Election

“Now is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. It is, perhaps, the end of the beginning”. Sir Winston Churchill at the close of the Battle of Britain. The Obama administration is scrambling to get the word out to its lapdog press and political smarm operators that it’s just a midterm and it doesn’t really mean that much…after His Arrogance crossed back and forth across both states enough times to give himself a teleprompter crick in his lying neck. The Marxispin band-aid crew is out in force, trying out spin after spin to try to keep this from looking like the ass-kicking it was. Virginia and New Jersey are firmly in Republican hands…and by large margins. The Democrats have been more tone deaf than the leadership of the Republican party, if that’s possible. AND that’s hard to do…must have been all those locked doors and overnight how-to-screw-the-electorate  and what-can-we-do-to-fool-them-today meetings. They’ve been buried in letters, phone calls and emails, with concerned voters visiting representatives’ district offices to voice their concerns over what they saw as a monumentally destructive policy in the form of this health care bill….and they didn’t listen. The leftist liberal OBSESSION to control every single aspect of every American’s life has completely blinded them to the groundswell building out in the electorate. In the 23rd District NewYork race Hoffman, completely unknown until thirty days ago, ran a heck of a race and gave the Democrats a near coronary but lost in a narrow decision…but it changes nothing. This is a harbinger of very tough times for Obama and the Democrats. “We have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with terrible purpose”. Admiral Yamamoto after Pearl Harbor. Americans, as much as the Obama-world view would try to have you think otherwise, are more fair-minded than any other people in the world. We are also very quick to react to those who are not and who offend that innate sense of fair play. A lot of this has come into play here. Obama was elected on a raft of promises and make-believe centrism, then immediately turned hard left and he didn’t walk, he didn’t even trot (although he prances a lot), he ran as fast as he could to create the most extreme radical agenda AGAINST this country in its history. This hasn’t been lost on the American people…they are afraid and they are mad. The Conservative march to regain the country, its legislature, its laws and Constitution has begun. God Bless this Great Country and its indomitable people.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2009

This exit poll statistic is a candidate for most underreported fact of the 2008 election.

Those who said race was an important factor voted 55 percent to 44 percent in favor of Obama.

So, as Mike Turk had predicted last year, racism was a more common factor among Democrats than Republicans in the 2008 election.

This may explain why the 'racism factor' stories disappeared so quickly after the campaign, replaced (if it was discussed at all) by "race not a factor in election" stories.

Promoted. My basic philosophy on a good leader: A's hire A's, B's hire C's. Let's hope that the next RNC Chairman is an A that can find A's within CR's and YR's to work for (and provide innovation for) campaigns and parties around the country. -Matt Moon

College Students to the RNC: We Care, Use Us!


by James Barnes and Brandon Hines, The George Washington University College Republicans

Fellow Republicans:  As we enter a fresh new year, it's easy to be discouraged by the battle ahead.  The Obama Administration promises to pursue an agenda of socialist redistribution.  On top of this, the 111th Congress has just convened, and it's the most liberal in our nation's history. Together, this double-headed monster threatens to grow another in the form of a new judiciary.

Sitting in a position we have long been removed from, our first step has been to question what got us here.  We've started to regroup, on Twitter, on the web, and soon by reconsidering who should lead the RNC into 2010 and beyond.  And, through these exercises, we've come up with some basic answers to the question of what got us in trouble.  We've blamed it on our grassroots, our fundraising, our web presence, our message, and a slew of other equally valid reasons, which we promise to overcome in the next election cycle.  We hope to argue, however, that many of these issues boil down to one oft-overlooked component: a focus on engaging and activating the 18-24 demographic —College Republicans. 

As the future of our party and, in many cases, the most passionate advocates for our platform, it is important that the RNC not only reach out and speak the language that we speak and communicate the way that we communicate, but that it engage and empower the youth of the party in helping to win elections. In this vein, the party already has a virtual army of well informed and connected potential activists, who, in many cases, simply haven't been asked to volunteer the resource they have the most of: their time. Though we lack the ability to donate large sums of cash, or the experience needed to run campaigns, we make up for this with cheap labor and an uncanny, even absurd, ability to remain in instantaneous contact with our peers and advocate for what we believe in. It is time for these and other potential resources to stop being overlooked, and for the RNC to directly engage the future of the party.

