Email This to a Friend
Rebuilding the GOP — One Internet User at a Time
How new media can save the Republican Party.
Let’s impact the conversations about what the party must do to rebuild. Let’s ensure, as a start, that the next Republican National Committee chairman sets the right tone from a tactical perspective. Most importantly, let’s open up the process so that we, the Republican people, have a say in electing our next party chairman.
Not stopping there, Rebuild sought to spark the attention of every right-leaning organization, campaign, and elected official — institutions that suffer the consequences of ceding the structural advantage to the left.
The founders of Rebuild the Party did not conjure up the plan and the idea for the group out of thin air: each of the initial coalition members believed in online politics before online politics was cool. They advocated for innovation and bottom-up grassroots campaigns as staff on campaigns for election officials, and were met with strong opposition. They came together not with an axe to grind, but with excitement about the opportunity that a crisis brings: learn from your mistakes, tap new leaders, listen to your “customers,” and work harder and smarter.
The next RNC chairman will have a considerable amount of power; they make decisions about money: what political programs to sponsor and which elections to effect.
With five out of six candidates for RNC chairman endorsing the plan: Chip Saltsman, Saul Anuzis, Ken Blackwell, Michael Steele, and current RNC chairman Mike Duncan, chances are pretty high that the next RNC chairman will share the ideas and follow the guidelines as outlined on the site. (Only Katon Dawson has not endorsed the plan.)
By agitating for change within the RNC, the Rebuild network has already made a difference. Candidates would not have signed on to a plan with 12 endorsers; it took thousands of endorsers to move the ball down the field. Each member can and should take credit.
The candidate endorsements, and for some of the candidates, the participation in the Rebuild forums, prove that while we may not always have a vote on the future of our party, we do have a voice … and a mouse … and mobile devices … and great ideas to share through our medium or device of choice.
If the RNC adopts the principles as outlined on RebuildtheParty.com, we can build a more active coalition of right-leaning Americans who want to make a difference. We will have the opportunity to reclaim the “party of ideas” and “party of the people” mantles, and create a culture of competition.
Our work won’t stop with the RNC. The nearly 10,000 people who have joined our efforts have a tougher mission ahead. Based on my conversations with U.S. House and Senate staff, efforts like Rebuild the Party are being noticed, and we should expect more of a say in the policy and strategic direction of our party. If not, we now have a platform to agitate for change.
<- Prev Page 2 of 2
Mindy Finn founded Rebuild the Party.
 |
 |
 |
Podcasts |  PJM Home |
Pajamas Media appreciates your comments that abide by the following guidelines:
1. Avoid profanities or foul language unless it is contained in a necessary quote or is relevant to the comment.
2. Stay on topic.
3. Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.
4. Threats are treated seriously and reported to law enforcement.
5. Spam and advertising are not permitted in the comments area.
The clause regarding "hate speech" has been deleted because readers criticized it as being too loosely defined. We agreed.
These guidelines are very general and cannot cover every possible situation. Please don't assume that Pajamas Media management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment. We reserve the right to filter or delete comments or to deny posting privileges entirely at our discretion. If you feel your comment was filtered inappropriately, please email us at story@pajamasmedia.com.
24 Comments
1. David Thomson:I am all for “a greater commitment to new media and technology.” Still, this effort must be coupled with a call for all sensible people to cancel their legacy media subscriptions and to shy away from viewing the TV news programs of our enemies. There are rumors that the New York Times may have to shut down sometime in May. This hoped for event would make all the difference in the world.
Jan 7, 2009 - 12:21 am 2. Ann:New media and technology will do nothing to offset the effects of gutless Republican leadership which, as often as not, obstructs articulate conservatives from being active at leadership levels.
RINOs infected with PC viruses are destroying the Republican party from within simply by their presence.
