Unifying Narratives Work. Microtrends Fail.
by Patrick Ruffini :: May 22nd, 2008 3:08 pmDavid All argues that the proliferation of competing “agendas” now emanating from individual Republican House members misses the point. I agree, but for very different reasons than David. His essential argument is that Republicans should ditch any hope for a Contract-style agenda:
Gone are the days of Newt Gingrich’s Contract for America, a plan which every Republican got behind and backed. A unified agenda back in 1994 was possible because of Newt Gingrich’s intoxicating personality and strong leadership style; but it was also a different time, a time before the Internet inspired a culture of choice and information.
Today, thanks to the Internet, each Member of Congress can and should be fighting in the trenches for the hundreds of issues which drive their voters to the polls under the banner of the Republican Party. The Internet provides a medium to distribute our message like never before. We can fight on thousands of fronts.
Rather than being forced to to pick a few, limited set of agenda items, House Republicans should change the game and act more like iTunes and NetFlix — offering conservative, libertarian, and independent voters a lot of different choices — all of which can only be found under the larger brand — Republican.
This overlooks the most salient example: Obama, the epitome of the new net-centric candidate. Obama has actually thrived on a very strong, unified message.
Change. Hope.
This is not an agenda. It’s deliberately vague. But the message is as clear and unifying as Reagan’s optimism. Those who celebrate the bottom-up nature of the Obama campaign can’t deny its top-down, cult of personality, aggressive brand management aspects.
I was recently discussing the difference between the Clinton and Obama campaigns with a GOP pollster in town. In the conversation, an interesting point came up: that Obama has beat Clinton because he’s refused the play the small-bore, microtargeting game epitomized by her ex-strategist (and Microtrends author) Mark Penn. Obama has run on a big, national message of generational change in both red and blue states and it’s worked.
Democratic voters have latched on to this narrative. There may not have been a mass market for a 46-year old guy named Barack as President a year ago — but now there is. He created it. That takes a big, aspirational message that’s bigger than the sum total of a bunch of issue positions and demographic segments. The Internet doesn’t change that. It actually amplifies the success of popular messages at the head of the long tail. The common thread of Internet success stories is that they tend to be really big success stories, the enhanced variety offered by the long tail notwithstanding. Think of Google, Apple, and Obama.
What Obama has done for change represents what the Republican Revolutionaries did with the Contract with America. They married the Republican brand to the idea of Reform. Republicans may have won in 1994 without the Contract, but they would have governed a whole lot differently without it. Without a well-branded agenda, they would have more quickly drifted into a boring, piecemeal floor schedule.
The problem with the current “agendas” on offer is that they’re small-bore. They act as though we were still in the majority and our job was to fine-tune the workings of government. It’s not. In the minority, our job is to 1) make the majority’s life miserable, grinding the House and Senate floors to a halt, and building a narrative of the Democrats as broken and incompetent, and 2) offer big, bold alternatives to this mess like the Contract did in 1994.
We’ll be discussing more of what these agenda items might be over at The Next Right, but I imagine it would be things on this scale:
- A total ban on earmarks
- Let the half of Federal workers due to retire in the next few years retire – and don’t replace them
- Personal Social Security accounts
- A 50% cut in farm subsidies (yeah, good luck on that after this week)
- McCain’s idea of
replacingsupplementing the UN with a league of democracies
There’s a market for this kind of change. When Tom Cole posted a few of the incrementalist agenda items to the NRCC blog, I couldn’t count a single positive comment in favor of the nearly 2,000 posted. This shows the disconnect between Washington and the grassroots. Instead of boldness, many members still think a 1998-style litany of “practical solutions” will work for a party that could be headed into the wilderness without a shock to the system.
Like this post? Join us on May 27th as we discuss the future of the Republican Party and more with the launch of The Next Right.
Comments (36) 
Trackbacks (4) 
del.icio.us 
digg it 
subscribe
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Patrick this is all true, but the problems conservatives choose to solve have to be tethered pretty closely to what people are experiencing as the big issues in their lives.
