Outreach and Get Out The Vote

By: Loren Heal (Diary)  |  March 29th at 04:25 PM  | 

In developing the Growth and Opportunity Project‘s Autopsy of the 2012 election (pdf), the Republican National Committee correctly identified the reason for the party’s loss, but failed to recommend a coherent strategy to reverse it.

President Obama won by defining his opponent in a negative way, and marrying modern technology with old-fashioned boots on the ground. Republicans can do those things even better than he did, but doing so will require radically reforming the party.

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Why Pat Brady Will Not Long Remain Illinois Republican Party Chair

By: Loren Heal (Diary)  |  March 18th at 04:55 AM  | 

The move to oust Pat Brady as head of the Illinois Republican Party has been cast as being all about gay marriage, but it isn’t so. Brady’s full-throated endorsement of same-sex marriage was just the tossed glove in a duel for the direction of the GOP in Illinois.

The Limits of Online Activism

By: Loren Heal (Diary)  |  November 25th at 03:00 PM  | 

Michael Barone has been watching and influencing politics for decades, and seems to be the rare pundit who is not in love with his own opinion. Barone talks today about the ways in which the 2012 campaign is different than those of the last 40 years. He is more or less correct in the three key differences that he finds, but more notable to me | Read More »

Do Not Blame Newt Or Mitch

By: Loren Heal (Diary)  |  May 19th at 03:48 AM  | 

Politicians have been trained for decades to internalize a strategy. It is the essence of the conventional wisdom: we have our voters, they have their voters, and to win we need to convince those in between. But that strategy is flawed, and its faults have been revealed by the rise of Barack Obama and laid bare by the Tea Parties. The political environment, at least | Read More »

The Spending Code

By: Loren Heal (Diary)  |  April 14th at 03:37 PM  | 

Barack Obama yesterday introduced us to the notion that the failure to collect taxes is actually government spending.  Tax cuts (or deferred increases) are just an alternate way for the government to spend money, because without the cuts it would otherwise get the added revenue. Actually the idea is as old as Caesar, but it was jarring to hear it so seamlessly encoded into the | Read More »

Candidates Do Not Lie

By: Loren Heal (Diary)  |  April 13th at 01:55 AM  | 

Despite the increase in sophistication and insight most of us have gained into politics since the 2000 election and especially with the rise of the tea parties, we’re going make one of two mistakes in 2012: Let the MSM pick our presidential candidate Prematurely jump for a shiny candidate who is most unlike Obama, as to avoid #1 Candidates present as little information as needed | Read More »

I Know Who Will Be the Next President

By: Loren Heal (Diary)  |  November 9th at 04:33 PM  | 

Every presidential cycle we either re-elect the guy who’s in or we throw him out for his opposite. During the course of a presidential term, a consensus develops among the electorate about the fitness of the fellow they elected. We tend to choose the next officeholder as one who would fill the perceived void, or to counteract the personality flaws of the one of whom | Read More »