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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

The Ending Spending Model

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  November 14th, 2012 at 09:21 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Yesterday I was less than complimentary of a bunch of the money spent by Republican billionaires and millionaires to advance the GOP this past year. Many of them threw good money after bad, hired marketers for technology, pooled their money with GOP ad guys who wasted it all, and some invested in massive and elaborately bureaucratic groups.

One model moving forward that these people should consider is Joe Ricketts’ Ending Spending. I’m very familiar with Ending Spending and the good work it has done. Instead of just going out to find Republicans to support, Ending Spending focused on an issue — ending spending in Washington. When many conservatives threw in with Don Stenberg in Nebraska, Ending Spending was one of the lone voices for Deb Fischer. In Arizona, Ending Spending played below the radar helping Jeff Flake.

A key to it’s success was that it stayed nimbler, focused on the issue not the party, and instead of building up elaborate infrastructure on its own, it worked with other small groups already doing good work. Instead of competition, which so many groups on the right do, Ending Spending collaborated. It avoided turf wars. It worked.

In the next four years, instead of more massive right-of-center groups sucking more time and energy away from conservative activists, working collaboratively between the smaller groups that fly under the radar and aren’t just tinker toys for the rich would be money well spent.

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COMMENTS

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  • Dan Middleton

    Ending Spending’s ads in support of Josh Mandel and against Sherrod Brown here in Ohio were all over the map. Some were solid, some were among the worst ads I’ve ever heard.

  • gmat

    I would like to see press releases by local and state Chambers of Commerce, saying something like: “If such-and-such regulation(s) went away tomorrow, then X many jobs would be created, by the following employers, in the next 60 days.”

  • nesalo

    Here’s the problem: we don’t know whether that’s true.

    It’s almost certainly true that if regulations went away, then more jobs would be created. But it’s not as though there are a bevy of entrepreneurs sitting in front of the Federal Register, waiting to hear that a emissions regulation for industrial boilers has been turned down by twenty percent. Which is about the scale of the regulatory change you’d get from basically any conservative candidate.

    In the short term, reduced regulations increase corporate profits. And then you get reinvestment in capacity. And then, finally, you get more jobs — not necessarily in the United States, and not necessarily within 60 days. It’s hard to articulate on this issue because it’s genuinely difficult to draw a straight, unambiguous line between particular reduced regulations and particular economic growth.

    The connection is there. But it’s not just hard because Republicans are incompetent. It’s hard because economic relationships aren’t deterministic.

  • nesalo

    Yeah. Erick is blaming the “tech consultants,” but I think the outside ads were equally incompetent.

    It seems to me that the outside money, and American Crossroads in particular, was in the business of selling ads to billionaires not selling conservatism to voters. It may be the case that the sort of ad campaign which makes an effective pitch to a billionaire donor isn’t a particularly compelling ad for the general population.

    Some of American Crossroads’ ads were good — the graph ad in particular. But it’s very hard to attack a candidate with an above-water favorability rating with ads that assume a 0% favorability rating. Dark rumblings about socialist dystopias and apocalyptic depressions don’t test well with voters: if the average voter believed that was likely, you wouldn’t even need to run the ad.

    You can see it in the candidate graphs: truly giant money dumps and ad buys didn’t do much good for any of our candidates. The needle had already stopped moving by mid-election-season, and only Romney’s truly striking (and very genuine) ‘happy, reasonable conservative’ positioning during the debates reversed it.

  • honor8versus8expedience

    the problem is looking at how unions are worse for job creation. i saw that on this site!!! The problem is obamacare leading companies to layoff labor and hire part time rather than full time!!!! the facts are there. we just need the ways to communicate them, we need ‘media’ like more movies, books, i don’t know…..

  • honor8versus8expedience

    YESSS!! I agree. There is more manpower on our side than the left’s. We have so many people and so much energy and potential wasted and spread thin.

  • davesinsanantonio

    Another problem with such specific predictions is that if you miss by just one employee, or just a few days, of your prediction the lefties will be all over you for lying. And, then they would tell the voters that all of your predictions were lies, even if you got ninety percent of them correct, by only speaking of your inaccurate ones.