Right now I’d say war, health care, global warming and the middle class squeeze are on a lot of people’s minds. That’s the current list in part because progressives are starting to establish at least the tiniest bit of agenda-setting power, but also for a reason that’s a much more serious challenge to conservatives: voter’s lives are being seriously affected by these things, sometimes on a daily basis, and there’s a growing perception that conservatives don’t have the answers.
Good luck with launching The Next Right, I’ll definitely be reading. (if not agreeing much, most likely!)
(1) The fact that she inexplicably failed to organize or prepare for the Super Tuesday primaries and immediately-following contests is more signficant than you credit. Had she done so (or if Ohio, WV, KY, and PA had bumped their primaries up to Super Tuesday, and FL/MI had not bumped past Super Tuesday), we would be singing about how MicroTrends beat up on his empty message.
(2) How about drill the hell out of ANWR and Western Shale/convert to nuclear power for our grid. If McCain wasn’t at the top of the ticket, I’d recommend running those ads against every Democratic Senator. I imagine your average working class voter right about now doesn’t care all that much about the caribou.
No internet gimmick is going to help the Republicans because the Republican Party does not have a demographic group that is as large and as faithful as blacks are to the Democratic Party. When Senator Obama became the only candidate for blacks, Senator Clinton faced a huge battle. The support of 95% of blacks gave Senator Obama certain wins in many states. Thus, the wink and nod internet gimmicks only had to affect a much smaller number of voters (educated white Democrats).
Sean,
Any and all of those are proximate causes to be sure — then again, with anything this close you could say that about a lot of things.
But what about the macro question: How did the prohibitive favorite for the nomination blow it? How’d she let a guy who was 20 points behind her sneak up and grab a sure thing?
You have to point to a series of terrible messaging misfires: trying to run as the more “historic” candidate against the first African-American, Penn’s maniacal focus on small-bore issues rather than sweeping narratives, running as the “experience” candidate in a change environment, and of course the assumption that caucuses actually favored them because of supposedly superior organization (”they look like facebook. they don’t look like caucus-goers”).
Imagine if they’d listened to Mike Henry and skipped Iowa. Or answered that question differently in Philadelphia.
@SD,
I find your fixation on the black vote fascinating. Black voters’ lock step allegiance to the Democratic Party is nothing new. It’s been here since 1964.
Nor are they growing in relation to the population. They’ve been a pretty stable 12% of the voting and general population for a while.
Hispanics are the growing share of the electorate AND they will shift based on the GOP’s perceived openness to their community. Given the reality of an African-American Democratic nominee and a pro-normalization Republican, I daresay Bush’s 40-44% in 2004 may be the low water mark in terms of the Latino vote for McCain.
The bottom line is the Republicans have to be the serious, adult party.
We are not getting the folks grooving to hip-hop wearing designer threads, but we have a shot at their dislluisioned parents or their suddenly blasted with reality older siblings.
Right now we are doing worse than we did when we were the boring Midwestern accountant party. Maybe that’s because every time I look at the DC Republicans I see a porkfest that would warm FDR’s heart and personal behavior out of the Hugh Hefner playbook.
Want to succeed. Act like adults.
Patrick,
the 40% Hispanic vote for Bush has been discredited. It was an artifact of bad exit polling. The Houston Chronicle has written about it. One of the things about the black vote is that there turn out has gotten better. Karl Rove depended on black turnout being significantly lower than whites. Yet, in Florida in 2000, blacks turned about in proportion to the 16% of the population.
When you realize that over 90% of elected Hispanics are Democrats, it is hard to see that they will ever start voting for Republicans in large numbers. The Hispanic vote in California has taken California out of play for Republicans. Do you really think that the Repulbicans can compete for the Hispanic vote when Democrats are promising to tax rich whites and given the money to them. Do you really think that an internet communication plan will reach the Hispanic vote.
