Matching the Message with the Messenger

At a recent meeting with concerned local Republicans, one person kept asking me how we can fix a widely-perceived problem with our party: the gap between the principles shared at the grassroots of our party, and the policies actually championed by Republican elected officials (primarily at the national level). This perceived gap lies at the heart of our party’s credibility problem with our own voters, and with independents, and we must address it if we are to win elections in the future.

What holds the Republican Party together is a set of shared principles about the role of the individual in society, and about the proper and limited role of government in our lives. However, the purpose of the Republican Party (like any other political party on the planet) is not to serve as a debating society or an advocacy group for these principles; it is to elect candidates to public office who will promote our principles in public policy. So, I think the first step in answering this question is to re-phrase it: how do we find, promote, and elect candidates who will promote our principles in public policy.

There is no silver-bullet answer to this question, but I believe we can begin a process, consistent with the strategic plan I’ve proposed, that will address this question. However, before I get to that point, I want to address the current approach that is being taken by the HCRP and why I don’t think it will solve this problem.

The current team at Richmond Avenue is taking a two-pronged approach: 1. they are allowing a group of precinct chairs and activists to use questionnaires, which are designed to identify specific platform planks people support, for the purpose of opposing candidates in our primary or excluding people from becoming precinct chairs; and 2. they are using the party email system, “rapid response” program, and social-networking sites to criticize fellow Republicans, including Republican elected officials. These approaches do nothing to build-up the party in the public’s mind. Narrowing our base and belittling our party’s elected officials is not going to help us win elections. Instead, this approach will only continue to agitate Republicans and drive many people away from the party over time.

The better approach is to first realize that the gap is caused by a systemic problem within the party, and then to address that problem focusing on communication, self-interest, competition, and culture.

First, we must begin to open a dialogue between our elected officials and our party leaders, activists and voters, in order to begin to harmonize the desires of our party with the issues faced by our elected officials on a daily basis in the process of administering their offices. The more we all understand each other, the easier it will be to help each other form and pursue policies consistent with our principles, and to support our officials as they face the daily challenges of their offices. If the only contact we ever have is a brief handshake during the months leading to an election, we can not hope to bridge the gap. This first step is so important to the future success of our party that I will elaborate on it in another post next week, in which I will outline specific ways the HCRP should facilitate this new process of communication.

Second, the HCRP must help create a positive atmosphere in which it will be in our elected officials’ self-interest to pursue our principles in public policy. By implementing the objectives of our proposed plan (including developing a supporting message, raising our own funds to finance our own operations to help get-out-the-vote efforts, and establishing permanent relationships and party infrastructure in every community and precinct), the party will create a broader base of like-minded supporters who will want our principles reflected in public policy. In turn, the need and desire to get the votes of this broader base should create incentives for our elected officials to pursue policies this broader base will support. If we believe incentives work in other aspects of our lives, let’s create incentives for our elected officials, too.

Third, just as we believe in incentives, we Republicans also believe in the positive consequences of competition. However, we distrust competition when it comes to our primary system. It’s time to embrace competitive primaries, by keeping the HCRP scrupulously neutral. That means opening the non-financial resources of the party to any candidate who qualifies to be on the GOP primary ballot, letting the campaign process determine the winner, and then embracing the supporters of the winner and the loser(s) into the party after the primary. If we think competition is good for our economy and our schools, we should use the threat of competition to improve the quality and effectiveness of our candidates and officeholders.

Finally, we need to address the culture of our party. Since the nomination of the famous explorer, John C. Fremont, as the first Republican presidential candidate in 1856, the pool of activists who sustain the party at the grassroots, the pool of activists who fundraise for the party, and the pool of people who run for office, have been drawn from separate and distinct groups, whose members rarely interact with each other. This is as true today in Harris County as it has ever been any where else in the country.

To change this culture, we need to break-down the walls that separate these groups. First, we need to expand our pool of activists: at the precinct level, by filling the hundreds of open precinct chair positions, and separately recruiting election judges and block captains; and, at the community level, by recruiting more people to run for the hundreds of local non-partisan offices at the municipal and school board level. Second, we need to create more interaction between this expanded grassroots base, our fundraisers, and those groups who have traditionally recruited our candidates. Once we’ve established a greater level of interaction, we then need to begin recruiting more candidates for higher office from the expanded grassroots base. This change in culture is a long-term project; but, if it is ever going to happen, we need to start the process now.

So, the answer to the gap is to start now to improve communication, to create incentives to fuel self-interest, to embrace competition, and to begin to change the culture of the party. This process will not fix the gap over night, but it will begin to narrow the gap quickly. As the process unfolds, we will then see the message match the messenger.