Category Archives: 2012 Election

Suddenly 2012 becomes more relevant than 2016

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[Stream of consciousness. Please forgive errors and craziness.]

The human brain is very bad at looking to the future.

It’s almost impossible to imagine a living person not being here. We naturally assume the future will be a linear progression of the recent past.

Then one of five conservative Supreme Court justices dies. And everything’s thrown into chaos.

We have only eleven months until a new president takes the oath of office. Those could be the longest months for America since the Civil War.

Already, Senator Patrick Leahy and President Barack Obama have signaled an intent to replace Scalia with a leftist at any cost. Already, Senato Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senator Ted Cruz have stated that the next president, not Obama, should fill the seat.

The battle to fill Scalia’s Supreme Court seat will likely overshadow the presidential election.

In practical terms, the Supreme Court is not the final arbiter of the law–it is the final creator of law in the United States. As far back as Marbury v. Madison, through Wickard v. Filburn and Roe v. Wade, and up to Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court has invented law in the absence–or even in contradiction–of the Constitution’s obvious meaning.

As several conservative justices aged, many of warned of the consequences of a second Obama administration. Romney was no conservative, but a Romney appointee to the court would be exponentially less bad than an Obama appointment.

In that respect, 2012 now becomes more relevant to America’s future than 2016. Because, if Obama appoints a replacement for Scalia, the legislature and the executive become mere functionaries of Supreme Court dictates.

If the Senate capitulates to Obama, the best hope for a republican form of government will be a Jacksonian president.

Think the Senate would block it? Maybe not.

Fox News is now discussing the possibility that President Obama may make a recess appointment, eliminating the Senate’s power of advice and consent. If that happens, the nation may well shake itself apart.

Whatever the outcome, 2012 now seems far more relevant to America’s future than 2016.

But, more importantly, our thoughts for Antonin Scalia and his family.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, the the mercy of God, rest in peace. 

This Is The Infographic That The Whole Republican Party Is Freaking Out About

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The 3 million McCain voters who didn’t vote for Romney?

They’re dead.

Voters Die

[Click image to view full size. Please forward, download, and print. This is important.]

To survive, the GOP needs to stop being afraid of Millennials and tell them truth: they can move out of mom and dad’s house, they can drop out of school, they can quit their dead-end job with the idiot supervisor. But they can’t get away from government and debt.

If you want freedom, it doesn’t emanate from Washington, DC.   It starts here.

The Republicans also have to stop pandering. It’s weak and annoying and convinces no one.

It’s time to bring professional, scientific marketing and messaging to work for our country. And that means a lot of money shifts from the traditional consultants to people who actually know what they’re doing.

ACTION

Please forward this infographic to your friends. Share it. Download, print, and hand out. This is important.

Karl Rove’s Air Power Strategy Failed America And His Donors

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We heard it repeatedly during the Iraq wars: air power alone cannot win. You must take and hold ground in war.

plane-crash

The same is true in political combat. For years the GOP upset Democrats at all levels through superior ground games. Typically, this process involves:

  • Identifying potential voters
  • Contacting the high-value targets
  • Registering the unregistered
  • Mobilizing them on election day

Karl Rove’s Crossroads PACs tried a different strategy this time. Rove decided to wage a decisive air campaign, using his $300 million war chest to buy airtime in key markets at the last minute. Apparently, team Romney followed suit.

The strategy failed miserably.

Rove’s 2010 Reference Point Was Flawed

Rove’s fundraising ability for 2012 relied on a flawed understanding of what happened in 2010.

During the Tea Party revolution of 2010, Rove targeted key markets with television ads late in the race. The vast majority of the races Rove targeted were winners for the Republicans. It was that fact that led some donors to trust Rove with as much as $30 million each for 2012.

Apparently, not even Rove grasped the difference in the two elections. In 2010, Rove focused on House and Senate races where Republicans were already ahead. In 2010, groups like American Majority Action and Freedomworks put unprecedented numbers of boots on the ground in these districts long before Rove every showed up.

The traditional pollsters missed 2010 because they underestimated conservative enthusiasm and over estimated Democrat enthusiasm. So when Rove’s bets paid off, it looked like he was a genius.

He was: in betting, not in strategy.

But no one bothered to ask if Rove’s 2010 ads made a real difference.

Jump ahead to 2012. Voter enthusiasm was down across the board. The money for ground warfare was diverted to Rove’s air campaign. And, unlike 2010, the full force of the DNC powered Obama’s re-election bid.

While Rove and Romney identified television markets, Obama identified and mobilized new voters. While our phone banks focused on the people on the voter rolls, Obama’s team grew the voter rolls. One observer said that Obama mobilized voters that Romney didn’t know existed.

We Can Fix It

We will win in 2014 and 2016 if we understand the failures of 2012. We need to shift spending from television and Super PACs to technology and people.

