Chip Saltsman has a plan for restoring the Republican Party
Chip Saltsman has stepped up his campaign for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee by sending the members a letter, in which he lays out his plan for rebuilding the Republican Party and regaining the losses we suffered on November 4, 2008. Because the letter is rather long, I will not repost it in it’s entirety, but rather use a few excerpts. You can download the entire letter here and you can read a couple of other posts about it at The Tolbert Report and at Trucker Randy.
One of the most important things Chip mentions in his letter is the fact that despite the win by Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, all is not lost.
In American politics, with events always fluid and the next election just two years away, things change and usually change quickly. What was novel in one outdated in another. However, we must not change our party’s core values, which have for decades appealed to the American center-right majority. And, judging from the 2008 exit polls, those values still resonate with the heart of our nation.
According to these exit polls, over one-third of the voting public is “conservative” and 44 percent are self-described “moderates.” Only 22 percent called themselves “liberal.” Unfortunately, 20 percent of “conservatives” and 60 percent of “moderates sided with President-elect Barack Obama. But, going forward, the party can take solace knowing that over three-quarters of voters place themselves on the center-right of our political spectrum.
While ideologically the country has not turned toward liberalism, electoral conditions and the economic downturn of the past few months led the public to shun Republicans. On Election Day, 20 percent of voters said the country was heading in the “right direction,” as opposed to 75 percent who identified the U.S. as on the “wrong track. Only 27 percent approved of President Bush’s performance in office, while over 70 percent disapproved.
Staggered by a one-two combination of skyrocketing “wrong track” numbers and plummeting presidential approval ratings, the final blow to Republican hopes was delivered by the economy, which almost two-thirds of Americans identified as the most important issue in the election. Fully 85 percent of voters said they were worried about the economy and only seven percent (yes,s even) reported “excellent” or “good” national economic conditions. Ninety-three percent of voters believed national economic conditions were “poor” or “not so good.” Given those statistics, Senator John McCain’s chances for election were also “not so good,” bordering on “poor.”
None of this should detract from the problems facing the party. There are serious issues and I will address them. I am only suggesting that those pundits, politicians and professors who gave our party last rites on November 4 – and who made similar declarations about Democrats four years ago – are engaging in political hyperbole. The issues and conditions facing the party this year were unique and, yet, our standard bearer still collected almost 58 million votes.
We need to remember what he just said. In spite of the perfect storm that was created by President Bush’s basement approval ratings and the candidate they fielded in Barack Obama, John McCain still managed to capture almost 58 million votes. That is a lot of voters who did not want Barack Obama or the Democrats to be in control of Washington.
Another item of interest put forth by Saltsman is the way the Democrats and Barack Obama used technology to their advantage. I believe he fully understands the need to use the Internet and other technologies to help strengthen our party and to rebuild it’s image. He showed his grasp of this issue while he was managing Mike Huckabee’s campaign for the Republican nomination and by doing so, helped bring Huckabee from obscurity to national prominence.
If the 2008 political technology race had been an election, it would be been an absolute landslide. We can all admit that the Obama campaign utilized technology in the most effective way anyone has seen in American politics. But it is encouraging to see the energy Republican professionals are bringing to address the digital divide between Republicans and Democrats. One great example of this vitality is the plan described at RebuildTheParty.com, and I certainly endorse their goals for our future.
We need to rethink our online tactics and strategy. The past election cycle taught us a number of valuable lessons: the growing political significance of self-organizing citizen activism; the speed at which viral information travels through the blogosphere and other digital media; the power of online fundraising; the extent to which younger voters rely on and demand online information and interactivity; and the peril of a strategy blind to these irreversible developments.
In every online category – fundraising, list building, message distribution, grassroots organizing – Republicans trail Democrats. I recommend that we reorganize the party structure by integrating e-Campaign staff into every department. In fact, the committee should consider making the e-Campaign director deputy chief of staff. By reorganizing the RNC and embracing technology’s capacity as a “force multiplier,” we will make a bold statement about how the party plans to transform its use of technology.
I also believe in building online Republican communities – not lists. Instead of focusing on amassing email lists of the marginally interested, we must make a concerted effort to transform our websites into hubs worthy of the fervent political dedication of our online supporters. To achieve this goal, we must link Internet users to social networks and blogs of all sizes, and we must be willing to value openness and innovation as much as message control.
We should also devote a sizable portion of our independent expenditure operations to online advertising. These efforts can fuel fundraising and online community building in ways that television ads, even those listing a web address, cannot, and they do so with an unprecedented capacity for real-time targeting and measurement.
It seems like only yesterday that Al Gore invented the Internet. But technology is rapidly changing how political campaigns are conducted and it is time for Republicans to be in front of these revolutionary changes – not lagging behind. The ideas listed above are only a few in a broad technological program that I want to employ at the RNC. We have the talent, the imagination and the know-how to place our party on the cutting edge of cyber-politics. We just have to act.
Saltsman goes on to mention something that is going to be of vital importance to the Republican Party, if they are to recoup the losses of November 4. The Obama campaign was able to win in places the Democratic Party has not won in a very long time and they did this by reaching out to voters they usually do not reach. In other words, they expanded their voting block way beyond their normal voters.
If there is one area Democrats out-worked Republicans over the past four years, it is expanding their voting bloc. Many scoffed at Howard Dean’s “Fifty State Strategy,” including other Democrats. But the fact remains that his party became more competitive in more places over the past two election cycles. In 2006, Democrats won House and Senate seats in traditional Republican territory. Two years later, Obama won nine states President Bush carried in 2004, and, in almost half of those states, Obama ran ahead of the national vote. The Republican nominee did not win any state John Kerry won in 2004.
Unless we’re going to be relegated to irrelevancy, we must take the “members-only” sign off the clubhouse and replace it with a welcome mat. Indeed, over the next few years, it is incumbent on the RNC Chair to guide major initiatives to register voters, expand the party’s presence to all regions of the country, reach out to Hispanic and younger constituencies, target first-time voters, and revamp the 72-Hour Program to better encompass the dozens of states with early voting. All of these goals must be met in order to restore the party to national leadership.
I believe Chip Saltsman fully understands the need to reach beyond the normal membership of the Republican Party, to include people who normally would not consider themselves a member. He mentions Hispanic groups, but I believe he realizes the need to reach out to African American and other minority groups as well. This must be done, if we are to begin regaining the losses we have suffered.
There are other candidates who are campaigning for the job of Republican National Chairman. Former Maryland Lt. Governor, Michael Steele is one of them and I have no doubt he would do a good job. However, I really believe Chip Saltsman would be a better choice for the job. He has experience in managing a campaign with very little resources. Just imagine what he can do with the full Republican war chest at his disposal. That’s just one reason he needs to be the chairman of the Republican National Committee.
That’s my take!
Larry
Larry, I haven’t been keeping up for the last couple of weeks due to extenuating circumstances, but what you write here makes sense to me. Yes, our party needs direction – I believe we need to do what we know to do, and that is practice conservative values. What happened at the polls on November 4 is a sad testament to the wrong direction this country is going in; it’s not too late to turn things around, however.