On Nov 5, 2008, at 2:23 PM, Mark wrote:
> > > Heck, even the college Republicans didn't even try to recruit..... > The party's complete dismissal of Ron Paul was a huge mistake. The post-mortems on this election are going to go on for months, but several things seem pretty clear to me. Ron Paul did have a large, remarkably motivated and almost entirely self-organized grassroots body of supporters (very similar to Howard Dean's gang, except Howard Dean actively sought them out, I sometimes think Ron Paul himself wondered where the HELL all these people suddenly came from), but in the end they had no influence whatsoever on the process, because they were kept entirely separate and outside of the Republican party, reduced to holding their own 'convention'. The "Big Tent" was a complete sham this year around. This was the "Year of the Angry Republican Base". The Paul supporters never did amount to more than a marginal influence because the Republican party itself has NO idea what to do with that energy; they're much too authoritarian, the party relies on it's hierarchy to maintain discipline and get things done. Top Down. The Revolution was a bottom up thing. Perhaps if the RNC makes Ron Paul the national chair...riiiiiighht. THAT will happen. NOT. The appointment of Howard Dean to the DNC chairmanship was a vicious, vicious fight, and the folks prepared to do that for Paul aren't even at the table, like the state-level dem leaders were in '04. That was a war between the state-level leaders and the DC-based DLC for control of the Democratic party. I suspect that had the DLC won, we'd be talking about president-elect McCain right now. The Dems have had four years to perfect their internet-based, decentralized, bottom-up grassroots system, and this year had both a candidate and a national chairman well versed in that kind of organization. Their candidate was tested in a brutal primary fight, whereas the Republican's winner take all primaries left McCain with months of nothing to do and no way to get in the news, which was dominated by the Obama-Clinton battle. That cost them a lot of momentum, and the McCain campaign was metaphorically flabby and out of shape when the opposite ticket was finally settled, while the Obama campaign was in peak shape. The Republican's vaunted 72 hour GOTV machine, supposedly their ace in the hole in '04, wasn't even funded this year, and that's separate from the presidential campaign. The RNC, RNCC and RNSC all were seriously underfunded this year compared to their Democratic counterparts. McCain didn't take public campaign financing because he had some idealistic wish to make it work, he took it because he needed the money. He came perilously close to going under in the primaries, and arguably broke his own campaign finance law to stay in. (He took public finding, then got loans with that promised funding as collateral..not legal per McCain-Feingold. It will be interesting to see if he gets hit with any fines or other sanctions after the dust settles and the FEC starts looking at the books.) Finally, the Republican party looks like it is forming up into that circular firing squad that the Democrats were so infamous for. If that continues, I seriously doubt they're going to be much of a threat come 2010. Reports are that Obama is asking Rahm Emmanuel to be his COS. Rahm is a serious, SERIOUS political infighter. I'm not so sure about the wisdom here, as Rahm is emblematic of the old DC-centered DLC bunch that lost several big elections in a row for the Dems, until the Deaniacs took over the party, but there's little doubt that he's a probably a good 'wartime consigliere' for serious battles with Congress; which there are going to be. I have no doubt that the Senate Republicans are gonna basically filibuster anything and everything, and the House Republicans will do their best to be as obstructionist as possible as well. It's all they have left after the base intellectual dishonesty with which they ran this year. We'll see how his cabinet choices pan out, and what shakes in the new Senate and House leadership. (I personally think Reid has GOT to go. If the Republicans are gonna filibuster, I want a Majority Leader who will say "Fine, here's the damn Federal Register. Start reading it to the chambers. Call me when you want to go to sleep, we'll vote then." and MAKE THEM filibuster. Make 'em do it every time. They wanna play hardball and crowd the plate, make like an old-time pitcher and brush 'em back a few times. They'll learn.) -- Bruce Johnson University of Arizona College of Pharmacy Information Technology Group Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "StrataList-OT" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/StrataList-OT?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
