and let me say that the GOP is almost synonymous with hatred and intolerance and that is NOT coming from the Dems, It is coming out of the words of our own mouths. We need to fix this and we needed to fix this in 2008. The cement is almost dry people!!! The rape crap, the birther crap, the kenyan socialist crap, this shit has to cease. The GOP is a self-fulfilling caricature of itself. Plays RIGHT into the hands of Dems, THEY ARE LAUGHING AT US RIGHT NOW

I have to disagree with your analysis. The only lesson about project orca is that Republicans show once again that they are incapable of coordinating an operation – if you can’t run a competent presidential campaign and overseeing the complexities of running that campaign, you are unsuited to run the country – PERIOD.

The Mitt campaign had enough money to hire professionals. But you can’t blame them for being clueless about how to deploy 21st century technology, when they were totally clueless about the state of the nation, and their election chances even after Ohio was called to Obama.

And to me, the real problem with Republicans is not even embracing the social policies of the 1960s, which I think are valid principles that ought to be defended if you strongly believe in them. It is about grasping reality. Creating a bubble is very lucrative for Fox News and the right wing entertainment industry because they get an audience who do not seek other sources for facts. How did that work out for them?

No, we don’t want to throw ANYONE out of the party. We may need to chastise and re-train them, but we still want them voting, and working, on our behalf and for the good of the country. Kicking people out is not a winning strategy.

Actually most blacks and Latinos are pretty socially conservative and Christian. They supported Prop 8 in California.

I don’t understand how the “real” conservatives don’t get the message. You would have Akin, Murdoch, West and Walsh still or newly elected to Congress if your message was palatable to most reasonable people. It is not. In fact, the unvarnished and bare central tenets of conservatism turn off so many people, changing how you describe yourselves won’t make a difference. Sorry…..please think forward.

Because his reasoning was infantile, as were his arguments. His snap judgements and generalizations about a group of people show one who lives in a very narrow world view. I would venture that he has never even spoken to someone outside his own echo chamber. Also, the way he answered the question.

It is quite ironic that in one statement you disparage being motivated by money, yet in the next provide an indirect brag that you have friends who are millionaires. By the way, thank you for confirming that the Democrat party is the real party of the rich (the1%). Given that Obama won 8/10 wealthiest districts in the country, I would say the data supports that conclusion.

I am curious, since ‘money is generally boring’, why don’t you and your friends volunteer to pay more taxes? You’re absolutely allowed to.
It seems to me, that if you have all that extra money, and you’re not helping the government, which your political stance promotes as a solution to poverty, you’re being hypocritical and greedy.
Let’s see if you have the guts to answer.

I don’t believe you. Or your friends. (Seriously.)

Thanks for this laugh – I am absolutely cracking up right now. I went to your little chart, and the economic powerhouses of Wyoming and Delaware crack your top five in per capita GDP.
#1 in the “Economic Powerhouse” rating?
Washington, DC.
What a complete idiot you are. Really.

This will probably irritate a lot of my fellow conservatives, and I hope it doesn’t get me blammed, but I feel compelled to say it:
I think the simplest way to deal with the democrat party, right now, is to sow seeds of dissension within it. Obama et al. have, with the help of a rotted media, managed to do something amazing: join two groups that really hold each other in varying degrees of contempt – the very wealthy and the very poor. They have managed to get as consituents, the 1% and the bottom rungs of the 99% (to use a little lib lingo). The libs have done a fantastic job of putting together a vocabulary, system of arguments and ‘thought’ patterns that distill class warfare to a simple system. I think we should use that. I think we should, especially targeting specific locales (e.g., those 8 of 10 wealthiest districts and their environs) play the class warfare game to the hilt. Raise the poor against those wealthy libs who really do keep them down, but use the vocabulary and arguments of the left. Heck, truth be told, we really are the party of the middle class and poor: we want to preserve the middle class way of life, we want to provide the poor with a way out, etc. A lot of these wealthy libs believe ‘not in my backyard’ about minorities, poor folk, etc. They also take gov’t money in the form of subsidies, contracts, etc. That money comes out of the pockets of the middle class and poor (think various federal taxes that raise the price of living, which are ultimately paid by the poor), who can’t afford fancy lawyers and accountants to get out of their ‘patriotic duty’ to pay taxes.
I say we out-lib the libs. Gin up the class warfare, but against the other side, and see if the conversation changes.

poor, stupid, and illiterate Americans. Glad to see you own up to what you are. Recognizing your problem is the first step in solving it.

