Part 1 on the clamor to raise taxes or “the kids will go unschooled” in Northern Virginia is here.

The following from the New York Times is about as concise as it gets on why it is so hard to combat spending:

But selling spending reductions may not be as easy as selling tax cuts, which first ignited the conservative grass roots. “It is the problem of concentrated benefits and diffused costs,” Mr. [Morton] Blackwell said. “For the people who want a spending program, it is the most important thing in their lives. They want and need that spending. They will work day and night to get that spending. But the cost is so diffuse it is hard to find people who have similar opposition to it.”

I blogged about Ken Mehlman’s comment in Part 1 about the GOP neglecting the candidates and the issues (people and ideas) and concentrating on technology (hardware).

He is not the only one. Rod Martin writes:

For most of my life, a small minority of us Republicans (notably Newt Gingrich and Morton Blackwell, plus acolytes such as me) agitated, cajoled and worked for the day when our party would take seriously the “ground war”…

We argued this point year after year, to no avail, until the closeness of the 2000 election and the rise of Karl Rove forced the issue. And having then won our debate, our party won too: an historic mid-term in 2002 and a seemingly impossible sweep in 2004.

Which is where it all went awry.

Like kids with a new toy, our Republican leadership became mesmerized with their turnout program. It wasn’t just a playhouse: it could be a fort, it could be a spaceship, it could be a secret hideout for the cowboys fighting their toy Indians.

It could, in fact, be absolutely anything.

Anything except a message.

And that’s how the majority was lost.

In other words, having ignored the necessity of hardware previously, the GOP went nuts in the other direction and thought hardware (or technology) could solve it all. But relying on technology while pushing power-hungry, unattractive candidates and no message but “we’re less evil” has been demonstrated to be a losing recipe. More from Martin:

A turnout effort cannot be better than the message motivating the turnout. This is Rule Number One.

For most of two years — and on certain things longer than that — Republican Congressional leaders settled for a message of “those Democrats are worse than we are” and “look at our new toy.” They pointed out that Democrats had no ideas and that you can’t beat something with nothing. It never occurred to them that Democrats might beat nothing with nothing.

Superior turnout machine (or hardware, technology or whatever one cares to call it) is still vital, but the sine qua non are good candidates and sound issues (people and ideas). The next challenge I see for people involved in hardware/technology/machine is this: how do they design and implement a political mobilization system that will encourage and recruit upstanding, moral and philosophically-principled candidates who will not be corrupted by power? And how will they fashion a system that will feed a continual renewal of such people into the system rather than relying on incumbency, which inevitably erodes principles?

When the GOP figures that one out, and only then, will it be able to forge that fabled permanent conservative governing majority.

From MSNBC-Newsweek:

The numbers looked a lot less rosy to the other architect of the campaign—RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman. It was Mehlman who built the much-vaunted turnout machine. But he feared that many inside the party were relying too much on technology, like voter databases, and had lost sight of the bigger picture: that voters were turning against them. “We’ve built a great new car, but the gasoline for the car isn’t us; it’s the candidates and the issues,” Mehlman told NEWSWEEK. There was no bigger issue than the war, which Rove had pushed as a winning theme for the GOP. As he flew back to D.C. on a private jet two days before the elections, Mehlman scribbled his predictions on a card—not to be revealed until after the elections. His numbers were much closer than Rove’s: the GOP would lose 23 in the House (5 short of the final tally), 5 in the Senate (1 shy) and 6 governors (spot on). Last week Mehlman announced he would step down and pursue opportunities in the private sector. [Boldfaces mine.]

The late John Boyd, an Air Force pilot, the leader of the Pentagon “reformers,” and perhaps the greatest American military theorist, said, “People first, ideas second, hardware third.” He also criticized the Pentagon for having its priorities reversed (“hardware first, ideas second, people last”). That’s what came to my mind when I read this passage.

BTW, my prediction was 20-25 House seats lost, 4-5 Senate seats lost. Looks like mine wasn’t too far away from Mehlman’s. And I am not nearly as expensive as Mr. Mehlman!

More on “People First, Ideas Second, Hardware Third” applied to politics in Part 2.

There is an excellent article today in The Christian Science Monitor about the differences between the Democrats and Republicans at the grassroots level (h/t RealClearPolitics):

The Democratic and Republican parties cultivate the grass roots quite differently. The GOP promotes its causes through naturally occurring community groups of like-minded people, such as conservative churches and pro-business associations. Democrats, however, often outsource their politics, relying on artificial, virtual networks and professional canvassers to evangelize their message and build their party.

