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Obamacare, 90 seconds, the NRCC, and YOU.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  June 6th, 2012 at 11:00 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

This is an interesting experiment that Rep. Steve King and the NRCC are doing with regard to House Republicans’ latest anti-Obamacare push:

…If you don’t have a scanner handy, the QR code* above goes here.

Alternatively, you can watch this video (“90 Seconds to Repeal.”):

…which pretty much walks you through the entire sorry mess that is Obamacare in, indeed, ninety seconds. Short version: Obamacare is horrible, nobody really knows everything that’s in it, and certain elements that people do know are in it are right now being assessed for basic Constitutionality by a very suspicious Supreme Court. Nothing particularly new to readers here, but still hopefully useful for people trying to explain to other people just how perverse the entire legislative strategy to pass Obamacare was. And it was pretty perverse.

I also find it interesting that the NRCC is experimenting here with exploiting new social media paradigms in order to achieve maximum memetic dissemination of its core messaging units… :WHACK!: …sorry. What I meant to say that it’s cool that the NRCC is working to take advantage of cell phones and Tumblr here to get the word out on Obamacare. We need to keep up with the technology.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*QR stands for “Quick Response;” essentially, it’s a two-dimensional bar code (the UPC code that you see on cans and boxes at the supermarket is one-dimensional). It’s gotten big lately because, being two-dimensional, you can pack a heck of a lot more of information into it; also, cell phones now have enough processing power** that they can decode one.

**Note, by the way, that I am assuming that of course the average cell phone has a camera attached. And so did you, probably. Funny how the tech keeps on advancing, even when we’re not looking, huh?

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  • http://boldcolor.blogspot.com/ Paula

    …smack your head into the RNC and Voter Vault:

    “Numerous former RNC staffers described the voter file as the committee?s ?greatest asset? and argued that by giving up control of the file, which the RNC shares with state parties, the committee would be agreeing to diminish its power dramatically.

    “Others downplayed the risk, arguing that the RNC must never and will never ?give up the list? but can allow private entities access to it. The more the list is used, they argued, the more it would be ?refreshed.? And, they added, only the parties can pay for federal get-out-the-vote efforts, thereby guaranteeing the RNC an important role in campaigns.”

    For the May primary in Ohio, I received nearly a dozen mailings for State Central Committee candidates who had been redistricted into a neighboring district. They originated from the OH GOP HQ, which is still limping along with Voter Vault.

    Meanwhile, there are better, more modern systems available utilizing publicly available information and our side is using the equivalent of dial-up and MySpace.

    My son was at a Campaign Management School with Leadership Institute yesterday and tweeted: “”RNC VoIP – 35calls/hr, Victory VoIP – 78calls/hr!” (referring to Victory Solutions). Why??????

    I’m glad to NRCC is stepping it up in the tech department, but I’m not optimistic that we’ve gained much ground on the Dems since the last presidential election.

    (But it’s a great little video!!!)

  • zachv

    Rather strange … Are they going to print stickers or posters?

  • Dave_A

    they really want you to sign that web-petition….

  • plwinteregg

    …however as an e-commerce business owner, they failed to follow through. QR codes can be pretty effective, but only if they lead to a mobile-friendly site. This isn’t.

    Someone needs to explain to them that the best way to do a QR is to have it lead to a mobile dedicated site that duplicates the main site, but is formatted to be mobile-friendly. That means the pages are formatted and sized for mobile use–smaller, and with ‘intelligent’ fields to make data entry easier (ex: your mobile unit will know it is an email field and automatically format your entry).

    Having said that–I applaud the direction they are going, but to avoid looking like complete dweebs to the ‘geeks’ of the world, and to encourage someone to actually use the page once they get there, they need to be sure to follow through on the rest of the mobile experience.