Michael Steele

Sarah Burris of Future Majority beats me to the punch in rebutting a blog post about a “Rising Tide of the GOP Youth,” as described by The Weekly Standard’s Rachel Hoff. Burris writes:

First, while Rachel is right to congratulate McDonnell for his campaign’s youth outreach, I hardly think it has anything to do with young voters having gone to the GOP…

This doesn’t mean young voters have gone GOP, it means that when you put forth the effort to get young voters, you speak to their issues, and you get out the vote you get a good result.

I wish I felt comfortable celebrating the fact that the 2009 elections meant young voters were turning toward the GOP, but unfortunately I just don’t buy it. Hoff suggests that “18-29 year olds in Virginia voted for Bob McDonnell over the Democrat 54% to 44%” could indicate a new trend, but as Burris notes, in Virginia there was not a “strong Democrat at the top of the ticket but…[there was] a strong Republican.” The unfortunate fact is that one Republican candidate’s successful effort in winning the youth vote does not indicate any sort of trend for future elections (for a counterargument, just look to New Jersey, where 57% of young voters voted for Corzine).

And while Hoff notes that “turnout among 18-29 year olds was 19% in New Jersey and only 17% in Virginia,” an “alarmingly low” turnout, it would be a huge mistake for the GOP to write off the youth vote based upon these numbers. As I have written previously, what’s at stake here is that the Republican Party stands to lose a generation of voters to the Democratic Party, potentially for life. Although Chairman Steele has taken some major efforts to reform the Republican National Committee, such as a huge push to modernize the RNC’s new media efforts, there still has not been a substantial push by Steele’s RNC to win over young voters.

In the end, both Burris and Hoff agree that making a real, authentic effort to earn the votes of young voters will result in young voter turnout. The Republican Party still has time left to turn the tide and prevent many of today’s young voters from becoming lifelong Democrats; however, the clock is ticking and time is running out. Major congratulations are due to the McDonnell campaign and their young voter outreach, but there is no time to pat ourselves on the back. Both the RNC and Republican candidates must follow Bob McDonnell’s lead and find unique new ways to reach out to and ultimately win over young voters.

There were a series of questions about whether the RNC would endorse Arlen Specter. Michael Steele has been asked about endorsing Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. And now people are getting their underwear in a knot about Charlie Crist.

I hate to be super pedantic, but the RNC does not make the endorsement decision. A state's delegation to the Republican National Committee control that process. And Sharon Day, RNC Secretary and Florida Republican National Committeewoman, has refused to support an RNC endorsement:

Sharon Day, of Fort Lauderdale, who holds the post of national Republican committeewoman from Florida, refused Greer's request to sign a letter authorizing the national Republican Party to help Crist in the primary.

Party rules say the party must stay neutral in primaries unless all three members of the national committee from a state sign a letter authorizing the party to take sides. Greer, also a national committee member, and Paul Senft of Bartow, Florida's national committeeman, have both signed the letter.

This is the so-called "Rule 11". 

Can we not play gotcha politics with Michael Steele and his endorsement of various candidates? The guy's hands are tied.

Over at FutureMajority.com, a left-of-center blog that "covers the involvement of young voters in progressive politics," Michael Connery brings attention to this:

Want to be a member of the Democratic National Committee? The DNC Youth Council is now accepting resumes from young people interested in becoming At-Large members.

What exactly is an at-large member of the DNC? At-large members are full-scale, policy-shaping members of the Democratic National Committee who are appointed by the DNC Chairman and approved by the DNC.

Also take note of the fact that the Youth Council is a separate entity from Young Democrats — it is an official arm of the Democratic National Committee charged with winning over the youth vote for the Democratic Party. The Youth Council’s mission reads as follows (emphasis added):

The Democratic National Committee’s Youth Coordinating Council (Youth Council) was formally constituted as a council of the DNC in December 2005. The goal of the Youth Council is to increase opportunities and improve participation by young people, under age 36, in the activities and structure at all levels of the Democratic Party. Among the purpose and goals of the Youth Council is to ensure that the Democratic Party maintains a majority of the youth vote which it currently holds with a wide margin.

Reading all of this forces me to ask two critical questions. First, where is the Republican National Committee’s version of the Youth Council? I’ve previously written that the RNC must establish some sort of “Young Voter Outreach arm,” but to this day nothing of the sort seems to exist (or even be in the works). Indeed, when I did some Googling, the closest thing I could find was an outdated page that still has talking points related to President Bush’s accomplishments.