Wow. Rather than try to get something done and do something good, let’s all demand that our government lock itself in endless political posturing and have everything come grinding to a halt. Fight simply for the sake of fighting. And they say liberals hate our country…
In the minority, our job is to 1) make the majority’s life miserable, grinding the House and Senate floors to a halt, and building a narrative of the Democrats as broken and incompetent, and 2) offer big, bold alternatives to this mess like the Contract did in 1994.
no, their job is to serve the f’in country.
don’t you get it? your insistence on playing obstructionist political games is why you clowns are in the minority. and it’s one of the main things Obama is running against.
“1) make the majority’s life miserable, grinding the House and Senate floors to a halt, and building a narrative of the Democrats as broken and incompetent”
This is why government as practiced by Republicans doesn’t work. God forbid that working for the benefit of the people be part of the conversation. If this is the plan, what on Earth makes you think that if you achieve your goal and reach the majority that anyone would lift a finger to help get things done?
Stop thinking of politics as a zero-sum game, you are hurting that which you profess to love.
the reason why our party will lose in november and continue to lose:
“In the minority, our job is to 1) make the majority’s life miserable, grinding the House and Senate floors to a halt, and building a narrative of the Democrats as broken and incompetent, and 2) offer big, bold alternatives to this mess like the Contract did in 1994.”
that’s brilliant stuff, patrick. pushing more folks away from the republican party with your tough-guy schtick is amazingly effective.
“In the minority, our job is to 1) make the majority’s life miserable, grinding the House and Senate floors to a halt, and building a narrative of the Democrats as broken and incompetent, and 2) offer big, bold alternatives to this mess like the Contract did in 1994.”
How freaking patriotic. You know, there are Americans outside of the Beltway that would actually like to see things accomplished, outside of a GOP return to power in Washington. It’s this kind of thinking that got you guys spanked in 2008 and will cost you the White House and more seats in Congress in 2008.
Oh yeah, your “Big Ideas” are totally stupid and bound to failure? “League of Democracies”? Good luck with that. And pleeze, PLEEZE bring back the privatization of Social Security! That was such a winner.
Patrick: I’d like to thank you and your amazingly unconstructive message, on behalf of all Democrats, for helping to make us winners in ‘08. Cheers!
All rhetoric and no reality. One of the main reasons the Republicans are in the minority is that they don’t have real answers for the very real problems that the average citizen is facing. All you guys have is your orthodoxy. Arguing over the black and Hispanic vote? Why don’t you argue over the real problems facing this country? Inflation, gas prices, cost of education, a pitiful foreign policy, and a declining infrastructure.
While the Democrats are hardly any better, at least, they are addressing these issues. All you guys talk about is tax cuts and activist judges. How do those things address the meat and potato issues people deal with every day. Instead of figuring out how to manipulate a segment of the population into voting for you, how about giving them an actual reason to vote for you.
Wow, I love these partisan hacks. Party before country. You should be ashamed to even call yourself an American, Ruffini.
The job of any member of Congress is to legislate, not to play political games in hopes of regaining the majority to push through an idealistic, partisan agenda. I wouldn’t think I would need to explain that to a political blogger, but there it is.
The GOP is in a bad sate because Americans have figured out two very important truths:
1) A party which does not believe in government cannot be expected to govern well. The only surprise is that anyone was surprised at the terrible job they’ve done.
2) Republicans have come to place party before country. Don’t believe me? Reread Patrick’s post.
There’s a phrase when Democrats and Republicans cooperate “for the common good.”
The Farm Bill.
And earmarks.
Both of which amount to legal corruption.
“Our job is to make the majority’s life miserable, grinding the House and Senate floors to a halt.”
Where’s your shame? How can you possibly take yourself seriously if you can write that sentence? This type of mindless, intellectually bankrupt hack-work (on both sides) gives blogging a bad name.
I think the GOP forgets in all their parliamentary games that these tricks only work if the public opposes the majority. When you play defense for an unpopular president, and block enormously popular programs (SCHIP) and back unpopular, the electorate will keep punishing you until you are too weak to block their agenda, or until you figure out that you represent the voters, not a party and its ideology.
The opposition party is supposed to prevent the majority from making massive mistakes with the government, not try to hamstring government so that it cannot serve the public’s interest. We are watching, and we know who to blame.