I believe there was a reply to this, but it disappeared. It started out, “You guys sound like it’s just a marketing problem.” My response was to be

“Heck, part of the problem IS marketing. There’s nothing wrong with addressing that part all by itself. Marketing is what got the Obama voters out. Plus issues, plus concepts, plus media exposure and media coverups, plus disregard for the truth, plus lack of specific knowledge of economics and history on the part of the electorate, plus the fact that at least one significant segment of the electorate votes Democrat no matter what and they went even further this time because they could vote for “one of us.”

But of course my original comment wasn’t completely about marketing, it was more about the message first, then about how it is delivered.

The real problem is the Democrats have the infrastructure in place. It was 10 years ago when Bush Created micro targeting lists. Yes have you looks out how outdated that official lists are? Most candidates are doing it themselves. We need groups to step out maybe something like the Tea Party and create there own systems outside the party to help get constitutive voters out.

Ok, I guess that means we are done. Have a nice day.

This place is pretty hostile to different opinions. Vitriolic rants against the dems? no problem. Against conservatives? banned. As an independent I dont feel welcome here. Honestly wondering if that is intentional? Does independent make me worse than a RINO? Are libertarians enemies too? How big is this tent?

as someone who holds conservatives in contempt you are hardly in the position to tell a conservative site how to operate. By the way, thanks for giving me the curiosity to examine your comment history.

political consultants and Asians are mostly not in the same Venn diagram

No, you’ve dodged the question. I asked about taxes.
Despite your claims, you’re a lib. (The phrases ‘socially valuable’ and ‘green energy’ give you away.) So again, why not give it all through taxes? How about this: since you’re interested in the idea, and not money, why don’t you work for free? Why is it the case that people can’t afford a person with your skill set? Didn’t you just say that technology entrepreneurs are more interested in ideas than dollars? So why is it we don’t see these guys everywhere giving away their services for free? Sure, there are some great guys that give away products, but by and large, the quality programs out there are very, very expensive, which is fine. It’s their product and they can charge for it. But if it is as you say, why don’t these guys (many of whom, probably most of whom, are libs) just work for food money?

You do the same. But before you go, please let me know how much of the money you don’t care about you sent to the federal government in excess taxes.

Many thanks.

Assuming you really believe what you type, let me clue you in. “Opinions” and “feelings” don’t count. Solid arguments, based on well-sourced data and facts, do. We welcome those. The tent is open to people who can manage that. Liberals rarely have any solid arguments, because “opinions” and “feelings”, backed up with nothing, are what they peddle and live by.

Again, just FYI, what you just typed has been typed inthe past, almost verbatim, by countless liberal trolls who come here just to crap on the carpet, then leave.

“Why don’t these guys…just work for food money?”

Soon they will. Soon they will.

You just typed nothing but opinions and feelings…

I like the idea of creating an infrastructure that would do better than ORCA. If a company pays enough attention to me to remember when I shopped there previously and what I liked then, it means something to me. Shouldn’t conservatives do the same for those they want to vote for/with them?

I’m curious why you say the Republicans aren’t allowed to do this. Can you elaborate? I’m a computer geek, so these tracking tools are interesting to me.

That video seems so simplistic. For example, who holds “anti-immigrant” signs on the right? Do you mean anti-illegal-immigrant? That’s a whole different issue. I have happily worked to settle legal immigrants (refugees) in this country, and I have sadly had to tell others that they shouldn’t stay illegally even though I know they wouldn’t be caught. Trust me, there’s a huge difference.
Now, if you want to talk about adding more legal immigrants, I’m all ears, if it’s done in a reasonable way.