Jan 7, 2009 - 2:11 am 3. Chuck Pelto:TO: Mindy Finn
RE: Heh
Tried to do that locally in 2007. Had a great start, the party chair gave me free rein to overhaul the obsolete web-site: making it more blogesque with multiple levels of access for (1) general public, (2) party members, (3) Central Committee and (4) Executive Committee.
Then he wouldn’t allow anything to be put on it. And, in 2008, just in time to impact on the November fiasco, he reverted it to the same old POS it had been.
I think we need a serious housecleaning of the ‘leadership’. And that’s at ALL levels: county, state and national. Otherwise, we’ll just have the same old POS leadership we’ve had for the last two years.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
Jan 7, 2009 - 2:50 am 4. Typewriter King:[A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction. -- sardonic Army staff puke axiom]
Those aren’t plans, those are objectives.
Aiming to recruit five million online activists is an objective.
A plan would be an outline of actions to take in order to recruit them.
Holding campaigns and local parties accountable is a goal.
A plan would be outlining how to punish them for incompetence.
I live in Oklahoma’s second district. You’re not going to achieve that benchmark for the number of indigenous activists.
“A more open technology ecosystem”
The paragraph that follows describes a still closed system. You don’t need ‘a corp of volunteers’ writing new programs, you need to discreetly pick off-the-shelf open source programs and adapt them. Pray there aren’t t-horses built in.
Mike Huckabee didn’t masterfully use the internet, he encouraged Baptists supporting him to run phone banks for him from home. I remember the ‘distributed BBQ’ or whatever with Huck and Chuck airing a cookout live on YouStream, and that’s about it.
Your plan says “bottom up” a lot, but initiatives like “40 Under 40″ make it clear that’s just marketing. The Chairman’s priority ought to be butting out and letting primary voters decide if they want young studs to be their nominees.
Making the local party a ‘civic institution’ is the most sound part of the document. The local parties usually just show up once biannually, like the Summer and Winter Olympiad. What Huckabee, McCain, Obama, and Romney all had in common were permanent civic institutions behind them. McCain had the military, Huckabee the Southern Baptists, Obama the black churches, and Romney the LDS. It so happened the two with the largest most cohesive groups won their party nominations.
I suggested to the ACP that they hold reenactments of “The Speech” by Ronald Reagan at VFW buildings, the way kids recite MLK’s “I Have A Dream” at black churches. That would be the rallying point.
Take care.
Jan 7, 2009 - 4:04 am 5. Craig:Ann,
Jan 7, 2009 - 5:45 am 6. Sara in VA:Apparently, we’ve done a Vulcan mind-meld.
Blog – and Twitter – if you must, because when Armageddon arrives, we’ll need to know about it as early as possible. But the most interesting Tweets and website musings require that somebody does something of interest first.
It’s time to be someone worth twittering about. Make a vow this year, not only will you post and read and read and post, that you’ll work to help rebuild conservate thought and support through ACTION.
Community activists/organizers don’t always have to be Democrats.
saraforamerica
Jan 7, 2009 - 7:06 am 7. Robert:Congrats the success. This is what I wanted to do and instead ended up with a news site. While it is good, it doesn’t embrace the community like I wanted. Time to build another site
Jan 7, 2009 - 7:49 am 8. TMLutas:Typewriter King – Your objections aren’t insurmountable. Here’s a practical way to convert those two objectives into plans.
Recruit activist – objective
Create a kit to help make the activist impulse successful in the GOP – tool
Advertise the activist kits and distribute them widely. Get the existing state and local committees to commit to receiving and cooperating those kit activists and tracking their performance with consequences (see below) – **plan**
Holding campaigns and local committees accountable – objective
provide a how to kit to take over rotten committes – tool
Offering alternative slates to replace rotten committees – **plan**
And don’t “pray there are no t-horses built in” to the open source software but rather review the code if that’s a concern for you. Lots of other people are doing the same. That’s how open source becomes secure because more people are doing code review than a commercial house can afford to put on the task. The power of paranoia if you will. Much general purpose software will be useful. Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, PERL, Eclipse, BIRT all come to mind. Some stuff is going to have to be purpose written though just like every other endeavor.