I’m a white, boomer-age, college graduate female. Perhaps
if you A-hole white guys would stop seeing this country and the world as some kind of hockey playoff (”winning isn’t everything, it’s the ONLY thing”; “Don’t talk to him, he’s your competition”) you might actually reconsider that your job is to do no more than thwart the opposition and bring government to a halt. Nevermind the fact that this country needs strong, smart leadership on both sides to find solutions to some tremendous problems confronting us. All you care about is getting elected again? But then, I suppose it’s the fault of your mothers
who went to work and left you to be raised by little league coaches and wolves. Our bad.
Amazing. Grind the country to a halt in order to retake power so you can then, once more, try to bankrupt Government for the average people, solidifying the wide divide between rich and poor. Talk about class war fare.
Republicans. The anti-American party. The party that depends on fear and selfishness and ignorance to order to win. Yer done boys. Check yer pulse the under taker is coming.
Personal accounts, so people can invest more of their savings in the stock market? Yeah, that’s a winning issue these days.
“The opposition party is supposed to prevent the majority from making massive mistakes with the government, not try to hamstring government so that it cannot serve the public’s interest.”
For those of us who are terrified of Obama’s plans for “change” and “reforms”, from a limited-government/strong national defense point of view, these two approaches might very well be on and the same.
There’s no reason to doubt that Obama truly has “the public’s interest” at heart, but socialism is not the answer to the problems we are facing.
At 8 am on my 18th birthday, almost 40 years ago, my Godmother arrived at my door to register me as a Republican.
Last year, I finally gave up and left the party basically because it had become absolutely clear that we had created a government “of the Greedy, by the Greedy, for the Greedy.”
It only took us (you see, I still think of myself as a Republican)–it only took us 11 years to so ruin our reputation as a party that it will take a generation to recover (if we ever do recover). Pathetic.
You disgust me. What you describe isn’t government, or leadership, it is only greed and a hunger for power. I hope at some point in your life you are deeply ashamed. People like you are ruining this country. Congratulations.
Man, people sure get huffy. Come on folks: it IS the job of the minority to slow down legislation they think is the wrong direction for the country. That’s how the system works. The line between principled opposition and pure politically motivated obstructionism isn’t always going to be all that sharply drawn. (c.f. Dems vs. Social Security privatization: this was both politically helpful and principled opposition, in my humble opinion) No reason to get the vapors over it.
Note the intellectual dishonesty at work in Dan Ancona’s post. He says “it IS the job of the minority to slow down legislation they think is the wrong direction for the country. That’s how the system works.”
But that’s not what Patrick proposed. Patrick said it was the job of the GOP minority’s job was to “1) MAKE THE MAJORITY’S LIFE MISERABLE, grinding the House and Senate floors to a halt, and BUILDING A NARRATIVE of the Democrats as broken and incompetent, and 2) offer big, bold alternatives to THIS MESS like the Contract did in 1994.” [emphasis mine]
Shorter version: 1) Make a mess, 2)Blame Dems for the mess to regain power.
How can this possibly be described as “principled opposition?”
Sorry I’m “getting the vapors” here Dan, but I tend to get a little testy when the country I love is run into the ground by dishonest incompetents who put party before country. How silly and emotional of me!
Strikes me Patrick had either a very, very bad night, or really wicked morning. As a plug for the Next Right he visualizes discussing:
* A total ban on earmarks
* Let the half of Federal workers due to retire in the next few years retire – and don’t replace them
* Personal Social Security accounts
* A 50% cut in farm subsidies (yeah, good luck on that after this week)
* McCain’s idea of replacing supplementing the UN with a league of democracies
This, after pointing out the fallacies of micro targeting and small bore politics. No plans for health care? How long did you say we plan to stay I in Iraq? National Debt, what National Debt? Dare I go on? Or shall we shot the ear-marks, many of which benefit the populous, while making more room at the through for that 2 to 3% who have received the benefit of major tax cuts…
Am I missing something. Were Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi working side by side with Bush to win the Iraq War, reform social security, and appoint conservative jurists?