Second, why isn’t the RNC offering these same sort of full-scale voting positions to young voters? If the GOP wants to win over millennials, then the RNC must be willing to not only listen to young voters but also to give them a substantial role in shaping the future of the party. Putting highly qualified young Republicans in the position to have a real say in the decisions regarding the future of the Republican Party would demonstrate that the GOP actually cares about winning the youth vote and is not just comprised of older generations.

Earlier, Jon Henke wrote a blog post that concluded that:

Republicans had better become more appealing to young people, because patterns established in youth persist for life.

The Democratic National Committee is taking serious strides to woo the youngest bracket of voters by empowering them to make real decisions in the Democratic Party. Without the RNC doing the same, young voters will continue to flock to the Democratic Party — a dangerous trend that could establish a generation of lifelong Democrats. Michael Steele was installed to reform the Republican National Committee and right a rapidly sinking ship. So Mr. Steele, are you listening?

Crossposted at NextGenGOP.com.

Amidst all the recent hoopla regarding chairman Michael Steele's television gaffs, one of his more significant statements as party chairman has gotten less press than it perhaps deserves. Steele, when asked how he would punish Senators Specter, Snow and Collins for their stimulous apostasy, stated that opposing their reelection was not out of the question. Patrick has discussed this idea here with regard to troubled and gaff-prone incumbent Jim Bunning, while scandal-prone and perhaps equally trouble incumbent David Vitter dodged a minor bullet when Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, elected not to challenge him in the primary. Still, Vitter faces a potential challenge from popular Secretary of state Jay Dardenne. Meanwhile Specter, who squeaked by Pat Toomey in the 2004 primary, looks to be facing a really tough rematch in which his reelect numbers are already below 50 percent. As someone from the KeyStone state, two facts which have escaped general notice leap out at me regarding the Specter case. First, PA chairman bob Gliesen has hinted that Specter may not get the state party's backing. This is a tectonic shift in PA politics, as the state party is not only deeply establishmentarian but is represented, at it's high eschalons, with southeastern party folk very close to Specter. If even the PA committee, which has a tendency to endorse the insider and incumbent in almost every situation, is considering not backing one of the longest-serving, most well-connected and most politically vindictive incumbents in Pennsylvania history, Specter ought rightfully to be very very concerned. The second and related point is that the firm which conducted the poll in which Specter's numbers were so low is a well-known Republican polling firm respected in PAGOP circles. James Lee, of Susquehannah polling, has been the pollster of choice for PA's Republican legislators for some time now (full disclosure: I met Lee in college, all be it briefly, and was pretty impressed). Given the source, hearing James Lee say that "Specter is toast" can't be helping Arlen's digestion any.

So, in the Specter, Bunning and Vitter cases, the question becomes, would the RSCC and RNC (not to mention the state parties in PA LA and KY) be better off backing primary challenges if these three troubled incumbents were unwilling to withdraw?

First, it's worth pointing out that, in GOP circles, the idea that a retirement is preferable to even a weak and troubled incumbent is a huge paradigmatic shift. yet if we look at the case of Florida, where Mel Martinez's retirement has cleared the way for a number of potentially strong challengers, this conclusion is inescapable. Whatever his motivation, Martinez, in opening the race to a strong field and doing so early, has taken a huge target out of the Democrat's sites for 2010 and quite possibly done the party a huge service (one wonders, hypothetically, whether a Dole retirement in early 2007 might have left room for the GOP to recruit a strong candidate and hold the NC senate seat). Should Specter, Bunning and Vitter announce their retirements, the GOP would almost certainly be in a position to recruit strong challengers in each of these races. These challengers would, as fresh faces untarred by scandal in a year in which the Democrats will have a historically up-hill battle, probably stand a somewhat better chance of holding the seats than the current incumbents.

Given this, how ought the party and campaign committees, and the state paties for that matter, to view primaries. I can see two arguments, from this perspective, not to actively recruit and support primary challengers. First, primaries are expensive and, in theory, damaging to all parties involved. Second, a bruising primary challenge with a well-heeled incumbent might damage a challenger's ability in future contests.

