When Does Movement 2.0 Get Started?
by Patrick Ruffini :: August 7th, 2007 3:58 pmComing on the heels of the YouTube debate fight, YearlyKos has sparked a lively conversation on the right about what needs to be done to reinvigorate our movement online. The leading lights on this are Mark Tapscott, Soren Dayton, Amanda Carpenter, and Robert Bluey.
A common thread is that the other shoe won’t likely drop until we have Hillary to unite against. I’d like to pick apart that assumption.
The basic assumption is sound. The online right was ascendant in the Clinton years, just as the online left was in the Bush years. Opposition galvanizes political movements, and not just online.
My question is when does this kick in? When Hillary becomes the nominee? Or if she becomes President? A lot of people are hoping many of these issues will work themselves out on February 6th when the Hillary menace will start to stare conservatives in the face. I’ve expressed that hope too.
But a lot of folks also hoped that we’d be at least partly there by now. With Hillary looking good on the Democratic side, and Republicans in the opposition (and on offense) in Congress, have things gotten any better? Is there any evidence that the Stop Her Now stuff that was so effective in 2000 is working this time around? I haven’t gotten as many direct mail letters or fundraising e-mails with Hillary front and center as I would have expected by now.
A lot of people are also arguing that we are weighed down by President Bush and Iraq. But why should that be? Rudy, Fred, and Mitt aren’t President Bush, and are strong in many areas where the President is weak. The nominee will likely have something different to say about Iraq. You would think that Republicans would view this field as a vehicle for moving beyond the current poisoned political environment, and feel some measure of optimism and relief. After all, Mitt Romney reinvigorated Massachusetts Republicans after taking over from a weak caretaker, Jane Swift. In France, Sarko wrote the playbook on pivoting against an unpopular leader of your own party and winning. It can be done. So why aren’t they doing it? What do they need to do to do it? Or is it just too soon?
Or is the truth that we need Hillary to take office before we reap the benefits of a fired-up base? That may be. Remember, that in the campaign, Hillary will present herself in only the most favorable light. She won’t be accountable for what happens in Congress, or deep in the bowels of HHS when someone starts funding condoms and needle exchange, or for the fact that she’ll be forced by the exigencies of being Commander-in-Chief into a more Bush-like position on Iraq. Campaigns are a clean business next to governing. Not many people hated George W. Bush during the 2000 campaign, or for the first two years he was President, and the left was slack enough to allow for a fatal third party schism in the form of Ralph Nader.
So when does it start to happen for us? 2008? 2009? 2010? 2012?
I think it ideally should have started in January 2007, with campaigns starting anew, George Bush starting to fade into the background, passions on immigration running high, and the Democrat majority in Congress. It’s still early yet, but does anyone see any signs of a new conservative coalition starting to take shape, or anyone trying to engage it?
Even if Movement 2.0 is two or more years away, there are things we should be doing now to prepare. At this point in the Clinton years, MoveOn had already started. Perhaps the analog to that is the immigration issue, where the right kicked ass. But, again, what did we create with the immigration issue? Where is the million person email list of people who got involved because of immigration, and can now be activated on other issues? It sounds like people were thinking of the right techniques for radio, but not for online.
I think it will also require a shift in thinking of how the movement relates to the Republican Party. We are very much in the position the Democrats were in at the end of the 20th century where “the groups” did not think of themselves as part of the party. The netroots revitalized liberal interest in the Democratic Party not by selling out, by positioning themselves as the authentic Democrats, where the Joe Liebermans and pro-Iraq War Dems were outside the party. What that the phrase, again? Oh, yes… The Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.
Do conservatives today really think of themselves as the “Republican wing of the Republican Party” or removed from the Republican Party entirely? That’s a key difference, and one that will have to be reconciled if we are going to finally quit being pundits and start being activists.
And, finally, is there any way this gets started without Hillary Clinton? I’ve read the same history books, and I don’t think the New Right was built on personal animus towards JFK and LBJ — and it thrived in power in the ’80s.
