Republicans continue to attempt to explain their repudiation by the American public as something other than what it was; the apparent rejection of a party whose core principles have proven outmoded, ineffective, and ultimately harmful.
As it turns out, though, it's nothing that a couple of well-designed iPhone apps couldn't fix.
The latest incarnation of the Young Republican movement has at least recognized that they have a structural disadvantage with one increasingly imporant demorgraphic of the voting public. In the Washington Post recently, Republican consultants Patrick Ruffini and Mindy Finn discussed their attempts to "rebuild" the conservative blogosphere and the Republican party, with their website, "RebuildTheParty.com", and accompanying three-thousand word manifesto.
Mindy Finn, you'll recall, served on the Romney campaign as the director of eStrategy. It was there, presumably, that she bolstered her national reputation as someone who could stir the voting public into action with technology in the absence of a candidate with a coherent or relevant message. She's now prepared to take those highly regarded skills to the next level in service of the Republican party and the conservative movement at large.
She and Patrick Ruffini will have their work cut out for them. There are now large swaths of the country where Republicans don't compete effectively: the east coast is "elite", the west coast is too "liberal", the midwest has woken up to the fact that Republicans don't represent their best interests, and the southwest is too Hispanic. The Republican party is also facing a mindshare deficit amongst the youngest segment of voters in the country by a substantial margin.
Outmoded ideology notwithstanding, they recognize at least one truism of the last election:
"...[The Democrats] more than 2-to-1 advantage with young voters, their discovery of a better grassroots model -- will be as big a threat to the future of the GOP as the toxic political environment we have faced the last few years."
So how to address this deficit? With ideas and programs to actually help the non-wealthy while providing better access to health-care, higher education, and economic security? A call to fellow Republicans to rediscover the US Constitution and its meaning? A recognition that today's "conservative" movement bears little resemblance to the vision that Barry Goldwater articulated over 40 years ago in regards to issues of choice and marriage?
Of course not.
The "manifesto" is surprisingly empty of any new ideas for which the middle class might express a natural affinity. It's a treatise on electoral style, not substance. Barack Obama, they claim, did not win a victory of policy - rather it was a victory of process: he employed a superior organization and a superior use of technology in a political environment that favored Democrats anyway.
Having won that victory due to an highly energized group of volunteers and a national media favorably predisposed to the idea of an Obama presidency, the President-Elect will now certainly turn his back on the movement he created and abandon its organizing principles.
"...Obama campaigned against the establishment, and now he is the establishment.
Consider these contrasts. Like the Internet, free markets are distributed and allow good ideas to rise from the bottom up. The bureaucracies that Obama prefers are inherently top-down and stifling.
And yet Democrats have been allowed to get away with the notion that their success online is fueled by a "bottom-up" culture while Republicans are "top-down." Ironic -- given that Democrats want top-down government control of your life, while Republicans believe in dynamic markets and a strong civil society."
Ruffini and Finn completely miss the irony of this statement, as it was the "top-down" Democratic party that had to school the "bottom-up" Republican party about the nature of netroots oganizing principles.
At least they're clear-eyed about the ability of the "top down", bureaucracy-loving Democrats to maintain and build on the success of 2008.
"Barack Obama and the Democrats' ability to build their entire fundraising, GOTV, and communications machine from the Internet is the #1 existential challenge to our existing party model...And, you will soon discover, online organizing is by far the most efficient way to transform our party structures to be able to compete against what is likely to be a $1 billion Obama re-election campaign in 2012."
Ruffini and Finn are also blind to the fact that while their party may eventually become more adept at twenty-first century communication and information technologies, the real problem is with the party's ideology.
Does this mean that we'll soon see a new game for the iPhone to compete with "Spore", based on Intelligent Design? Or how about an online polling application where you get to vote for the top five books you'd like to see burned? Why not an application that does racial profiling of your Facebook friends? Or how about a tax tool that calculates what your income would be if the Capital Gains Tax was eliminated?
RebuildTheParty.com has laid out some rather lofty ambitions. Among them...
In target 2010 Congressional races, we recommend setting a standard of at least 5,000 in-district online activists recruited, and a minimum of $100,000 raised online.
In target 2010 Senate races, we recommend a standard of 7,500 in-district online activists recruited and $150,000 raised online for each Congressional district.
It is expected that the next generation of newly recruited Republican candidates will allow them to compete in all 435 congressional districts, assuming they have access to a Blackberry or similar device, and know how to use email and the internets. Familiarity with "the Google" would also be helpful.
Thus enabled, this technologically-savvy generation of conservative candidates will undoubtedly be able to receive their talking points from the Republican leadership in a timely fashion, wherever in "real America" they happen to be campaigning, thereby eliminating the annoying tendency of some of the newbies to "go rogue" and get off-message.