Example: GOTV effort. The GOP already knows how to do GOTV. And it knows it needs it. The problem is, finding masses of nationwide volunteers. Have an inspiring and principled candidate (or slate), and the volunteers will come. Have an un-inspiring and apparently unprincipled candidate (or slate), and they won’t.

Republicans can not choose candidates that will pass the Democrat “litmus” test. Democrats have the talent of supporting Clinton’s draft evading and then trying to nail Bush with the same charge. They will attack a Republican’s religion, a Republican’s tie to a lobbying firm, a Republican’s wealth, and you can bank on attacks on the weak mind of the Republican candidate.

The RNC must have a chair who knows how to take the mud, while clearly pointing out, in an effective way, who has the mud on his hands. That is a talent and Haley Barbour has it.

Among my observations of the GOP is that as a whole, Republicans lack a fundamental understanding of the structure of a functioning party. They think you can dip in and out, paying attention only close to election-time, or focussing mostly on gubernatorial and national campaigns. It’s like having a ball team with no bench strength. What is needed is a pyramid, with a lot of ground troops at the bottom, including a lot of people being involved as PCOs, zoning commission members, etc. Most of these community level jobs can be incredibly boring and don’t seem important, but they are necessary so that candidates can be trained through running for smaller elections and so you have a candidate pool from which to draw county positions, then lieutenant governor positions, etc. Conservatives usually are busy with their personal lives and don’t like to do these “servant-like” positions. So, those who are willing to do them are often just those who seek power and don’t have any coherent ideology.

If county and state parties would learn how to communicate the importance of these lesser positions to the overall vision, more people would participate.

The Christian Coalition used to run some helpful training seminars years ago in basic instruction about how political parties work, and how elections are won. I’m not sure if any other organization ever bothers to do the same thing. What amazed me was the fact that so many conservative voters knew nothing about how the system actually works. One of the benefits of these seminars was that local politicians would attend them and speak about their own experiences getting elected. It was very motivating in terms of generating activism when you can actually meet these local officials and speak with them personally, that is, without having to attend $100.00/person fund-raising dinners!
As I am surmising, McCain-Feingold effectively shut down the activities of the CC. However, there’s no reason another organization dedicated exclusively to defending Constitutional rights, or some other strictly conservative viewpoint could not do the same type of training.

In my limited experiences of county GOP conventions, I’ve seen at least half of the available seats go empty, and chairman’s positions go uncontested due to lack of interest, even, in one notable case, when everyone detested that chairman.

Conservatives have been on the outs for so long, they tend not to have realistic expectations. They squabble among each other over the perfect school voucher, or school choice method, or whether we should move to a flat tax or a national retail sales tax instead of being content with the incrementalism which is how our system works. Liberals on the other hand, understand this. They chip away for years, as they have with health care, with education, with Goals 2000, etc. until they have eventually attained their goals.

In 1996, I saw Republican candidates for the presidency maneuvering around and arguing about in which cases abortion should be permitted. This shows a naivete beyond belief. What I would advise strategists to do is to focus on what reduces demand for abortion in the first place, as well as pointing up the heroic and unselfish nature of those mothers who choose to have their babies and place them up for adoption as opposed to aborting them. A PR campaign of this order will accomplish far more than squabbling over how to un-do Roe v Wade. Social conservatives need to become more sophisticated in being able to explain why their causes are causes which benefit everyone, whether religious or non-religious. Those who find the values voters frightening might want to get to know enough of them to get a feel for what they think.

If outreach means pandering to the various hyphenated-American groups then we’re doomed. The only way to out-pander the left is to adopt their philosophy… which, come to think of it, the president and the GOP did.