Oct 24
On Republicans Getting the Message Out - Read Ruffini
It is becoming irritating to hear Republicans say, “When we run on our ideas, we win.” Um, no. Not unless that running involves relentless marketing of our ideas. We’re a little short on relentless these days. Yes, we have great ideas, but we are often uncomfortable reducing them to soundbites. I don’t mean we should reduce them thusly. But if we are going to run on more complex ideas, that means we must reach more people with more content more often.
This puts us at a disadvantage, as we don’t own old media. We have plenty of good bloggers, but what are we doing with that? For good thoughts on this, see Patrick Ruffini (posting at Hugh Hewitt’s place).
Excerpts:
…I can identify two information flow problems for the right, neither of which have to do with “blogs” as commonly understood…
…And the Bobby Jindal story is also a litmus test. The fact that an Illinois state senator with few accomplishments got fawning coverage when he first ran, while the younger Jindal’s storied accomplishments and unique narrative are A17 news speaks volumes…
…Republicans have research operations as sophisticated if not more. The challenge is that they’re tied up on campaigns, the RNC, Congressional leadership, think tanks, etc. They can only release information that supports their message on any given day. Or they’re focused on long term policy studies, not day-to-day political battles. To the extent they’re “official,” they’re also seen as less credible. If any of these operations could release the majority of their work product on a blog, it would be incredibly powerful. But they’re prevented from doing so, for institutional reasons.
If someone has $2 million to throw around on Rush Limbaugh’s letter, then someone has a few million to spend on a blogger-journalists to investigate Democratic corruption or on a sustained project to get out different storylines about Iraq or to set up an open-source research operation to more closely bracket the coverage.
Read the whole thing, as they say. Especially if you are a party leader.