Ideally, we would figure out a formula for this stuff that wouldn’t require us to lose in 2008.
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I think there are a number of issues that could engage parts of the Republican “big tent” online. One of the most prominent is proposing to win in Iraq.
Though independent, I have voted Republican for some time now. The social conservative issues have kept me out of the party, as these often seem to serve as a opening for intruding into people’s private lives.
But as someone who argues for what I consider to be Republican mainstays — lower taxes, less regulation, smaller government — I have felt betrayed by the former Republican Congress. The lack of excitement on the right I sense has a similar source: The party has let its boosters down.
The Democratic Congress should be at issue, especially its zeal for handing victory to the murderous Islamic fascists in Iraq. People should be calling the defeatist press back from the brink of declaring victory for the “insurgency,” as if in support of Harry Reid. There’s plenty of time between now and September to get online to warn members of Congress that many of us are not willing to accept the idea that losing in Iraq will spare us greater grief in the long term — especially since this great nation has the strength and resources to win.
The Democrats’ drumming up support for the “insurgency” should be made as politically risky for them as possible. We should tell them flatly, “I elect to win in Iraq.”
I basically disagree with both positions. George Bush has split the party and it won’t be put back together again easily.
Winning in Iraq was never a problem. We did that easily. OCCUPYING Iraq was quite a different story. Pres. Bush and Sec. Rumsfeld were warned early enough by the uniformed military that we didn’t have sufficient troops for that purpose. We now have a definition of victory, “a stable, unified, democratic Iraq” that can only be achieved by Iraqi’s. American troops cannot force Iraqis to cooperate with each other if they choose not to.
The next president, be he/she Republican or Democrat, is going to withdraw from Iraq. Forcing the Democrats hand in Iraq is a losing strategy. 70% of the public wants us out. Meanwhile, they’re mad as hell at Congress for not forcing the President to withdraw the troops. Congressional gutlessness is helping Republicans. Leave well enough alone.
But a showdown is looming between neo-cons, on the one hand, and paleo-cons and most libertarians on the other over control of the party. Neo-cons have completely hijacked the Republican agenda giving us an imperialistic foreign policy and big-spending domestic one. They aren’t conservatives at all. They are ex-LBJ Democrats.
38% of Republicans oppose the Iraq War and the number is growing. You can’t go into an election with 38% of your base against you.
I don’t see how this can be papered over for the 2008 elections, especially since there could also be a big fight over immigration and border security. Maybe someone like Mitt Romney could do it. If he can, he certainly deserves the nomination.
A strong showing by Ron Paul could bring the Republican split over the war out into the open and lead some candidates to move away from supporting Bush on Iraq. Especially Romney since New Hampshire is even more anti-war than Iowa. But it’s going to happen in any case. Republican candidates can’t go into the 2008 elections with Iraq going the way it is now.
The only thing that can keep the party together for 2008 is for Bush to follow the Iraq Study Group plan or some similar exit strategy and pull our combat troops out of Iraq. That might even give Republicans a chance to regain control of Congress.
We have seen how Ron Paul has utilized the internet to give his candidacy a boost. Other Republicans will follow suit, but I suspect that they will do so as part of a battle within the party to gain control of it after they lose the next election.
I say this as a former party activist and Executive Committee Vice-Chairman. I’m not speaking from the point of view of an outsider. Personally, I will never again vote for a Republican who does not repudiate the neo-con position and everything that they stand for.
The notion of conservatives separating themselves from Bush is rubbish. There’s no way you can credibly separate yourself from Bush when
(1) for six years the Republican netroots, talk show hosts, etc. made a god out of Bush; and
(2) they have brainwashed most of the Republican base (see MarkG above) into spouting the neo-con line. As a result, even Romney (who seems to me to be the most sane of the major candidates) can’t repudiate the Bush/Rumsfeld war, which means all the major candidates are part of the Bush/neocon agenda lock, stock and barrel.