That’s particularly ironic, because many Democrats oppose corporate outsourcing. There is nothing inherently wrong with their strategy; it is a successful method of contacting voters and bringing in money. But the repeated experience of painful losses on Election Day suggests it’s a flawed approach that’s hurting Democrats over the long term.

The Democratic Party and left-leaning political groups rely on outside organizations to hire young people who recruit members, collect funds, and contact constituents through quota-based pay systems. Since many hires don’t have strong ties to the places where they work, this approach to gaining support and getting out the vote fails to capitalize on existing personal bonds among like-minded Democrats.

These observations are right on the mark — as of today. In the past, the left, particularly communist and socialist groups, excelled at what is today called grassroots organization. Despite their flawed, and later clearly disproven, ideology, they continued to attract passionate members. Indeed, the very term “communist cell” evokes the organic, grassroots nature of their organizations (everyone involved in politics should read, for example, Mao Zedong’s “On Guerilla Warfare,” masterfully translated by Samuel Griffith; unlike poseurs like Che Guevara, Mao actually led a peasant communist organization to total victory in a long, difficult war and won power).

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In the public debate, you are either a winner or a loser. That part, everyone knows. How to get there though is a different story. Across all levels of politics, from the local school board up to the board of supervisors and state houses on to Congress and the White House, people spend an inordinate amount of time trying to influence and manipulate policy so that it meets their ends.

Some are successful and some are not and often times the ones who aren’t end up being victimized by the one’s who are.

I saw a presentation here in DC recently that really laid out the process of transferring power between constituents and elected official in a very clear manner. How this process works is often a mystery to the average person, who is convinced that politics is a game of insiders conducted in smoky backrooms that they will never have access to. It need not be, because of one simple truth . . . which is true across the political spectrum: If you don’t get elected, you haven’t been elected.

What this means is that the first and only priority of any politician, be they George Bush, George Allen, Tim Kaine, or Gerry Connolly, is to get elected. As a result, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see which side they are going to come down on more times than not.

In fact, you can pretty much sum up the tiers of political influence as follows (this is based upon the average 646,952 person congressional district but it operates the same across all levels):

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I’m going to make an assumption here, and it is that over the course of this blog’s life that there will likely be a fair share of criticism directed at members of both the executive and the legislative branches of the federal government. However, while we can criticize these members, and their staff, for foolish political decisions, I would propose that we also keep in mind the sacrifice their staffers make to work in Washington, D.C. - one of the most expensive cities in America - for what amounts to largely a paupers wage.

A new web page, Legistorm, by placing salary information online makes plain for all to see, the extent of this sacrifice.

Who is employed by Congress, and how much they are paid, is often a source of fascination for the politically aware. Prior to this site’s creation, members of the public needed to visit the document rooms of the House and the Senate in Washington, DC to discover who was being paid what. Now, all this information is available on the web - for residents of Alaska or Zanzibar - at the click of a mouse.

So, while I urge you to criticize the decision, I think any criticism must also be tempered by a respect to the extent most congressional staffers have forgone higher salaries in order to serve the common good.

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“Women can’t fight” vs. “Macaca,” courtesy of RCP Blog.

Or is it cowboy boots vs. combat boots? This much the NY Times is right about:

Some Republicans worry that the growth of Northern Virginia, with its increasingly urban voters and what some pollsters say is discontent with the status quo in Washington, poses a real challenge to their party. Mr. Webb’s allies, for their part, worry he will not have enough money to hold his own against Mr. Allen on television. 

 

The anxieties on both sides point to a central truth: Virginia, at the moment, is a very competitive race.

From Leesburg Today:

Loudoun County lost its only seat on the Commonwealth Transportation Board after Gov. Timothy Kaine (D) replaced Leesburg attorney Robert Sevila with E. Dana Dickens III, of Suffolk, as one of two at-large urban representatives on the board.

 

In addition, Kaine appointed Fauquier resident Peter B. Schwartz, who is a member of the Piedmont Environmental Council’s board of directors, as the at-large rural representative to the CTB, replacing Hunter R. Watson, of Farmville.

 

Schwartz represents the second appointment by Kaine of PEC-affiliated campaign contributors to state-level positions. [Snip]

 

Schwartz, who ran unsuccessfully to unseat Del. Clifford “Clay” Athey Jr. (R-18) in 2001, contributed nearly $50,000 to Kaine’s lieutenant governor and gubernatorial campaigns and inaugurations from 2001 to 2006.

Call it a convergence of political cronyism and anti-growth ideology. I guess the idea is to preserve Western Loudoun county as an artificial “nature preserve” for the super affluent at taxpayers’ expense.

In the mean time, the growing middle class exurbs in Eastern Loudoun will subsidize the rest of the state while the county’s own ballooning transportation needs go unmet by Richmond.