As for the complaints about RINOs, I have a different take. RINOs don’t deliver results. They deliver genteel country clubs that are rotten producers. They need to be judged on objective criteria and replaced by the votes of the party faithful with sustainable slates that produce better results. But nobody admits to being a RINO and tossing the label around isn’t actually that productive. Make it about performance and getting the best people into power up and down the chain and there will be less hurt feelings all around. After all, I’d like their money and their votes too, just as they would like mine and my faction’s.
Jan 7, 2009 - 9:07 am 9. Ms. Attitude:The Republican party should get a young, good-looking black male and start priming him to be the president. Teach him the Saul Alinsky method of starting in the community and working your way up. He won’t have to be truthful because it’s not the means that matter it’s the end. Oh wait, the democrats already did this…
Jan 7, 2009 - 9:14 am 10. deguello:If the Republican party wanted to harness the grassroots internet to win electiions, it would have done so a long time ago. The party led by its internationalist, plutocratic wing,despises and fears the grass roots,as it recasts itself as a DemocratLite party.Rather than waste precious energy,working to revitalize a corrupt organization, conservative activists should be using the web to CREATE a new militant,principled truly conservative third party .
Jan 7, 2009 - 9:44 am 11. Chuck Pelto:TO: All
RE: Miss[taken] Attitude, Alinski and Murder
That’s what America needs. A leader whose willing to murder the ‘opposition’. After all Alinski is the epitome of ‘the ends justify the means’ and that leads, ultimately to killing the opposition.
So. Ms Attitude suggests the Republicans should start killing Democrats? In the streets? In their homes?
Regards,
Chuck(le)
Jan 7, 2009 - 1:34 pm 12. Mark C:The republicans were killed in the last election by technology. The Obama campaign, to their credit, used technology like never before in an election.
However, the republicans need to get young and ethnic members. Appointing Michael Steele as Chairman would be a great first step. He is young,articulate and African American.
As of now the Republican party is the party of old white men and that must change or we don’t have a chance in the future.
I am a white male over 40 and see this need for change. Hopefully all are willing to change and have the younger ethinic population take charge of our party.
Mark C.
Jan 7, 2009 - 2:08 pm 13. Sara:Columbia,MD
Mark C
You poor pitiful man. There’s nothing wrong with being a white male, I’m sorry that you think so. Please stop being so ashamed of yourself. Maybe you ought to stop reading HuffPo and Daily Kos for awhile.
Sara
Jan 7, 2009 - 2:37 pm 14. Luke:Most importantly, fit our canidates with cranial bombs, so that when they inevitably betray us, we can exact a price.
(Sadly, only partially tongue-in-cheek.)
Jan 7, 2009 - 5:30 pm 15. David S:@11
Chuck,
You made me laugh.
“That’s what America needs. A leader whose willing to murder the ‘opposition’.”
Your assessment of Alinsky speaks volumes. Maybe if you actually studied his work it could be helpful to your cause? His observations and tactics are hardly radical today.
The internet is a tool, and it is only as useful as we make it. The worst part about the internet is that people tend to compartmentalize, and see only a small slice of reality, usually one that reinforces attitudes and beliefs. Rather than seek out a balanced perspective, taking advantage of the diversity of ideas available, people tend to stick with their own interest group.
This compartmentalized medium serves to make divisions between groups more distinct and foster misunderstanding. Just as FOX news preaches to the choir, so do right wing websites like the author’s.
The fundamental element missing here is that you are working within a closed ecosystem, and it is not a sustainable one. US demographics are trending against the GOP, at an accelerating rate, and simply gathering all the GOP internet users together will not be sufficient to increase the ranks. GOP voters belong to the shrinking portions of the demographic.