I think both of these arguments fall short. First, with regard to primaries. While they can be damaging, they can also raise the name recognition ofthose involved. Primaries dominate the news cycle, and the winner has already been tested with a tough election battle. His or her negatives have probably gone as high as they are going to go. This may not be the case for a candidate who has been waiting in the wings, struggling to break into the news cycle and who has not faced real opposition research. Second, a strong primary challenger actually endorsed by a state party may cause an incumbent to withdraw. Fighting the state party is a hard enough task when one is the challenger, but there at least one has the outsider image working in one's favor. Not so for a troubled incumbent; how can primary voters be expected to place faith in an incumbent rejected by the party committees? As to the second argument, I think this is unlikely. If anything, a well-fought but closely-lost primary challenge is often a springboard for future electoral success.

At the very least, the RSCC, RNC and state parties should do as little as possible to help weak incumbents, and make it very public that they will not be making primary endorsements or providing primary help to these incumbents. Smart and ambitious politicians in Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Louisiana would almost instantly read the tea leaves correctly. Not only secretary of state Jay Dardenne, but freshman representative Joseph Cao, who faces a very tough reelection bid, might take a shot at an unprotected Vitter. Kentucky has a few very solid prospective candidates, as Patrick has already mentioned. And with party luminaries and the state party not standing in his way, Toomey, who won election and reelection in a Democrat-leaning district and knows economic issues far better than most sitting senators, would have a solid chance of toppling Specter. These younger, fresh faces, who could stand as stark contrasts to the actions and inaction of Washington Democrats, would, in my view, be at least as likely to hold their seats as would the weak and troubled incumbents who hold them now. And such an outcome would tell members of the house and senate that the party will not bail them out when they make disastrous mistakes. Rewarding failure, after all, ought not be a Republican virtue.

These haven't been the best couple of weeks for Rush Limbaugh, Michael Steele, or Bobby Jindal. (OK, let's carve out a possible exception for Limbaugh.)

What these three people have in common is that they're all significant figures who have taken fire from different elements of the conservative movement at the behest of the Obama White House and the Kos/TPM/Olbermann triangle.

It's time this stopped.

Conservatives need to decide who we want to see succeed and who we want to see fail. We then need to calibrate our reactions to the inevitable missteps from either camp accordingly. If someone we want to succeed comes under attack, we hold our fire and close ranks -- unless it's clear they've become a long-term liability. If it's someone we want to see fail -- like Jim Bunning -- we unload until they get off the stage.

Limbaugh, Steele, and Jindal are all important personalities that we should all want to see succeed. The larger and more influential Rush's audience, the more mobilized the base will be against Obama. This has nothing to do with Rush exerting policy leadership over the GOP -- and everything to do with Rush as a popularizer of conservative principles and a rallying point for opposition. The best reaction to the Limbaugh "controversy" is for GOP politicians to avoid it entirely -- while Rush's audience grows and grows.

Michael Steele made a tactical mistake in getting drawn into this argument, but I still want him to be a successful RNC Chairman. Steele was elected Chairman as a fresh face and a reformer, a basic orientation the Republican Party will need to embrace in 2010. He remains one of the most compelling public faces of the party. If I were a Democrat, I would rejoice if Michael Steele were somehow made less relevant. Moreover, his challenge of the party's blind support for incumbents -- conservatives' #1 frustration with the RNC -- is probably more relevant to his leadership as Chairman than his Rush comments.

And some conservatives have gleefully joined in on the pile-on against Bobby Jindal for his delivery of the non-SOTU response and stayed mostly silent when it came time to counter the left's coordinated attack against Jindal's leadership during Katrina.

Taking a step back, and it's easy to see why the Obama team must be rejoicing. Some of the Republican Party's most charismatic and influential voices are being attacked -- from within. Conservatives appear flailing and divided, embroiled in controversies against the leading talk show host, the party chairman, and one of the party's rising stars.

I could deal with the "flailing and divisive" narrative if it were aimed at public embarrassments, like Bunning, or against more expendable, transactional pols -- people whose removal would not hurt the cause and in fact could help it.

We should be highly vigilant -- however -- when the attacks are aimed at people who would be significant public scalps for the Democrats, and who are not easily replaced.

At some level, we have to project a basic level of confidence in the people we choose to elevate -- whether it's on the radio, at the RNC, or in the statehouses -- especially if these are the kind of people we say we want -- younger, aggressive, reformers, etc. If we are too eager to throw people like Steele and Jindal under the bus when we were celebrating them not so long ago, conservatives overall appear indecisive and uncertain in their leadership. 