What makes the Bush presidency distinctive is two things: (1) the total separation of tax and spending policy, and the unqualified support of unlimited deficits and (2) the Iraq war. Most so-called conservatives are behind Bush 100% on both issues.
I think the neocon strategy is pretty clear: stick with Bush, and if the Democrats are unlucky enough to win the 2008 election, they will pump up the Weimar “stab in the back” strategy (much as MarkG did above) by blaming dissenters for losing Iraq, and possibly even metamorphose into something akin to a fascist movement.
If the Republicans win the Presidency, keep ignoring Pakistan till you’ve let the Islamists cook up another 9/11- then you get another “terrorism election” victory just like Bush did. As we know from 2002 and 2004, there’s a pretty clear formula here: every 1500 or so Americans murdered by terrorists = one Republican sweep.
C’mon Ruffini et al. You guys are smarter than this! Look and see what’s staring you right in the face. Stop sucking up to ‘conventional wisdom’ and get creative for a change. Become bold, real men and women! You are all caving.
look, the intertubes have awakened HUGE numbers of people already to the dreamstate garbage that passes for MSM. Plus, people of all kinds are strongly sensing that things are really screwed up and off-kilter in the economy, the gov’t and foreign relations. People are CRAVING simple honesty and authenticity - not Hollywood/D.C schlock. Anyone under 30 yoa with half-a-sober brain knows they are getting screwed… and they are pissed. Cult of personality will surely continue to sway a sizable minority, superficially, but even those people are wake-able to simplicity, honesty and authenticity, cuz the desire for that dwells deep inside everyone.
That’s why Paul supporters are rabidly Enrolled with him. “Ron Paul” HAS NOT utilized the internet to galvanize his followers. THE FOLLOWERS have galvanized the internet for him! RP2008 has simple ‘joined’ the revolution. RP states it exactly that way whenever he speaks to rallies - “Thanks for letting me join the Revolution!”
Woodrow is making the same incorrect assumption as MarkG. He is assuming Republican unity where there is none. The fact that it hasn’t broken out into open warfare doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Right now, Republican candidates are in a bind. If they split with Bush on Iraq, they risk alienating the 59% of Republicans who still back him on Iraq. If they stick with Bush, they risk losing the 38% of Republicans who oppose the war and the far greater percentage of Independents who are in opposition. Only Congressmen and Senators with very safe seats can survive that.
They’re all waiting for Bush to change course in Iraq after Gen. Petreus and Amb. Crocker report to Congress in Sept. But the propaganda line lately has been that the surge in Iraq is working. And that suggests that the White House isn’t going to shift its strategy.
The situation in Iraq has improved somewhat but it has nothing to do with the surge. Al Qaeda simply overplayed their hand and alienated the Sunni insurgents and tribal chiefs who turned against them and kicked their ass.
If the White House doesn’t adopt an exit strategy by, say, Oct. 1st, the split in the Republican party will come out in the open as more and more candidates desert the president. They need anti-war Republicans and Independents to win. They can take their chances with the pro-war base which has no where else to go and can be appealed to, in many cases, on the immigration issue which is also contrary to Bush policy.
There already is a “movement 2.0″ - it’s called the Ron Paul Revolution. As soon as the warmongers start practicing intellectual honesty, they can become a part of it too. If Ron Paul wins the GOP nomination, there will be no Democrat that can stand a chance.
Which candidate is going to lead the 2.0 movement?
Rudy Giuliani talks like a fiscal conservative, but he’s pro-choice and anti-Second Amendment. (If he had shut down a few New York newspapers, and said states could censor the press, he would be anti-First Amendment, wouldn’t he?)
Mitt Romney hasn’t earned the trust of conservatives that his recent conversion is authentic, and will have a hard time doing so. His latest ad indicates that he’s joined the Culture War — that’ll sure help him catch fire on the Internet with young people, just like dissing the YouTube debate did.
John McCain sold out his maverick credentials by reaching out to social conservatives, and was the main cheerleader for a troop increase when most Americans wanted out of Iraq. He showed his independence in backing amnesty, and sank his own campaign.
