My mother recently visited from parts out west. It’s always a joy to have her visit for a week. She loves visiting the sites in DC, then heading home and saying that she’s been to a particular location when it shows up on television or in conversations. Honestly, I do the same thing when I travel. There are inherent bragging rights about DC, but, I digress.
During a shuttle ride we were talking about the sheer number of PAC’s and how they muddled the message of the Republican party, and I did what I do best. I just started talking a mile a minute and in the middle of my mini-dissertation on communications and messaging in campaigns it hit me like a lightning bolt. Citizens United was the worst decision to roll down the pipe for the Republican party in, I’d say, the last few decades.
During the last Presidential cycle PACs were resplendent in their causes and number. In my personal experience working with one PAC there were at least 20 other children organizations working under a parent group, and that was just in Virginia. We drowned the electorate in calls, with my phone bankers getting complaints that voters had been called dozens of times. Different organizations, but the same script. A Hispanic outreach organization was using the same script that was being shared by a tax policy revision group and an organization that touted itself as the “conservative counterpoint to the AARP” (without the insurance, benefits, etc).
This saturation killed the messaging. It became an irritation. A reminder to the voters that the candidates, and by proxy, the parties were not running the show, but some separate entity; not voted in, not voted for, and not replaceable by elections or political machinations. No, these entities, churning out messages tailored for specific candidates, walked the thin line between social activities and political activities, most of the time saying ‘to hell’ with the line and marching right over it.
There was the rub though. The presidential candidate didn’t have a Koch Brothers logo next to his name. Halliburton emblems were not resplendent on his bespoken suit jackets. No, next to his name was an (R) like every other candidate that runs for the Republican ticket. They’re using the family name, but they’re not using the family prayerbook, as it were.
This is were Citizens United comes in. It opened the doors and wrested control of the message of the candidates away from the candidate and the political party they are representing and put it in the hands of, literally, anyone who can afford to file the paperwork for a 401.3(c); which, by the way, is not all that much.
The sudden wide scale access to the ability to put out a message in support of a candidate, or, if you want to be safe, a ‘social agenda’ was jumped on by any entity that had an iron in the fire or wanted one there. The result, the splash damage effect. Romney’s people weren’t making calls for Romney, Political Action Committees were, but because PACs and the political campaign cannot communicate (and I believe with all my heart that they didn’t do so…/sarcasm) the messages became disparate. Phone bankers who were not part of the official campaign were answering questions for voters in an official capacity regardless of access, propriety, or authorization.
PACs, in effect, diluted the message of the core agent, the candidate, and wrest control of the process from the party for whom the primary candidates were fighting for. Newt Gingrich should have been toast after the failures in Iowa and New Hampshire, but even while his campaign was failing, a PAC stepped in and played the part of a campaign for him, allowing the train wreck candidate who speaks of Christian virtues but is on his third marriage with his second mistress. Go down the list and the weak candidates clung to the primary process not by their own moxie and skill, but by the hand of entities that they supposedly had no connection to. When your campaign isn’t having to raise money to pay for commercials it tends to make your fundraising numbers look better, and when that happens to be one of the barometers that campaigns are measured on, it gives a false impression of how strong a candidate is.
That obfuscation of ‘real’ political value allowed the Republican primaries to drag on for months longer than it should have, handing truckloads of political ammunition to the loyal opposition who watched on and tittered in utter glee at the monumental fluster cluck that was our Primary.
Our Primary. The Republican primary, and the crux of the problem. The party has been neutered by Citizens United. Originally hailed, by very few, as a way for individuals who had a vested interest in the process to provide more financial support to candidates they liked soon discovered that the rigid structure and quality control that was instituted by state level Republican parties and the Republican National Convention were no longer applicable. After all, is the RNC going to tell a multimillionaire to stop supporting a candidate? Don’t spend your millions on adverts for our candidate in swing states? Take your cash and spend it elsewhere rather than buy us a new auto-dialer system. Nope, the party took the bait, bit the hook, and was reeled in like a whopper that it is. In a few years the Republican party organization acquiesced control of the message, control of the candidates, and the discipline of a time tested political organization to the free wheeling of individual agents.
Now candidates are not being selected on their political credentials, but their savvy and speech crafting. Policy knowledge and party relationships are being replaced with noxious war cries of ‘anti-establishment’, which I’m fairly certain even those who bark it out can barely define what makes someone establishment outside of the fact that they just happen to have been in the political game longer than those making the accusation.
I would suggest to the Republican party to reign itself in. For five years we have had individuals run under our banner who spit on our establishment, abuse our history, and ignore the hideous damage that ill-thought comments do to themselves and fellow republicans. It’s time to to start holding back that (R) for those who play the game and meet the criteria set forth. Something that has bothered me for the last five years is that the “Tea Party” candidates don’t have their own party. There were no (TP) candidates on the Presidential ballot in 2012, no were there any at the Federal or state level positions. In 2012 the same thing occurred. I saw no (TP) candidates. I saw members who claimed Tea Party association, but demanded that they be given the Republican mantel after talking about how corrupt we’ve become, how vile we are, and how the RINOs, and the establishment needed to go. You’ve been handing the coveted (R) to those who turn around and, politically speaking, piss on your shoes.
You’re the party. That position as the arbiter of who represents the party falls on your shoulders. It is not found in the checkbook of a wealthy businessman or in the ridiculously home crafted hat with teabags dangling from each fold of a tricorne. You are, as far as it can be estimated, political professionals. Maritime Lawyers do not allow Ambulance Chasers to march into their courts and dictate how the rules should be. I’ll put it another way; you want the best of what you can get. Need Surgery, you’ll want the best doctor. Need a lawyer, I know a guy in Hampton who can hook you up. The short version is that you are professionals, and you’ve let the quality of your product slip right off the side of a damn cliff.
Joe the Plumber can run for congress, but he’s not going to win. If Joe reads up on the issues affecting not only his district but the nation as a whole, puts deep thought into policy positions, communicates these ideas with professionals in the respective fields and gets some feedback, develops plans of action, and learns to communicate those plans in an articulate and meaningful manner to the masses. Well, then he has a shot. By the way, that process above, it’s going to take some time; a few years of dedicated time at least. Candidates don’t come out of the woodwork. They earn their chops by working in the system you want them to manage. Again, Joe Schmoe doesn’t walk off the street and take over a legal firm or a Fortune 500 company (unless you want a repeat of 2008, then be my guest). This notion that the big tent philosophy allows for those not vested in the moral obligation of long-term policy for the betterment of as many as possible rather than those who can pay for a television ad in the major districts and tolerating political mistakes bordering on negligence is, frankly, bullshit.
Old Jeffersonian 