First, we need to hire top-shelf marketing strategists, data analysts, marketers, behavioral psychologists, market scientists, database designers, data miners, and web and app developers. That’s where money must go in 2013 and 2014.

Next, we need to invest in systems that support the people above. These systems have to work, they have to work well, and they have to support MODERN marketing strategies, not Y2K-era web sites.

After that, we need funding for the largest GOTV campaign in history. People don’t like phone-banking and door-knocking, and they have plenty of alternatives today. Our campaign offices need to be fun, inviting, entertaining, or people just won’t come out.

Finally, grassroots organizations need to spend far less time in their affinity bubbles talking to themselves nit-picking over minor policy differences. We need to put down our dog-eared copies of  our favorite books occasionally and get involved in spreading ideas in the language and context of 21st century America. And we have start advancing a few big ideas rather than a bunch of little policies.

We Need New Thinking and Funding

A lot of people on Twitter and Facebook are talking about doing what we’ve been doing, only harder. That won’t work. Grassroots conservatives burned themselves out in 2009 and 2010 working hard. And in 2012, the fatigue showed.

We need to look beyond politics to see how winning campaigns work. Look at advertising and marketing. Look at Hollywood and the online game worlds. Look to experts in consumer behavior and neuroscience. Stop looking inside the damn knitting circles of like-minded people.

If you want to help, register on this site. I’ll be talking a lot more about the strategy in Missouri.

Did You Vote?

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Voter turnout was down in every state from 2008. In many states, turnout was lower than 2004.

Thanks for responding. 

The Conservative Base Is Dying And Taking Your Freedom With It *CORRECTION*

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Consider these numbers:

  • 9.8 million
  • 11.6 million 16.8 million
  • 55%
  • 61%

Between the 2008 and 2012 elections:

Between those years, neither the GOP nor conservative leaning organizations did anything significant to deal with this demographic cliff. We know the cost.

What was Obama’s popular vote margin?  About the same as the difference between deaths and new voters. (1.8 million difference in dead voters vs. new voting age, and 1.07 difference in vote.)

For the next four years, there is only one objective: inform the kids.

On this front, there’s a glimmer of hope. According to a Harvard Institute of Politics survey, the youngest of those 11.6 million new voters, are becoming fiscal conservatives:

In one poll, for instance, he found that 42 percent of 18- and 19-year-olds identified as “conservative,” compared with just over one-third who said they were “liberal.” By comparison, those proportions were nearly flipped for 22- to 24-year-olds: 39 percent said they were “liberal,” and a third called themselves “conservative.” It was much the same for older twentysomethings.

Obama’s disastrous economy has a lot to do with this “schism” between younger and older Millennials. Though 51% of voters blame the nation’s economy on George W. Bush, the 18- and 19-year-olds were 14 or 15 when the economy crashed.  They were less aware of the good times of the 00’s and more aware of Obama’s inability to fix things.

Crush Sensibilities

Knowing these facts–the death of aging conservatives, which will continue, and the matriculation of school-trained Democrat voters–I see no reason to consider the past. It’s time to focus exclusively on the future.

The future I see involves a three-pronged strategy to reform conservative politics:

  • Marketing
  • Psychology
  • Messaging

This is a moral duty. I won’t waste more of my time placating the sensibilities of the establishment. That’s both the GOP establishment and the Tea Party establishment. (Yes, there’s a Tea Party establishment, and it stopped helping the situation in 2010.)

I need your help. 

If you want to help advance liberty and slow tyranny, statism, authoritarianism, whatever, then follow this link and tell me. Tell me you want to help.

**UPDATE**

I’m not the only one talking about the Republican problem of targeting seniors instead of talking to kids. Allahpundit:

 The advantage of relying heavily on senior citizens, as the GOP does, is that they turn out reliably on election day. The disadvantage is, er, that they die, just as 18-year-olds — most of whom are pro-Obama — are coming onto the rolls.

The GOP needs a Cadillac-like makeover, and it needs one now.

*Based on data from US Census Bureau

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Here’s My Electoral Map Prediction

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Yes, I’m feeling a wave toward Romney.

Bill Hennessy Electoral Map

My gut tells me this year is a lot like 1980.

1980 Was A Dead Heat

The final Gallup poll that year had a dead heat. Time Magazine’s November 3, 1980, called the race a dead heat. So did Newsweek.

The press was hoping John B. Anderson, a former Republican Congressman running for president as an independent, would siphon votes from Reagan. He did siphon votes from Reagan, but not nearly enough. America was fed up with Jimmy Carter.

What appears to be a dead heat to pollsters could, in fact, be a landslide for Romney. And I think that’s the only way Romney wins.

Romney Must Win Big To Win

In a close race, Democrats will cheat, steal, and defraud. They will fight it in the courts, discover ballots in trunks, and sue to let people vote until they get the numbers they need.

For Romney to win, the race must appear hopeless to Democrats before midnight Tuesday.

That’s exactly what I think will happen.

What do you think?

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