Fred Thompson generates all the excitement of another TV cop show rerun, and he’s a former lobbyist.
Ron Paul is generating the real enthusiasm (30,000 Meetup volunteers and more joining every day), and with good reason. He’s on the right side on the Iraq war, and more conservative across the board than any of the front-runners. He has three decades of consistency and personal integrity that is unquestioned.
Some might argue that he’s too radical to win, and that a more moderate anti-war nominee like Chuck Hagel would have a better chance, but I don’t see him generating anywhere near the enthusiasm that Dr. Paul has.
Maybe, as Ron Paul says, “Freedom is Popular!”
Despite the short-term opportunity to rally people around an anti-Hillary mantra, I fundamentally believe that if you want to motivate and mobilize large numbers of people, it must be FOR something, not against someone. Hillary will be bad for our country, no doubt. But what will be good for our country?
That’s where we as Republicans have failed. There used to be this talk about us as the “Party of Ideas.” That talk has vanished. We don’t have ideas, we have talking points. We have attack pieces. We are on the defense, and no army ever took ground, let alone won a war, by strictly playing defense.
Patrick’s one of the best minds on this topic (interactive grassroots), and some of his underlying assumptions shows where our strategic thinking is nationally. Many of our Party’s strategists have skipped a step. Before we talk about Movement 2.0, we need to talk about the principles and foundations that will drive that movement. I think it can and must happen without Hillary as the central focus. It needs to happen with shared principles and values at the core. Even in a big tent party, we should be able to agree on some fundamentals.
We won the House in 1994 on the back of values, ideas and principles. The ‘Contract with America’ was a great focal point to show unaffiliated voters “hey, we know our country needs a new direction and we have a vision for the future.”
We lost in 2006 not because of the Iraq war, but because we Republicans lost our way. We passed massive spending increases, large new entitlements, and millions of dollars in pork. Our leaders weren’t just accused of ethics problems - they went to jail after genuinely breaking the public’s trust. In short, we governed like Democrats.
Let’s unite on some values - low taxes, limited government, and personal responsibility. Let’s take those values and craft a vision for our nation’s future. Someday, hopefully post-victory, our troops will come home from Iraq. What will we do next? Where will we take our nation then? Unless we look ahead for answers to the question “Then what?” we will find ourselves in a permanent minority. The Democrats want to win by creating big government programs and spreading fear, and they can play that game better than Republicans. We need to shift the playing field and focus on our own core strengths.
Conservatives should be leaders in a Party of Ideas. I firmly believe that motivated with a conservative vision for the future, Movement 2.0 will be huge.
The problem with waiting for Hillary Clinton to become the nominee is that is exactly what Democrats did with Ronald Reagan back in 1980. Most people vote for someone for president, not against someone else. What most conservatives seem to forget is that by all rights, Gore should have won the 2000 election. After all, Bush lost the popular vote, and if it wasn’t for poor ballot design in Palm Beach County, Florida, Gore would have caried the electoral college, too. Conservatives have not realized, either, that the 2004 election was very close. If 70,000 voters changed their minds in Ohio, Bush looses the election to Kerry, who by most accounts ran one of the worst presidental campaigns in recent history.
Sure, Hillary Clinton has her obvious flaws, but there is no way she will lay down and take attacks the same way Kerry did with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign. Also, all the top tier Republican nominees have their own flaws that the Hillary Clinton campaign will be certain to exploit.
The point I am trying to make is that if conservatives want to win the 2008 election, they must be for someone, and not against someone. By the way, has anyone noticed that lawyers at Ken Starr’s law firm have given more money to Hillary Clinton’s campaign than nay other?
It’s pretty Soviet, Ruffini, that you can write a post wondering where the enthusiasm for Republicans is without mentioning that your own freakin’ poll on the right sidebar shows you where it is: Ron Paul.
