In the wake of last week's Presidential Election, many articles have come forward anticipating the wagging fingers and accusations.
But nothing like the one below by Zeke Miller of BuzzFeed Politics. His piece is outstanding. He makes the case that the "oldsters" of the GOP need to move over.
I believe Miller is accurate.
And my perspective may have some street cred to it. I am 56 years old and I have been in politics in two states (CA and ID) for 36 years. Allow me to put that time in pserspective.
In California, I entered politics when Stu Rothenberg was starting, when Ed Rollins began working with Lynn Nofziger and Citizens for the Republic and when David Dreier was first elected to Congress. I was in politics when Reagan lost the GOP nomination for President. I helped Proposition 13 before it had a number. The Jarvis-Gann Initiative changed property tax policies across America. I worked with Pat Nolan and The Cavemen in California's Assembly. And worst of all, I was Doris Allen's Chief of Staff when she was first elected.
In Idaho, I spent years as the pro-family leader of conservative politics, working nationally with Bill and Mary Cunningham Agee, James Dobson and Gary Bauer. In Idaho, I was on the GOP Primary kitchen cabinets/or consulting staffs for US Congressmen Helen Chenoweth-Hage, Bill Sali and Raul Labrador. In 2000 I ran for the GOP Nomination for US Congress as one of the first candidates endorsed by the Club for Growth.
And I encourage new young guns to come forward!
We need them.
Why? Well, in one sense the internecine actions within the Karl-Rove-Class of GOP consultants is simply not working. Their work of 2000 & 2004 is now ancient history. 2012 will go down in history as the election when social media and micro-campaigning awarded the keys to the White House to the victor.
According to Zeke Miller of BuzzFeed's post, that particular class of political "oldsters" may well have seen their day - especially given the absolute need for the use of social media.
As an aside, I used my then-18 year old son, Colin Mansfield, to head up the entire social media campaign for Raul Labrador's 2010 come-from-behind win against the Washington DC insiders. Both the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal picked up on his success and his age. This past week, he just led a collegiate conference (SCUSA) at the US Military Academy on social media and politics. He is a Junior at West Point.
Read this from Zeke Miller:
“Campaigns are a young person’s business now more than ever, in part because of the way people receive information and communicate has changed so much in just the last decade,” said a senior Republican staffer who came of political age in the late Bush years. “For example, Facebook and Twitter were not factors in the last campaign, and they arguably were the biggest factor in this one.
“I don’t know how you can run a modern campaign if you haven’t embraced information and social technology in your own life,” he said. “I don’t know anybody that uses landlines and the post office except Republican campaigns.”
And,
"In the hours after Barack Obama’s electoral rout of Mitt Romney, young Republican operatives in Washington, Boston, and around the country felt the same letdown as their bosses — the older crop who ran the losing campaigns of 2012.But some of the younger generation — people in their twenties and thirties, digital natives, committed conservatives — reported another feeling: relief. The time had finally come to push aside the television-centric operatives who have run Republican campaigns for a generation, to reset the party’s values around race and sex, and to adapt its tactics to the era of Twitter. Politics has always been ruthlessly competitive, with one cycle’s guru the next cycle’s washed-up cable news commentator. Mentors have always had to keep an eye out for protégés wielding daggers. And now the daggers are out."
More here.
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