Opening Thoughts on Forming a Stronger Rightroots

I'm jumping in on this discussion about building the next right infrastructure. I’m late to the conversation but have been in the game since 1999 when I was running around trying to explain to a 55 year old State Representative what a targeted banner ad was on AOL.

This might be a little philosophical and meandering for some but I hope that I can use this to make a few larger points. But I do reserve the right to revise and extend my remarks at a later date.

Cable splintered the networks. Satellite splintered cable. The internet splintered everything all over again. Hundreds of papers have been written on the weakening of the political parties and my point is they are weak and it’s been a slow slide to the state we are currently in.  No one will argue that it is harder to get a guy to go out and canvass if you aren’t holding a job over his head. I’ll cover more on personnel later.

Political parties were weakened further still with professional consultants pushing TV advertising only campaigns to get the message out where the result became political parties taken away from their traditional focus of providing boots on the ground. Twenty years later we struggle to get people to want to run for precinct committeeman. But why TV only campaigns? Apart from that is how they lined their pockets for decades with fat 9% cuts off the ad buys. For one, the professional consulting class saw the same thing I described above. They saw a fragmented message stream with cable, more cable, TiVo, internet and satellite making it cost more and more money to move the needle. Seriously, what is 4 million of today’s money in 1992 dollars? Close to 20 million? Can you imagine the impact on the polls if Ross Perot had spent 20 million in 1992 the way Obama did last week for his infomercial? But what will be the net impact of Obama’s $4 million expenditure? Obviously it’s hard to tell at this point and because it’s historic with ad like that never being done that late in a presidential cycle.

My overarching point is the treadmill that the current political infrastructure has been under since the mid- 80’s has crumbled and with it the traditional grassroots has scattered. Not dried up, not disintegrated, just scattered and fragmented like the networks and cable before it. It’s a cascading effect and this cycle I think might be the bottom. Our flower garden of 2004 quickly grew weeds and was choked off by many things but one thing is sure the grassroots garden was not tended. It was abandoned.

Actually I’m having quite the Matrix like moment right now because the garden didn’t exist. I have to switch metaphors to make my point. Karl Rove “the Architect” built a wonderful sky scraper. And 2004 was the apex of the period of time from 1994-2004 where a skyscraper would do. Of course we have all pointed to Gingrich and the Republican Revolution and that was the beginning. I won’t be the first to say that 2006 was the end.  

I agree with John, from this moment on we have to go organic. But we have to change out mindset to do it. We are now gardeners. That’s what social networking is. That’s Web 2.0, 2.5 and beyond is. Gardening, not building a castle, I think needs to be the paradigm. This isn’t the field of dreams. Build it and they will come does not work. We have to use the internet to educate and train people to know how to use internet tools to engage and reach out to others.   

My point is I’ve always seen the internet as a means to an end and a way to pull the scattering back together. People have always moved this process. It’s about the people. Focus on the people and the messaging and money will take care of themselves.

So the question becomes: What are we not doing right with the people?

For one we aren’t educating them. You can have both a blog that has punditry and a blog that educates to action. Thomas Paine and his Common Sense pamphlet educated and told how we had gone down the wrong path and what needed to be done to get us back on track. A blogger can use his first principles to do the same.

Lincoln said “The philosophy of the classroom today will be the philosophy of government tomorrow.”  Or as Morton Blackwell put it “Personnel is policy.”

So how do we apply that to the online right infrastructure we have been talking about?  

For those bloggers like Rick Moran it doesn’t mean being a shill for anyone. Using your first principles to educate for action will have more impact than you think. If you don’t want to carry it to the final step and get in the ring yourself than you can at least prepare the way for a younger person that looks up to you and your writing and give them the tools to make a run at getting something changed for the better.

And that’s why I lead with education. I know the crowd that is leading this discussion on building a new right infrastructure. I personally am 37 years old probably one of the older among the movers and shakers that has started this conversation. I'm not old by any means but old enough to look back and see the conservative movement I grew up with and seen the changes that have occurred that has gotten to where we are today. I see a disconnect happening with the 18-27 crowd that has to be addressed.  I am constantly looking at in the rear view mirror and looking for young people who I can snag to bring up the rear. The sad reality is the ranks are thin. I would hope the big point of this infrastructure talk is to use the internet to link back to the younger generation and help them realize that what the other side didn’t tell them in their schooling was pretty important and to spark their curiosity to learn about things that Russell Kirk points out in Roots of American Order that “all the major empires, republics, and democracies have fallen throughout the ages due to over taxation and bloated top heavy administration.” Not something I think was underscored in anyone’s High School Government class or Poly Sci 101 college class.   

So I think a large component of this infrastructure talk needs to build into it the educating of the younger activist in the first principles of conservative thinking. The result will be sowing the seeds for idea factories (new bloggers that get recruited) that will grow the influence of the ideas that we seek to re instill back into society. We have to have someone to pass the baton to. The internet can get us there.  I was very please to see this kind of thinking was incorporated into the recently launched YRNetwork community. They have an online library here.

Lincoln also said “With public sentiment anything is possible, without it, nothing is possible. “     

I’ll end this section and work on part two and three this week. I promise this is going somewhere I just want to lay out some ground work.