Alinsky could teach the GOP quite a lot, and I suspect he has. The one lesson that never seems to stick?
Justice for all.
Peace.
DS
Jan 7, 2009 - 9:48 pm 16. '08ama:The GOP will not make a recovery until they take all their HATE of everything non white and non old out of their mantra.
Jan 8, 2009 - 8:34 am 17. Ann:5.Craig. So noted!
Jan 8, 2009 - 9:49 am 18. K Heck:Every 25 or so years Republicans (read conservatives) need to get back to person to person contact. In the 50’s Ray Bliss in Ohio developed a plan that involved knocking on your neighbor’s door, finding fellow conservatives, and getting them registered and to the polls. We elected Ike, and Nixon. In the low times when Kennedy/Johnson were in power, we started over again…with Goldwater, which led to electing Reagan, etc. finding and registering new (read young) conservatives. It seems that the Democrats have followed our example with local organizing…and we have forgotten again the basics of finding and organizing our fellow thinkers. Only the medium changes….the person to person contact is still necessary….and the followup of registering and getting our friends to the polls. Let us start over……….
Jan 8, 2009 - 11:22 am 19. Maverick:It sounds great, but everyone has to on board. To begin with the Republican nominee MUST have 100% support from the beginning of the campaign trail to the election. We can’t afford to have those in the party who attacks the Republican nominee as much as the Democrats do. That sends mix messages to the voters. There must never be a time when our party supports a Democrat if there is a run off between two Democrats, like the one we witness between Obama and Hillary. At no time must the voters crossover and vote for a Democrat thinking it’s some kind of strategy, like we witness in Operation Chaos. One last thing, there are too many who demands too much in exchange for their support of the Republican nominee, and they know who they are. The new media is fine, but if it brings with it the old faces who do nothing but pull the rug out from under the Republican nominee months before an election with their negative attacks then forget it, and they know who they are too.
Jan 8, 2009 - 2:13 pm 20. Nana:How about picking a handsome Muslim man for Republican presidential nomination. Or even better, Muslim woman.
Jan 9, 2009 - 2:01 pm 21. Tired of RINOs:I’m a conservative. What has the Republican party done for me lately?
Jan 9, 2009 - 3:20 pm 22. Jeff Perren:By all means, use modern communications facilities to spread the message. But more important is the message you have to spread. I didn’t see anything on that here, nor on the website in question.
Ideas drive history. Obama won not chiefly because of better organization (though that helped), but because he inspired many people with certain ideas. All wrong ideas, but plausible appearing ones to our current society.
There is still time for Republicans to regain the public trust, re-capture Congress and then the White House. But they must return to being a party that believes in the Constitution, individual rights, and capitalism. Genuinely believes, not merely gives lip-service to while-me-tooing the Democrats. Then they must argue persuasively for those views.
Instead, we have Sen. McConnell debating the Democrats about which pocket to pick on the stimulus plan and whining because Republicans have not been sufficiently consulted. That is not an opposition party. That is a recipe for obsolescence and irrelevance.
Until they can do that, all the marketing and modern communications methods will not make a dent. Don’t worry overmuch about mechanics. Advocate the rights ideas with ample facts and sound logic and word of mouth will do the rest. Above all, do not implicitly accept the oppositions views on morality; it disarms you in the realm of economics and every other policy decision.
Jefferson and Madison should be our guides, not Teddy Roosevelt or Herbert Hoover.
Jan 9, 2009 - 3:25 pm 23. elfman:“We did not intend to provide an all-encompassing manifesto that will guarantee a renewed Republican majority.”
STEP #1: Find another word for “manifesto”.
Jan 10, 2009 - 10:36 am 24. Rob:My own thinking about this that it might be a wise move of the republican party to put a Hispanic man in running for the next President. Seems like this would be a logical direction, especially considering the changing demographics of the nation.
Jan 23, 2009 - 6:05 am