Winning Elections

How the Left has Won

The way to win elections is very simple. A candidate must locate supporters, motivate them, and mobilize them. The Left has beaten us at this very simple game, despite being woefully outnumbered in the American population and woefully deficient in the marketplace of ideas, because they’ve controlled the messaging via the media and because they’ve effectively leveraged their influence through the community organizing/agitating tactics of Saul Alinsky.

The mainstream media’s grip on controlling the propaganda may be weakening, but there is still no foolproof method for making a connection with each and every voter except by the old-fashioned, time-tested, and well-proven method of canvassing the electorate.

How did the progressives overtake the DNC? How did ACORN and affiliates orchestrate the protests in Madison, WI, and now Wall Street, manufacture faux outrage to have Hank Williams, Jr., thrown off ESPN, and lean on Bart Stupak, Ben Nelson, and Joe Lieberman to pass Obamacare? How does the Left repeatedly squeeze victories out of close elections and pull upsets in safe states? They do it through a savvy application of technology to their organizing and mobilizing. For the last ten years, the Left has been using VoteBuilder, dubbed by some as “Obama’s secret weapon.” VoteBuilder is without question the premiere election/campaign software out there, and its unique collaborative structure enables various faction groups to pool their efforts and ally themselves on the issues where their interests overlap.

How the Right has Lost

Despite being repeatedly out-maneuvered and out-flanked by the Left, we have clung for far too long to the outdated program Voter Vault 3 to manage voter data on the Republican side. Notwithstanding several upgrades, the latest iteration of Voter Vault is still outdated, inefficient, and woefully inadequate to manage a robust campaign.

Enter rVotes

In the course of my research into a superior database platform during my most recent bout of citizen activism, I stumbled across rVotes, which is without a doubt the wave of the future for successful retail politicking on the Right.

rVotes was created by the founder of VoteBuilder, Steve Adler. He has been thoroughly vetted by such reputable sources as The Voices of America, the Ohio Liberty Council, and Ron Robinson of PROCINCT, not to mention participating Republican candidates in Rhode Island, who enjoyed an unprecedented degree of success in the election of 2010 thanks to rVotes. In the course of my research, I spoke with numerous players in Arizona and Ohio, who were able to give me a good perspective on rVotes and reassure me that this was not some fly-by-night shoestring operation but was in fact the real deal.

Here is an article, replete with links, which sums up the history and background of rVotes and VoteBuilder.

The concept of what rVotes is and what it can do for the Right might seem overwhelming, but history buffs and political junkies won’t want to miss a sliver of this intrigue, nor fail to apprehend the crux of our political woes: OFA works in cooperation with the DNC and other Leftist groups to manipulate our political process, influence politicians’ votes, and throw elections. The Left does not have the advantage over us in the arena of ideas or in strength of numbers. What they do have is the determination to advance their agenda using the best tools at their disposal, and the cleverness to have spotted this dynamic ten years ago, while the GOP was still busy embracing the ineffectual corpse of Voter Vault. And the RNC/GOP seem to have made the calculated decision to hobble along, losing an unacceptable margin of elections and issues, rather than relinquish their death grip on their power structure. Many find that absolutely shameless and despicable.

A note on the beauties of free-market capitalism and caveat emptor: I did come across several other campaign software programs out there, but as I’ve discovered, ever since Adler pioneered his ground-breaking technology, there has sprung up a cottage industry of knock-offs, all decidedly inferior in functionality and effectiveness. The only place where these knock-offs seem to outshine rVotes is in their presentation, which in my opinion is an unfortunate marketing decision: gloss over an inferior product with a slick sales pitch. (A specific and detailed analysis of why rVotes outshines the competition may be found here.)

My assessment of the competition may seem glib or harsh. Unfortunately, many venture capitalists and political players have already become invested in various VoteBuilder imitations, possibly without giving due diligence to research all the options. Now, as to the question of which campaign software the Right should embrace, I'm all for competition and letting the market determine the best product. I have not sat through a test demo of each and every election program out there. However, I've gone straight to the source: rVotes is the original concept, pioneered by the inventor and creator of VoteBuilder, which is the single unified system used by the Left. Just as bank tellers don't need to handle all the varieties of counterfeit money to determine the genuine article, I think it's rather pointless to compare the strengths and weaknesses of the various election programs when there's a proven winner already established. More power to all the investors and venture capitalists who are re-inventing this wheel, but they should take care that they don't mislead about their products' capabilities or unfairly slam the competition.