Ron Paul is going to bring this country back to limited government, back to rule of law after 16 years of Clinton/Bush raping the constitution, away from pointless and neverending foreign wars, and back to sound money after 37 years of fiat currency that have run our national debt to unsustainable levels. Did you see the Drudge headline yesterday? China lends us $3 billion per day and could bring us to our knees anytime they want with the amount of dollars they’re holding.
Ruffini, go youtube Ronald Reagan’s speech at the 1964 Republican convention. Close your eyes and you’ll think it’s Ron Paul speaking, verbatim. Neoconservatism was a wrong turn towards big government, big wars, and corruption. It’s time to get back to the old right and to libertarianism, which we had until 1913.
Join the Ron Paul Revolution, Ruffini!
****Let’s unite on some values - low taxes, limited government, and personal responsibility.****
You can’t have low taxes and limited government while waging wars on “Terror.” Republicans have no credibility left for advocating personal responsibility anymore after whipping up fear of terrorists and promising to “protect” everyone. People are rightly sick of all the fearmongering.
>>As Washington moves towards its summer legislative recess, indications of fear are apparent. Things seem similar to the days before the war in Iraq. Prior to the beginning of the war, several government officials began using phrases like “we don’t want the smoking gun to come in the form of a mushroom cloud,” and they spoke of drone airplanes being sent to our country to do us great harm.
It is hard to overstate the damage this approach does psychologically, especially to younger people. Of course, we now know there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, let alone any capacity to put them to successful use.
To calm fears, Americans accepted the Patriot Act and the doctrine of pre-emptive war. We tolerated new laws that allow the government to snoop on us, listen to our phone calls, track our financial dealings, make us strip down at airports and even limited the rights of habeas corpus and trial by jury. Like some dysfunctional episode of the twilight zone, we allowed the summit of our imagination to be linked up with the pit of our fears.
Bush has alienated a large part of the traditional Republican base on three basic issues:
The war in Iraq.
Government spending and the expansion of the welfare state.
Immigration and border security.
All of the Republican candidates in 2008 are going to have to deal with these issues, and they have to do it without alienating Bush loyalists. In addition, they are going to have to have an exit strategy for Iraq because anything less is a sure loser.
I’m not convinced that any candidate can accomplish this which means that Democrats will win in 2008, and these issues will be held over to be dealt with in the 2012 campaign.
Then, foreign policy will be the key issue. Neo-cons have little popular organization but they control most of the conservative media. They don’t much care about balanced budgets or immigration so the real battle will be over foreign policy. They will be in the forefront of those blaming the Democrats for “losing” Iraq.
Bush, however, could preserve Republican unity and promote Republicans chances by changing course in Iraq and by backing off on the immigration issue and concentrating on border security. Without that, I don’t think Republican chances are very good regardless of how well or how quickly they begin to exploit the internet.
Personally, I favor Ron Paul. But I am under no illusions that he is likely to win the GOP nomination. Even if he should surprise everyone and pull it off, he wouldn’t be able to win because his nomination would split the Republican Party. It would be a Goldwater moment as in the 1964 Democrat landslide.
But that’s not all bad. Goldwater gave the conservative movement the commanding position within the Republican Party. They couldn’t dictate the nominee, but they could veto it. And, of course, it paved the way for Reagan in 1980. So a Ron Paul nomination would go a long way toward deciding the future direction of the Republican Party.
And it would go a good way toward answering the question of how to utilize the internet. You utilize the internet most successfully by offering a program that MOTIVATES individuals to become in your campaign with both time and money. After all, you can call Iowa voters from anywhere in the country and urge them to vote for Ron Paul.
Forget about Bush loyalists. They’re still in a hypnotized state of reflexive fear-based war-mongering. 7-year-olds in adult bodies playing out frustrated bully fantasies. Or latent insecure control-freaks who’ll stop at nothing to try to secure and sterilize their petty little inner world. You can’t give these types an opening, cuz they’ll scare and freak everyone else out temporarily with their gyrations. Still, most have woken up, and even these types will wake up eventually. Or not. Doesn’t matter. They must be shoved off to the sidelines if they remain asleep.