Consider this: during our organization's deployment by the RNC this year in Ohio, a state never lost by a Republican president, we never met a single student from an Ohio college.  Elsewhere, in 2007, many argue that we lost the Massachusetts special election due entirely to a complete absence of area college students.  Contrastingly, in Georgia's recent runoff, the unusually strong showing of college students from Maine to Texas served to bolster a winning campaign—a notable exception to a troubling rule.  College Republicans exist everywhere.  In this regard, it's very simple; it's not about changing the minds of college students-- it's about activating and empowering the ones who already care.  To our detriment, this is something that Barack Obama knew all too well.   

In the coming years, the promise of victory does not tolerate the prospect of an inactive college demographic.  This is why we, with the support of many of our friends in the young conservative movement, are calling on the next RNC chairman to pledge to directly engage the next chairman of the College Republican National Committee in kick-starting a strong partnership for a radically better next four years.  In this, they should plan for a future that utilizes CR’s in dominating new media, more directly involves college students in party operations, and most importantly, ensures that, in 2010 and beyond, every willing College Republican will be afforded the chance to work for a Republican candidate through a better organized and more broadly utilized College Republican grassroots operation in every state.  On the path to victory, this is an important stop that has the promise to change the future (and the face) of our party for the better.

James Barnes and Brandon Hines are the Political and Public Relations Directors, respectively, of the George Washington University College Republicans and are working to re-engage Republican youth.

The political blogosphere is buzzing about Obama campaign manager David Plouffe’s interview. Soren Dayton argues the lessons of the Obama campaign were “budgeting, technology, field, and media,” while Patrick Ruffini finds that the important lesson is that “Obama ran a better kind of offline campaign.” Although it is quite true that these are some critical lessons, as a business nerd and student at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business, I think there’s a massive lesson that pundits are missing: Obama for President wasn’t run like a traditional campaign, but instead like a huge corporation. I don’t believe that any campaign on this level was ever able to accomplish this with nearly the same success as Plouffe and company.

Plouffe makes this unmistakenably clear throughout his interview:

There are business analogies. One is, we’re a startup, we had to go from zero to 60 in a matter of weeks. Our company, if we were successful, would only last two years at the most. … We had over 5,000 employees… And we were an organization about accountability. Down to the entry-level staffer, we measured their job performance based on metrics.

What specific trends that the most successful modern corporations employ were echoed by the Obama campaign?

1. “Know your customer.” I’ve probably heard this from my entrepreneurship advisor a thousand times now, but only because it is perhaps the single most important phrase in business. Obama’s campaign really knew its customers – just look at the way it outreached to young voters.
2. A consistent message and high-impact branding. These two go hand in hand. Take Apple, a highly successful company even despite the recession, for example: they have a simple but highly memorable logo, effective messaging (i.e. “Get a Mac” ads), and a well-designed and innovative website. Barack Obama’s branding and messaging was as good as any corporation.
3. Job performance measurement and personal accountability. Think quarterly or annual reviews at your place of work. As quoted earlier, Plouffe confirms the importance of this in the Obama campaign: “Down to the entry-level staffer, we measured their job performance based on metrics.”
4. Fiscal accountability. Successful corporations have very specific budgets, and virtually all spending is highly scrutinized. Plouffe notes that, “People on the campaign could not make more than a certain amount—$12,000 a month… If you were a deputy you got paid X, if you were an assistant, you got paid Y… From a fiscal management standpoint, Obama was very clear that he did not want to end up with a debt in the primary or the general, so we just planned accordingly. We didn’t spend beyond our means.” (emphasis added)
5. A willingness to take significant financial risks and depart with the norm to be on the cutting-edge. This sentiment was echoed by the Obama campaign at many levels. Team Obama got the idea of peer production, which is quickly becoming the premiere business model of leading corporations like IBM, Boeing, BMW, and Goldcorp. In addition, as Patrick and Soren point out, Obama invested the campaign’s resources in a very unique way – remember the advertisements the campaign ran on an Xbox 360 racing game?
6. A corporate infrastructure. Since when does a political campaign have both a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and a new media director – let alone a Chief [Anything] Officer?