Ultimately, the journey out of the wilderness won't happen without a leader. We will ultimately have to learn how to get on the bus with somebody, warts and all. This is what a mature movement did with Reagan. And it's what the left did with Obama. I'm not pronouncing anyone the leader right now, but if we fall into the left's trap of delegitimizing important conservatives and potential rising stars from the get-go, we will never know what it is like to have that kind of leadership because only the utterly mediocre will be let through the netroots/MSM filter of Republican leadership.

Podcast Show Notes

Schumer tries to force states to take all the stimulus money or nothing.

Some mental stimulus for the Obama Administration. (Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin.)

Rick Santelli's America.

Democrats unconstitutional efforts to push a House seat for the District of Columbia. (Hat Tip: Hot Air.)

Steele:No room for Civil Unions. (Hat Tip: Pam's House Blend.)

British Muslims conspiring with the Taliban to build IED to kill British soldiers. (Hat Tip: The Corner.)

Gaza's $900 million give-away.

Beam me up, Shatner for Canadian Prime Minister?

McDonald's fights hero's worker's comp claim. (Hat Tip: Pam's House Blend.)

Click here to listen, click here to download.

On the main page, Jon Henke offers a template for Republican mea culpa that should allow us to move forward.  I agree with the assessment that we owe the American people an explanation of where we went wrong AND (let's not forget) where we went right over the past eight years.  That said, such a mea culpa has to concentrate on the issues where we actually WENT WRONG as opposed to the one major issue where George W. Bush sacrificed his personal popularity to lead the United States (and the entire world) to a better tomorrow.

On that note, these are the seven legitmate issues for a Republican Mea Culpa:

1) Terri Schivao

2) Harriet Miers

3) TARP and Bailout Nation.

4) 2002 and 2008 Farm Bills

5) Duke Cunningham, et. al.

6) 2005 Highway Bill

7) Continuing and expanding Carter/Clinton "affordable housing" policies.

Things that have NO PLACE on this list: IRAQ, Medicare Part D, Katrina, Missle Defense, or ANYTHING related to the War on Terror.

Agnostic: No Child Left Behind, Immigration.

Thoughts/Suggestions?!?

Yesterday, I expressed concern about the fact that newly elected RNC Chairman Michael Steele has yet to make “any significant new effort to win over millennials.” Today, however, I want to recognize Steele for something he has done exceedingly well.

This chapter concerns accpeting reality and advancing an agenda within reality.  It discusses words related to social organizing and instructs the reader to their proper use in the real world.  Alinsky's views on this topic can be summed up thusly:

Nowhere is the prevailing political illiteracy more clearly revealed than in these typical interpretation of words....Power is the right word just as self-interest, compromise, and other simple poitical words are, for they were conceived in and have become part of politics from the beginning of time.  To pander to those who have no stomach for straight language, and insist upon bland, non controversial sauces, is a waste of time....[Quoting Neitzsche] Why stroke the hypersensitive ears of our modern weaklings....To travel down the sweeter-smelling, peaceful, more socially acceptable, more respectable, indefinite byways, ends in failure to acheive an honest understanding of the issues that we must come to grips with if we are to do the job.

As those of you who follow this blog know, I have no patience for those who whine about hardball politics.  As this chapter makes clear, Alinsky doesn't suffer these fools either.

Power

Alinsky starts this section by explaining why he uses the word power and why it's important:

[i]t is a determination not to detour around reality....I do not propose to be trapped by tact at the expense of truth.

In other words, you need to have power to affect social change.  There's no way around this reality.  On a practical level, it means you need a certain amount of economic, political, and cultural power.

For our purposes, it means we need to start winning elections again.  There's no way around this reality.  We couldn't stop the stimulus.  We're not going to be able to stop any of Obama's judicial nominees.  We need more power.

Alinsky then continues to discuss power, ultimately reaching the point that:

Power is the very dynamo of life....It is the power of active citizen pulsating upward, providing a unified strength...The power of a gun may be used to enforce slavery, or to achieve freedom....To know power and not fear it is essential to it's constructive use and control [his italics].

This re-enforces the notion that the arena of power politics is where the contest for social change occurs.  We can't be afraid to compete in this arena.  This is made all the more important by the fact that the other side will compete in this arena no matter what we do.  To arms, friends, to arms!