I am at a loss to understand why Republicans should show any more deference to the opposition than Democrats showed us.
There is a purpose to a loyal opposition. It forces the majority party to defend their record and provides a credible alternative to the party in power. I’ve said a lot about the Democrats, and while I’m not sure all of them were loyal, they certainly were an opposition. As a result, the voters could decide to punish the Republicans in 2006, since the Democrats could honestly say they weren’t supporting the President’s agenda.
What the Obamatons want is a one party government which erases all partisan differentials. Perhaps the “three men in a room” bipartisanship of NY State is their ideal. As for providing principled leadership or credible choices to the voters, this approach is an abysmal failure.
The GOP doesn;t have to be nasty about letting the Democrats hang themselves in office; they just need to make sure the voters don;t see them on the same damm gallows–much to the chagrin of the “misery loves company” crowd.
Okay, our job is to hinder and halt bad legislation which is what most of the Democratic proposals are. Secondly, conservatism is “in.” The Democrats who won in Republican races in Lousiana and Mississippi (and I believe in Ohio) ran as conservatives. They took our issues and stuffed them down our throats while the GOP ran badly-produced big bad Obama and Pelosi ads (they were truly terrible). That’s not what the voters wanted to hear. They wanted to hear what candidates were going to do for THEM, conservative stuff, and the Dems gave that to them. Now the GOP should run on what these newly elected Democrats in conservative clothing DIDN’T DO, and how the GOP candidates will — at long last — support their conservative values.
“iTunes” political choices don’t get parties into power, or keep them there; overarching themes and specific large issues do. The economy. The war and defense policy. Big social issues. You people that keep complaining about the Republican “brand”… how is the GOP going to have an identity to present to the voters if we stand for nothing, instead becoming a “store” where voters can choose an item like picking a color of a car?
What a laudable goal, Patrick, to make people’s lives miserable!
“In the minority, our job is to 1) make the majority’s life miserable, grinding the House and Senate floors to a halt, and building a narrative of the Democrats as broken and incompetent,”
I suppose this fence-sitter has just fallen back over to the left again, not that there’s much room in your Party for middle-of-the road people like me anymore. Probably not Silicon Valley enough for you either.
I’m sure Reagan is rolling in his grave seeing what his Party has become, but I realize that my opinion doesn’t matter to you nor to the “new” GOP.
I will keep you in my prayers, sincerely, Patrick. Maybe there will someday be a time when people can work together again.
Oops! My mistake - wrong coast. I took you for a techie and assumed you were a Silicon Valley guy. Is Falls Church near the coast? I suppose I can check a map. I understand that Virginia is a very beautiful state. Best wishes to you, Patrick, and may God bless.
[…] Narratives Let You Win, Microtrends Let You Govern Jump to Comments Patrick Ruffini is right that a large, unify narrative is what will help you win an election.Republicans won in 1994 on a reform agenda in Contract for America, Democrats last year on a more generalized reform agenda and Obama is now well on his way to winning on a message of Change. If you are out of power and people are unhappy, reform is the single best way to appeal to them. You can’t win with a long, generic list of policy proposals. You win with a big picture approach. […]
[…] His mind is gone Posted on May 23, 2008 by Joe Tobacco Sullivan demonstrates his utter abandonment of reality: Ruffini: In the minority, our job is to 1) make the majority’s life miserable, grinding the House and Senate floors to a halt, and building a narrative of the Democrats as broken and incompetent, and 2) offer big, bold alternatives to this mess like the Contract did in 1994. […]
[…] The very model of a modern partisan hack, Patrick Ruffini, inadvertently illustrates why the current GOP is an utter failure: The problem with the current “agendas” on offer is that they’re small-bore. They act as though we were still in the majority and our job was to fine-tune the workings of government. It’s not. In the minority, our job is to 1) make the majority’s life miserable, grinding the House and Senate floors to a halt, and building a narrative of the Democrats as broken and incompetent, and 2) offer big, bold alternatives to this mess like the Contract did in 1994. […]
[…] But then, Andrew Sullivan points out stuff like this: Ruffini: […]