In Summary

To paraphrase Thomas Paine in The American Crisis, we Hobbits do not lack force, but “a proper application of that force.” It is my firm belief that rVotes will deliver the capacity for that proper application of force we so sorely require. Please don’t take my word for this. Read through the links provided, call the people referenced, ask for a demo of the system, and come to your own conclusions.

An Open Letter to Michele Bachmann

Dear Representative Bachmann,

You first caught my attention and admiration as an outspoken critic of Obamacare. Of course, two years ago most Republicans and a few Democrats (as well as a majority of the American people) were opposed to Obamacare, so that in itself wasn’t so newsworthy. Specifically, I admired your poise and grace under the boorish attack of Arlen Specter, when you insisted that you were acting like a lady for making your point and not allowing him to interrupt you. You have been in the news many times since, and your stances seem sound. So I believed that you were a true Tea Party patriot.

However, I am dismayed at the recent turn of events, in which you hired GOP sell-out Ed Rollins to manage your campaign, refused to fire or even rebuke Mr. Rollins for his baseless and quite foolish attacks on your ally and benefactor Governor Sarah Palin, and announced your candidacy for the presidency by positioning yourself as “the” Tea Party candidate.

Because of your outspoken criticism of Obamacare and your conservative stance on social issues, you had been dismissed, criticized, derided, and attacked by both the media and by the GOP establishment as “The poor man’s Sarah Palin.”

Yet suddenly, within the space of a few short weeks, we are bombarded with article after article from mainstream journalists commenting on your seriousness, your potential electability, your rising stance in the polls. In short, the media appears to believe – or at least to want us to sincerely believe – that you are a force to be reckoned with. They want to make you a star. 

It should be obvious that we are witnessing a massive orchestration of subterfuge and misdirection intended to hand the nomination to Mitt Romney. We know the major media – 90% of whom voted for Obama last election – do not like true conservative/libertarian politicians. We know that these articles they are writing about you, pretending to take your candidacy seriously, do not demonstrate that they have suddenly decided to like you. (They pretended the same thing to Bob Dole and to John McCain, and as they did to those candidates, they will drop you once you have accomplished their ends.) These articles simply confirm that they have decided to use you.

Representative Bachmann, are you unaware that they – both the liberal media, who want the GOP nominee to fail, and the GOP establishment, who want the Tea Party to fail – are using you in this egregious fashion? Do you realize that they are deliberately stoking your ambitions, egging you on to grasp for something they have no intention of bestowing, propping you up as long as it suits their purpose and then intending to hang you out to dry?

Or have you actually cut a deal with the GOP establishment, and are you in on this one yourself? Have you been specifically recruited to whip up a bit of modest Tea Party huzzah, with an end game of handing the nomination to Romney either by diluting the Tea Party vote or by dropping out at a crucial moment, throwing your support, your momentum, and your money to Romney? Did he promise you the VP slot? Because you know he won’t give it to you. You can’t break into this GOP good ol’ boys club. You have to break it up.

I’d like to think that you are innocent of this great ploy, but that would paint you as incredibly naïve, gullible, and delusionally ambitious. You could be all that and still be a great Representative to the good people of the 6^th Congressional district of Minnesota, so I’ll leave that one up to them for the next election cycle. Perhaps you could ask your fellow public servant Governor Sarah Palin to come stump for you, help you raise money, and drag you across the finish line again as she did in 2010.

However, I do see one good way out of this for you. In fact, it’s the only way you can realistically come out of this with any kind of political future. This involves a bit of subterfuge, of slyness and cleverness on your part, and most of all, integrity and idealism. This solution proves that you can play politics and win, and gets you off the hook for being called a Judas for the rest of your life.

Suppose you know what you are doing. Suppose you know what they are doing. Suppose you know that they are trying to play you, trying to game the primaries, and play the honest Republican voters out there. Suppose you didn’t think you could call them on it, because no one would believe you when the media still painted you as a Tea Party darling (read: lunatic fringe), as recently as a few months ago. You had to gain access first. You had to pretend to be an insider so you could get inside to blow the whistle. You had to let them build up the momentum of portraying you as a serious candidate, so that when you speak out on the corruption and cronyism going on in the GOP ranks, you could be taken seriously. You’ve been carefully saving all the emails from Romney’s team, offering you the VP slot or some coveted Cabinet position; all the memos from JornoList (or is it CabaList, now?), documenting all the backroom deals being brokered; and you’re going to air it all when the time is right.

I really hope that’s your plan, Representative Bachmann. I’d like to go back to liking and mostly agreeing with you. For now, I’ll have to watch and wait.

Sincerely,

A Concerned Citizen