In business, constant innovation is crucial. Fall behind and your competitors will likely crush you. Find a decisive edge and you stand to profit immensely. Plouffe’s comments and the results of the election demonstrate that business and politics are actually two very similar animals.

Crossposted at NextGenGOP.

Lost in all the punditry about the "impressive" Obama victory is how 2008 compares to other elections where one party had served two consecutive terms.

In 2004 Bush won re-election with about 2.5% of the vote. In 2008 Obama won by somewhere around 7.0%, producing a "swing" of 9.5%.

For comparison:

In 1904 Republican Theodore Roosevelt won by 18.83%. In 1908 Republican Taft won again, but only by 8.53%--a swing of 10 points even though Roosevelt was popular.

(1912 was complicated by a three-way race that hurt the Republicans, so direct comparisons with 1908 are impossible.)

In 1916 Democrat Woodrow Wilson won by 3.12%. In 1920, after an unpopular war and an economic recession (sound familiar?) Republican Harding won by 26.17%. The swing amounted to 29.29%.

(Another third party ticket sabotaged a party in 1924, making comparisons with 1928 impossible.)

In 1936 Roosevelt won re-election by 24.26%. He ran for a thrid term in 1940 and won by 9.95%--a swing of 14.31%.

(1944 was a war year and Harry Truman essentially served that term.)

In 1948 Truman was elected by 4.48%. In 1952 Eisenhower beat Stevenson by 10.85%. The swing was 15.33%.

In 1956 Eisenhower was re-elected by 15.40%. In 1960 Kennedy beat Nixon by 0.16%. The swing was 15.56% even though Eisenhower was popular.

In 1964 Johnson crushed Goldwater by 22.58%. In 1968 Richard Nixon barely won by 0.70% but it amounted to a 23.28% swing.

In 1972 Nixon won by 23.15%. In 1976 Carter beat Frod by 2.06% and the swing was 25.21%.

In 1984 Reagan won re-election by 18.22%. In 1988 Bush won a Republican third term by 7.73% but that still amounted to a 10.49% swing in spite of Reagan's popularity.

In 1992 Bush lost to Clinton by 5.56%, marking another 13.29% swing.

In 1996 Clinton was re-elected by 8.51% and in 2000 Gore won the popular vote by 0.51%. The Swing was 8.0% even though most thought the country was going in the right direction.

Barack Obama's 9.5% swing is thus smaller than the 16.5% average swing. In fact, only in 2000 was the swing less than 9.5%--and then not by much.

If we only average the unpopular administrations (1920, 1952, 1968, 1976, 1992), we get a swing of 21.28% on average.

Once again, the question that should be asked is why we didn't lose by more, not why we lost.

According to a new Pew survey, that is. Of course, they don't put that in their actual report, instead you have to go to the complete report and scroll down to page 35 to find out that fully 24% gave press coverage an "F" grade. The previous high was 20% in 2000 after the Florida fiasco. Another 15% gave a "D" grade and 26% said "C".

But there's more. Fully 44% believe that the press did not fairly cover the McCain campaign. This compares with 40% who said the same thing about Bush in 2004 and 35% who said it about Bush in 1992. Even these numbers don't tell the full story though. Just 22% of Republicans thought the press was fair to McCain compared to 40% who thought it was fair to Bush in 2004 (and 67% of Democrats who thought the press was fair to Kerry).

In 1992 73% of Republicans thought Clinton was covered fairly, in 2008 only 48% of them thought Obama was covered fairly.  41% of Republicans thought the press was fair to Bush in 1992.

