A couple of days ago, I posted on the state of the GOP. Yesterday, Shaun Kenney did a much more masterful job on the subject than I.
Nonetheless, in an effort to complete my thoughts, I shall continue:
So what IS the problem?
Business leaders have figured out a few of the key things that destroy organizations. It’s all very predictable, apparently.
Internal Issues
• Focusing on the past, not the future
• Focusing on activities that do not leverage core competencies and / or losing sight of primary objectives
• Promotion based on personal relationship or seniority alone – without regard to merit
External Issue
• Compromise or dilution of brand / product identity
What do you think? Do Republicans struggle with any of these issues?
Focusing on the past?
While memories of past successes are inspirational, an obsession with the past may serve as a barrier to future success. This is particularly instructive for the temperamentally conservative among us, who may enjoy reminiscing about the glory days more than investing in immediate victory. The key is to implement the lessons of the past while continually improving and adapting our methods to current conditions.
Failure to leverage core competencies / losing sight of primary objectives?
What is our primary objective as Republicans? To promote a certain set of “Republican” principles or to elect “Republican” candidates? YES! For too long, Republican leaders have taken one side or the other in a ridiculous debate between our primary objectives. You can’t promote party principles without strong candidates and if your candidates cease to represent the principles of the party, they will lose grassroots support and seriously damage the GOP’s long term electoral prospects. While meeting these goals will look slightly different across the diverse landscape of the commonwealth, neither can be successfully compromised. Moderates and conservatives must realize that both commitment to principle and nomination of viable candidates are necessary for the health of the GOP. The people who object to being called “RINOs” should stop throwing labels like “puritan” at conservative Republicans – and visa versa. While there may be a few instances where both labels could apply to some people, surely we can agree that the hard feelings they engender are unhealthy for the GOP – and inaccurate in most cases.
Our parties’ internal discussion must include identifying and leveraging our core competencies. Core competencies are those things which we, as an organization, ARE ALREADY good at or are perceived as being good at by the general electorate. Then, we must make those strengths work for us without being overly distracted by peripheral issues.
Finally, we must employ our core competencies to accomplish both our primary objectives.
Good Ole’ Boy Behaviors?
The Grand Old Party has solidified its identity (in far too many minds) as a Good Old Boy network. In some units it is very difficult to join the GOP. Many units don’t have a website or a simple way to contact the local party about membership or volunteering. Unless you “know the right people” you can’t even get involved in these committees.
Unfortunately, this sort of ingrown behavior doesn’t stop at the local level. The good old boy network is made up of some really great people – good Republicans who do the right thing most of the time. But the institutional norm for the good old boy network is self-protection. They tend to manipulate the rules of party nomination processes to suit their own ends – and sometimes to avoid the will of Republican voters. They avoid accountability and squash anything new or different. They try to stop intra-party competition and in so doing, they put the brakes on the growth of the party.
In the good old boy network (which certainly includes women), the people in power endorse each other in order to foreclose meaningful challenges. It’s a mutual protection society that often places personal relationships and electoral / career prospects over the good of the Republican Party or even the will of its volunteers and voters.
While we have seen plenty of good old boy behavior in the past year, perhaps the clearest recent example is from 2006. You might recall Sen. Cuccinelli telling this story in the Compass. After far left wing GOP Senator Russ Potts left the party to run against its nominee, Jerry Kilgore, for Governor, his Republican colleagues couldn’t summon the courage to officially kick him out of their caucus. Russ Potts had a habit of not voting with the GOP on anything important and now he’d done his bit to make sure we lost the Governorship. As a “thank you very much” the good old boy club (including newly elected Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling) let him keep the chairmanship of the powerful Education and Health Committee through. Mind you, the Republicans were in the majority then and they devised this scenario to protect Potts chairmanship from a challenge by Sen. Cuccinelli. They didn’t need his vote and he rarely gave it to them anyway – so this isn’t exactly analogous to what the Democrats just did in delivering a slap on the wrist to Joe Lieberman (at least Lieberman’s party gave him a token punishment). From Bacon’s Rebellion, here’s what happened:
Sen. Tom Norment, R-Williamsburg, introduced an amendment to the Senate’s operating resolution, requiring a two-thirds majority of the 40 senators to strip a senator of his party affiliation and the appointments and privileges it affords, such as committee chairmanships. The vote on this resolution was 35-4—proving once again that there are only four true Republicans in the state Senate.
It is only natural that incumbents work for their own protection. Challengers, if they perceive a vulnerability in the incumbent, work to defeat them. In a healthy party, the party works as a fair and neutral arbiter of process through which the people of the party express how they wish to be represented. In an ingrown party, process becomes the means through which those currently in power and their favored representatives arrange a system to work their own will. Such a process inevitably breeds resentments and stymies the growth of the party.
Whether it means opening up our party to more people – voters, activists and candidates who generally share our principles but haven’t “come up through the ranks” or “waited their turn” to run for office, or making sure we are accessible to potential volunteers, or running party nomination processes that are fair beyond suspicion, the GOP must stop being a club for the initiated if we are going to win elections.
Brand Identity
In business, a brand is diluted when it is so frequently or effectively mimicked that consumers lose the ability to differentiate between your product and the competition. So sad, won’t you pass the Kleenex?
Similarly, a brand can be compromised when the company makes changes – usually to the quality of the product – that lead to the loss of standing in the marketplace. Starbucked, anyone?
I won’t overdiscuss the GOPs brand identity issues here. Countless drops of virtual (and real) ink have been spilled on the subject already.
What we all know is that Mark Warner won the Governorship by sounding like a Republican (on fiscal issues, gun rights & more). He won the Senate by running on his record of accomplishment as Governor — made possible by pro-tax Republicans.
Our “brand identity” as the less government people has been effectively mimicked by Democrat candidates at their leisure. They can get away with it because the quality of our own product — faithfulness to the principles that built the brand — has been compromised from within. After all, if you want a Democrat anyway, why vote for a Republican? And, if you want limited government and conservative social policy and economic freedom, why vote for a Republican party that is utterly ineffective at reducing the growth of Government, protecting the free market and enacting family-friendly social policies – even when it is in the majority?
Losing Republican principles – the heart of the Republican brand – ultimately leads to losing rather than gaining market share (votes).
If we don’t clean up the business model, we won’t start winning again.
