Making the Republican Party More Engaging
Are County and State chairmen doing all they can to drive engagement for the party?
As Republicans, we need to demand more of our Republican leaders. We can accomplish this through educating Republicans in our area. To change the Republican party - means to take ownership of it, not just getting frustrated and throwing your hands up. Don’t quit the first time you hit a roadblock. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, and try again. Have a little persistence. Certainly there are leaders that do not want the input of the public, they believe they know best, and they are driven to be tyrants to implement what they believe is the best course of action.
Leaders need to ask themselves, why aren’t Republicans more engaged now?
What do I need to do to get Republicans more engaged?
Is there an advantage to engaging more Republicans in my community?
As much as many leaders would like to think there is value in being a lean mean Republican fighting machine - the reality is the more you can augment your forces with intelligent thinking Republicans, the more successful you will be. Stupidity is the belief that there is not strength in greater numbers.
Trying to get everyone on the same page is hard to do - that is normally because the party does not engage the public near enough and cannot gain the acceptance needed to be successful. Engagment is key to a successful and thriving party.
Engagement
Let’s face it, people like government best when it can solve problems without being controversial, taking your freedoms, or taking your money.
The contest is between which party can come up with the best solutions and get them implemented.
It is easy to get people mad about government and how it is operating. It is entirely another thing to actually solve the problems facing people. Solving problems is hard and that is why politicians just love to sling mud and use their bag of dirty tricks. This means they don’t have to use their heads and everything is reduced to the lowest common denominator. - Yes we have a lot of dumb people in politics, and our smart people have to deal with them.
For example:
It is very easy to get mad at the party in charge for rasing the tax on gasoline, because it takes more of people’s hard earned money out of the economy to pay for new roads and new bridges. So when we need to have the roads and bridges fixed, and our government did not budget properly - it is a now a no-win proposition to increase gasoline taxes. So, now because of past mismanagement and people against raising taxes - the roads don’t get fixed.
Increasing the gasoline tax to fix the roads is a simple and obvious solution - but is there a better solution?
It takes little to no brain power to just raise taxes - that is not what people are looking for. People are looking for innovative solutions that reduce costs and make government more responsive, efficient, and cost effective.
This is why so many people love conservative policy making that restrains and limits government - rather than embracing government largesse and bloat. People normally gravitate towards conservative principles. The more that Republicans embrace conservative policies and become creatures of substance - the more successful they will be.
It is natural and self-evident as to why a person would want to keep the money they have earned and why government should be efficient.
A conservative answer to the problem of fixing roads might be:
The State will make an investment into “strategic infrastructure material manufacturing” that will create precast modular roadway sections and roadway pavers. This private public partnership will help to dramatically reduce the costs of roads. These precast super-slabs and paver roadway materials greatly reduce the time and complexity needed to make our roads. Materials can be poured and cured off-site under temperature controlled conditions and then hauled to the project site and quickly installed to a prepared base. This will make our roads last longer with less maintenance. Roadways can be installed in a fraction of the time using this method. The state will make this investment through a volunteer penal program for Ohio’s incarcerated. Every hour worked in this volunteer program will knock an hour off incarceration time. Additionally, the incarcerated for non-violent offenses will earn half the wage of minimum wage - which will accumulate with interest, in an account that will be paid to them upon their release. This will help those upon release find housing and transportation and help to reduce recividism. This will kill two birds with one stone as it will dramatically lower our cost of incarceration and the cost of our roads.
We have arrived at a point and time where it is no longer good enough to just “stand” or “support” things - you must have specific policy plans to get things done. This is why it is so important for the Ohio Republican Party to have a platform of specific policy planks it wants to achieve. For the most part, you can no longer have the soundbite bulletpoint that you “support re-development of our infrastructure.” You have to tell people how you are going to get things done.
Getting things Done with a Platform
If you want to be the party of getting things done, you had better come up with popular ideas and solutions on how to get things done. This necessarily means developing a platform of specific solutions. Your plan on how to get things done is your platform.
To be clear, the RNC national platform is, you guessed it, a national platform. The RNC national platorm is wholly inadequate for a State. For instance, on page eight of the platform, it speaks to the federal debt, not to state debt. A state platform plank may be elimintaing the Ohio State Income Tax, and of course you won’t find state specific policies in the national platform.
It does the ORP (Ohio Republican Party) no good to elect a supermajority to the Ohio House and to the Ohio Senate - if they all go out and do their own thing and fail to pass meaningful reforms that improve the lives of Ohioans. This can only be achieved by focusing efforts.
No war was ever won by a general that told all of their soldiers to go out and do their own thing.
The purpose of a platform is to prioritize and focus the efforts of the party and elected officials around a common set of goals. A platform calls the plays on the field and gets the entirety of the party working as a team. Pet projects become secondary to party goals.
What is more powerful?