Next, Alinsky hits on one of the main weaknesses of the modern Republican party:

To do a thing well, a man needs power and competance.

While many of the more malicious charges against Republicans aren't true, it's also true that the last time we had power, we had a competance problem.  We're the ones who passed billion dollar farm bills and bridges to nowhere.  We're the ones who covered up a pedophile in the house of representatives.  While Democrat scandals will probably give us a huge leg up in this regard, we still need to demonstrate competance to the voters.

I have one specific suggestion in this regard: during the middle years of the Bush administration, the Republican Congress and the administration didn't do nearly enough to hold each other accountable.  They lost sight of the fact that the legislative branch and the executive branch have different institutional responsibilities even when they're controlled by the same party (something the Dems don't understand right now either).  When the administration loses $8billion in Iraq, Congress should hold the President accountable.  When Congress passes a bridge to nowhere, the President should veto it.

Self-Interest

Stating the obvious:

[t]here has always been near universal agreement on the part the self-interest plays as a prime moving face in man's behavior....To question the force of self-interest that pervades all areas of politcal life is to refuse to see man as he is, to see him only as he would like him to be.

This speaks to one of the major failings of the McCain campaign.  McCain never translated how his broader policy proposals translated into the self-interest of the average voter; he never bridged the gap between the theoretical and the practical.  Bush wasn't great at the self-interest thing either, but he was a heck of a lot better at it than McCain.

That said, self-interest by itself isn't enough.  Self-interest needs to be promoted from within a moral framework:

The overall case must be of larger dimensions than that of self-interest narrowly defined; it must be large enough to include and provide for the shifting dimensions of self-interest.

To illustrate this point, Alinsky describes the flexible nature of American alliances during and after World War II.  To ally with Stalin against Hitler, then to ally with Germany against the Soviet Union, required not just self-interest and also a moral foundation like fighting tyranny.

Compromise

Alinsky takes the practical view:

[t]o an organizer, compromise is a key and beautiful word.  It is always present in the pragmatics of operations....If you start with nothing, demand 100 percent, then compromise for 30 percent, you're 30 percent ahead.

This one's tricky and I don't always agree with it.  While there are times you can get a good compromise, there are other times (like now) when such a strategy would be suicide.

Earlier in this chapter, we discussed power.  I think the amount of power you bring into any negotiation determines the quality of compromise you can get out of said negotiation.

Ego

Without getting into too much detail, there is a continuum in life from meek coward through confident courage of convictions to arrogance.  You should seek to be in the middle of said continuum.  This isn't just smart politics, it's also good advice for life.

Conflict

Conflict is the essential core of a free and open society.

The only states without conflict are totalitarian states.

Thoughts/Suggestion?!?

The power of the chairman to impact the future of the party is, to a degree, limited. Michael Steele will be able to attract a range of people that other candidates may not have been able to. But there is one area in which  the Chairman's race for the Republican National Committee will have significant power. He will pick the committee that sets the next primary calendar.

RNC rule 10(d), added this year, creates a "Temporary Delegate Selection Committee" which Steele "shall convene ...  as soon as practicable after the 2009 Republican National Committee Winter Meeting", at which he was elected.  The Committee will make a recommendation to the full RNC, which must approve or reject it on a 2/3rds vote of the full committee by the Summer meeting of 2010, to complete the process before the presidential nomination contest begins in full. (the full text of the rule is after the jump)

The key thing is that Steele picks 11 of the members and will have almost complete control over the committee, if he wants it. What will Michael Steele do? What will Michael Steele want? This could be a major legacy of his term as chairman. It will complete before he has to run for re-election in 2011, and it will probably mark the beginning of Presidential maneuvering. Also, given the differences between RNC and DNC rules, whatever deal that Steele cuts with the Democrats on this will likely be long-standing. 

The remaining four members were elected at the Winter Meeting. The elected members, their regions, and who they defeated are in the table. For people who follow, the RNC, these are interesting. Norcross and Ryder are two old RNC hands, while Ricketts and Simpson are new. My understanding is that the issue in the West was simply an anti-California one, while Bennett, the author of this rule, was rejected partly over this rule and the way that the issue was handled at the Convention.

The complete rule 10(d) and an embed of the complete RNC rules are after the jump.