A lot of commentary has been focusing on the fact that the GOP lost Virginia for the first time since 1964 and North Carolina since 1976. This is treated as absolutely unprecedented, and to a certain extent it is.

But consider the demographics. The last Republican loser, Dole, won Virginia by a tiny 2 point margin while McCain lost it by 5.5. However, in 1996 the Virginia electorate was 81% white and 16% black while in 2008 it was 70% white and 20% black. Dole won white voters 53-39 while McCain won them 60-39--a substantial improvement. The problem was, of course, that the black vote in 2008 was larger and more monolithic than in 1996. The same lesson applies to 1992, where the elder Bush won the state by 4 points while obtaining an identical margin among whites than McCain did.

Similarly, in North Carolina whites were 80% in 1996 and Dole won them by 24 points, carrying the state by 5. McCain did better at 29 points but barely lost the state because whites only constituted 72% in 2008.

The point is that we lost these former Republican strongholds not necessarily because parts of the state have more white liberals, but rather because the white share was lower (and the black share correspondingly higher) than in the past elections we lost. We can look forward to these states being purple for as long as these turnout trends hold up.

Facts did not matter in this election. This election was decided based on how much free stuff the candidates promised to hand out, and we just couldn't compete with Prince Barack.

But I really don't think that we lost as badly as everyone wants to portray it. Obama's edge in the popular vote is going to be less than 7%.  Considering that we have been through four years where every possible bad thing that could happen happened--natural disasters, botched Social Security reform, highest gas prices ever, botched immigration reform, costly wars, recession, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, Republican scandals, the most unpopular Presidential term in U.S. history, the media functioning as a campaign arm for Prince Barack, a Republican candidate with no message, an election where the Republican candidate was outspent 4:1 and lost every debate by a wide margin--why Obama didn't win in a FDR-like landslide should be the question people ask, not why we lost.

To be sure, though, the exit polling/results indentifies some disturbing trends:

--White voters voted for McCain by the same margin they voted for Bush in 2000. But their percentage of the electorate declined from 81% to 74%. Meanwhile, minorities are even more Democratic than they were when Bush was elected.

This is going to be a huge problem for the GOP in Nevada, where the white vote declined from 77% to 69% in four years--and will continue when Prince Barack signs the amnesty bill. Remember,  Bush only narrowly won Nevada and Prince Barack won it by double digits this time around.

It's also a problem in Florida, where McCain lost because of a huge movement among Hispanics to Obama. Obama won hispanics there 57-42 while Bush won them by double digits in 2004. By contrast, the white vote in 2008 was identical to 2004.

--In Colorado there was a large shift among whites to Obama, who won them despite the fact that Bush carried them by double digits in 2004.

--We lost Indiana and North Carolina. I suspect we lost North Carolina for the same reasons we lost Virginia--more liberal migrants. But I really have no response to Obama winning Indiana other than to note it borders Illinois.

Other observations:

--Obama's four point margin in Ohio was unimpressive considering that Ohio is going through hard economic times and that Bush only won it by 2 points.

--People keep saying that we  need more white working class voters to make up for the more liberal white college graduates. But the loss of white college grads is made up for a gain in minority college grads.

Just thinking of the long lines from this past election, a thought occured to me.  We need Conservatives to be able to demonstrate their willingness to lead and stand up for American principles.  What better way to start than to push for legislation that will (hopefully) prevent the registration/voter mess we experienced this year.

• Better structuring of registration
• Voter databases that are searchable and have the ability to be crossed referenced (much like police precincts can). 
• A basic modernization, started on the local level and formed into a hierarchal tree.
• Require photo IDs to vote.  For those that already don't have them (as long as they would legally be allow to possess one),  start getting the word out to them and seeing what would their input is.

Now would be the time to start this process and try to get these ideas implemented by a "mid-term" election when voter turnout is not as high.  It would allow for a testing of the system under reduced capacity.

We the citizens should suggest/push this to our local governments and if it works well it might take off.   Start small because it is harder to work against a bigger force.  We're looking for ideas and solutions to problems ... this should be a start.