If there is to be a serious reawakening and realignment with the fundamental goodness of human spirit, based on maximum freedom, responsibility and subsequent altruism, then the fundamentals of human liberty and creativity must be unleashed - again.
There’s nothing new about this; it’s always this way, cycle after cycle, civilization after civilization. Usually it takes violent revolution to garner a blip upwards to more freedom. I figure the USA has one last shot at regaining its foundation. If not, we’ll have to put another checkmark in the Failed category very soon.
Patrick, one clarification: I don’t think what the Right must do re: Web 2.0 depends on who the Left nominates for president. True, being in the opposition can unite and energize (though that isn’t a guarantee), but all of the prospective Democratic nominees are so far to the left that it really doesn’t matter whether its Hillary or any of the rest of them. My view has been for months that Clinton/Obama is inevitable because they will do anything/everything to make sure they regain the White House.
The only thing that will prevent such a dream ticket is about two more goofs by Obama.
Ron Paul IS the candidate of the internet. If you want the support of the people who think, you need to think about what he says, and why it is so appealing.
Here’s a hint, because it is the truth, and the people are sick and tired of politicians lying to them.
Patrick,
I’m not terribly concerned about the netroots driving the agenda for the Democrats if they take power in 2009, as seems likely. American politics seems to go in cycles back and forth between the parties, but generally over a relatively narrow range, not the extremes of right and left. Get too far outside “the zone” and the electorate punishes; stay within “the zone” but succumb to the temptations of incumbency and its privileges, and the electorate says “give the other guys a chance, they can’t do much worse than the present crew”.
The GOP suffers from that corruption of incumbency, the lack of will to lead with competency and principle. So the Democrats will likely be the beneficiaries, if they do not follow the netroots to the extreme left and lose the confidence of voters to “give the other guys a chance”.
People mis-remember the Reagan ascendancy. He was considered too far outside the mainstream to win, right up until a week before the 1980 election polls were too close to call. Things had to get bad, really bad as they did during Carter’s term, for voters to challenge the assumptions of what constituted the mainstream and overcome their qualms about whether he was an acceptable “other guy” to give a chance, instead of being a mirror image of too-far-out-there McGovern.
Once in office, Reagan governed competently, people saw that drastic reductions from ridiculous marginal tax rates and a firm foreign policy were effective, and the mainstream shifted.
Today, government even under GOP admin and Congress proved to be burdensome and ineffective. Tax rate arguments are harder to get either side excited about with top marginal rates under 40%, instead of over 75% as they were in 1980. Republicans failed to advance a real argument about the future of Social Security in the last two Congresses, and health care seems to be at an impasse.
Only the war is a real dividing issue, and the Iraq component of the war will remain a huge negative unless military progress continues and political progress within Iraq finally starts to happen.
So to the average American being spoonfed by the MSM, the GOP looks like they cannot competently manage the government, are corrupt (Stevens, Delay, Ney, Abramoff, etc.), not friendly to minorities and immigrants, and under the domination of some mostly negative social and religious conservatives. Democrats have the easy position of running as Santa Claus, as usual.
Republicans need to rebrand, and the movement you seek is a collection of activists committed to both competency and effective policies. Will it be nativism, or optimism that prevails? Free markets, or protectionism and favored groups? Spending restraint, or spending now in an attempt to fix current messes? Newt’s a one-man think tank, and will contribute to the debate, but the party will have a hard time defining itself while in power and trying to hold on for another cycle.
Hey, maybe nominate Ron Paul for President, and RuPaul for Vice President. Now THAT would be rebranding!
But seriously, the coalition will splinter as long as the social conservatives dominate as they have. It’s too hard to hold together free market, small-goverment, competent management, strong foreign policy types if only straight white men talking family values are allowed in the party.
[…] Patrick Ruffini wants a "Movement 2.0." While I agree with the sentiment, I want some specifics. Ruffini starts with: […]
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