  • celador2

    Ending Spending in Washington is a good idea whose time is still here. Sen Ron Johnson used a theme of spending that needed to be halted in DC and ousted an incumbent Feingold in Wisconsin 2010. It makes sense to end spending or really cut it as an instituion with a life of its own..
    Educating voters to the stark reality of where our money goes is an eye opening that causes most to stop and listen to more of what a candidate has to say.

  • celador2

    An ad theme of small business job creation and what lower taxes and regulations means for job creation and economic growth is a winner!

  • gmat

    Agreed. And not just in terms of campaign ads, but also, once elections are past, to motivate people to write letters to their legislators and letters to the editors. The more specific information that an individual can relate to his own locality, the better.

    What regs, what tax laws, exactly, are inhibiting hiring, and how much? If you hit a Congressman with a thousand letters from his district with that kind of specificity, I believe you can effect change.

  • gwalt

    What I proposed to Erick in 2009 and I believe will help us is to out the businesses that supported Obama. We know a couple who were Obama delegates and taunted us thru the election. Too bad he is a home builder and there are these thing called Angie’s list, Kudzu, YELP and others that I will gladly go on and simply state I will not use this company because they supported Obama.
    Live by Obama you wanted him, you should get him — Good and HARD.
    How will this help us? It will help Conservative small businesses weather the next few years by NOT using Liberal businesses. This should be easy.
    And nothing—– nothing—- will change unless we destroy the media in its present form. Ending Spending is great.
    Ending Broadcast Whorenilism is equally important. End Stepphie, end Lauer, end Dems.

  • edintexas

    I thought he included the 3d party groups in his commentary the other day. Perhaps you missed that column?

    And here he writes: “…and some invested in massive and elaborately bureaucratic groups.” Did you take that to mean the campaigns, or the RNC? If you did, you were mistaken.

  • celador2

    Absolutely! They need to push small business taxes and regualtions all the time and keep them as a major focus. Why are lower taxes so essential to an economic uptick? Why are lower taxes essential to mainstain good economic health in the arena where wealth is created?

    Competition elimiinates waste, innovation results and creativty drives more as cots drop. Free amrkets have ups and down and no top doen DC panel can match a free market. Cars are a good example. Until Ford not man could afford a car despite their high quality.

    Henry Ford started with the black Model T and cut prooduction costs on autos by running off a standard assembly line .By the 1920s car ownership had risen. After those production costs were dropped look where we have come with cars, trucks, vans, SUVs RUVs you name it. Any size or cost any add on, is there. Vehicles are the products of a free market and millions of people have been employed in white, blue and related industry jobs creating products they made with pride.And all derived from a simple one standard Model T.

    In contrast to a free market economy and process we have Obamacare and the top down model it imposes
    .
    How will Obamacare specifically harm small business? This is a crisis issue that need be explained to voters and one Judge John Roberts allowed to stand after he switched his vote and decided yes the federal gov can take over health care. Obamcare is NOT the product of the competition and innovation from free markets , no it is imposed by partisan Democrats and John Roberts in DC.

  • commonsenseobserver

    Maybe ending government hostility to any form of striving in the first place.

  • commonsenseobserver

    I agree with most of what you say, except that even healthcare rationing won’t be able to control costs in the end.

  • commonsenseobserver

    Sure, but Chambers of Commerce just remind people about the GOP being pals with big business nonsense.

  • commonsenseobserver

    The RNC always should have done that, if Michael Steele had not run them into the ground.

  • celador2

    Market demand keep prices down. Nothing else will. patients also benefit from innovation from market demnds and elimination of waste.
    COmpetion is the formula for lower costs.
    Costs drove the call for health care reform. i folowed polls closely leading up and through 2010 when partisan ACA passed. And only competition, innovation eliminate waste and control costs. in other words free market exchanges between patients, the consumers and providers decide a real value of a service and the fee.
    Having ACA price controls and set fees by panel leads to rationing and a room full of people online when making a health care decision that once was private between patient and doctor.