Sixty state House Reps, each doing their own thing -or-
Sixty state House Reps, all focused on accomplishing the same 10 things
The RNC national platform has a few specific policy goals entangled with what the party stands for. The document is 54 pages of mostly values and principles with a few specific policy objectives. National platforms tend to do this because every state and every delegate has their idea of what needs to be in the document. Rather than consider this an actual platform - it normally is considered the vision and mission for the party.
Fifty-four pages is just way too long for it to be a useful platform. Even Jared Kushner thought so - as he and the Trump team tried to ply the traditional 50-100 page document down to 1-3 pages.
A platform is normally composed of 5-20 solutions to problems that people are most passionate about. The platform helps the party to raise money - the party makes their money by promising to support candidates that will implement their platform. A Federal platform addreses federal issues, a State platform addresses State issues, and a County platform addresses all the governments within the County.
How the Platform relates to Engagement
A State and County Central Committee are supposed to identify the biggest problems facing their respective areas. They should then form a committee for each of these problems that is committed to their resolution. These are called platform advisory committees. These committees expand the Central Committee to engage the public and experts to analyse and produce policy that will best solve the problem. These policies are either submitted at a State or County convention for approval or are approved by a majority vote of the State or County Central Committee. These advisory committees are normally large in number. The Chairman of the party normally, appoints a chairman to each committee and that chairman is in charge of recruiting experts in the community to develop policy to recommend to the Central Committee. While a county Central Committee may only have 60 members in total there can be many more times that number participating in platform development.
Fundraising
In the end - people are not really passionate about the party or politicians. People tend to be passionate about policy solutions to their problems. Platform advisory committees have the potential to raise a lot of money and use that money to only support candidates that pledge to implement those policies.
Issues based fundraising and cafeteria style giving to candidates is extremely popular with the people.
Rather than being a passive manager of the party without a platform - proactively managing the party and defining what it stands for allow the party to build more passion. This way you don’t allow the mainstreat media define who you are. You define yourself proactively. It’s people coming together, to not live by a chance that something might happen to make their lives better but, by proactively taking the responsibility to manage their own destiny and realize a better tomorrow.
A Republican party that might only have one major event a year (like a Lincoln day dinner) may have several major events in a year for platform advisory committees such as:
The Ohio Republican Party Right-to-Life Committee Dinner Gala
The Ohio Republican Party Gun Owners Committee Soiree
The Ohio Republican Party Tax Elimination Committee Workshop
The Ohio Republican Party Foreign Trade Committee Breakfast
The Ohio Republican Party Economic Development Committee luncheon.
The Ohio Republican Party Committee on Crime townhall meeting.
It is about time that Ohio Republicans that are conservative start to demand more and want to be engaged rather than sit at home and mope about being disenfranchised!
When they say it can’t be done
It is heard everyday that - “It can’t be done” coming from the mouths of County and State Central Committee members and leaders. They say that they cannot get enough people to participate. Yet, these same people are very narrowly focused - so much so thatthey cannot grasp how important more participation is.
Yes, it can be very challenging to get people to participate - especially if they have no voice and you want them to do all the work and get none of the credit. If you want people to participate - they have to see that they can actually make decisions that does not get over-ruled. As a chairman - you have to accept your role as a traffic cop. You are not there to make all the decisions. You are there to help keep everyone in their lane and help others operate professionally and make good decisions. Your leadership and mentorship will help the party thrive - but you cannot be a dictator.
You need to be fair and impartial - even when everyone is asking you to not be fair and impartial. A chairman is a cheerleader and a mentor. Not the person that does all of the strategy and conceptual work. A chairman’s job is to explain to committee members what their roles and responsibilites are and what his/her responsibilities are.
You can’t be disgusted with Central Committee members, if you didn’t take the time to put them on the path of being productive and engaging. If you are not having contests between committee members to register Republicans on a monthly basis - you are not doing the very basics. If you are not giving them a National Change Of Address list from the USPS for their precinct - you are not giving them the tools to be successful.
A chairman doesn’t know everything. They surround themselves with people smarter than themselves and then trust them to make good decisions - that is part of being on a team. You’ve got to delegate some responsibility to get participation. So many party chairs have a distorted view of their job.
Executive committees, you are doing it wrong if you are doing all the work of the party. The Central Committee should be meeting as many times as the Executive Committee during the year, if not more.
Are you advertising the County or the State Committee - are names, email addresses and phone numbers available to the public?
If you are not seeing the participation you expect then - you need to change your tactics and strategy. Don’t think for a moment that just because you tried 1-3 ways to get your community or state involved and failed that there are no other ways to increase engagement. Don’t rest on your laurels if you are successful. Set a goal to be even more successful. You have to bring some excitement to the party to get people interested.
Good luck!
This sounds like a great idea. Who is making this preformed roadway? I think I might know who it is.