In a piece I wrote in June 2016 titled,
The GOP's Strategy for Winning Hearts and Minds, and the 2016 Election, I wrote that Republicans worked at winning the 2016 Presidential Election from the day Barack Obama won the 2008 election. That was accurate. Republicans turned 'loyal opposition' into outright obstructionism. Their thinking was that if nothing worked, if
policies weren't promulgated, if laws weren't passed, if vacancies weren't
filled, it would thwart Obama's "liberal agenda," and as a bonus, make Americans
become disillusioned with government. When that happened, voters would be
less likely to turn out for elections. That would favor Republicans, as
it has historically, and as it did, ultimately putting the "Grand Old
Party" back in control of both the House and the Senate.
But they needed to do more to win the Presidency
The RNC made it their mission to reach out to "low information, low propensity" registered
Republicans, who made up some 35% of the Republican base and generally didn't vote. They made a concerted, heavily-funded
get out the vote (GOTV) effort through direct,
personal contact -- these folks didn't do social media. In my 2016 post I identified some of the
organizations they reached out to on this. Click on these hyperlinks and be amazed.
UNIFIED PATRIOTS
REDSTATE
THE PRECINCTS PROJECT
US PRECINCT PROJECT
Uniting the Right Wing Base
The Republican strategy also involved uniting the right-wing base, which consisted of a plethora of single-issue factions (like the Democrats, actually), including:
National Rifle Association (NRA),
Gun Owners of America (GOA), other gun groups, and
militia organizations.
The
Tea Party, which had split into the
Tea Party Patriots,
Tea Party Nation,
Tea Party Express,
and unaffiliated voters who call themselves Tea Partiers.
The 9-12 Project (an Ayn
Rand sort of group with god thrown in for good measure). Their
principles included, "Government cannot force me to be charitable."
Smart Girl Politics Action (SGPA) This organization
began with the mission to "engage, educate, and empower conservative
women to get involved in the political process." The RNC didn't think they'd have to do much
to entice them into the fold, but they began to worry when Trump became the nominee. They needn't have worried. Trump won 53% of the vote of white women -- not Republican white women -- all white women voters. Digest that.
SarahPAC.com
was Sarah Palin's personal money making
venture designed to capitalize on what she termed "her historic
endorsement of Donald Trump." Palin's fund-raising message to
prospective donors was that she supported "anti-establishment"
candidates, but the RNC wasn't particular. If they could latch on to Sarah's
"momma grizzlies," they'd use their money and voter network and nominate who they damn well felt like nominating. Of course things didn't quite turn out the way they hoped.
Grassfire a very
social media centric group, which the RNC used it to network with the
organizations outlined above.
Evangelical Christians.
In the 2014 midterm elections, white evangelicals or born-again
Christians made up 26 percent of the electorate and 78% of them voted for Republican
candidates. During the primaries, a plurality of
self-identified white evangelicals voted for Trump (40%), while the
majority split their votes between Ted Cruz (34%), Marco Rubio (11%),
and John Kasich (10%). The RNC's challenge was to unify that voting block
behind their presumptive nominee. It wasn't a problem once Trump promised to rollback the last half century of progress made on women's reproductive rights ("Two Corinthians"
notwithstanding). Evangelicals continue to stand firmly with Trump,
as I write about here.
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| The laying on of hands |
AsaMom mission was, "to empower Moms
and Moms at Heart in preserving our Constitution, country and children’s
future." The RNC had to convince this voting block that Donald Trump was only kidding when he said it doesn't matter what the media said, "as
long as you have a beautiful piece of ass with you." The Access Hollywood video surfaced later and the RNC thought, "Oh, shit," but once Trump explained that it was "only locker room talk" everything was okay.
Why the RNC got Donald Trump instead of JEB!
The problem the RNC had in leading up to the Republican 2016 Primaries and in then trying to unify the above groups, whose
commonality was primarily angry disaffection, was that the RNC was the 'establishment' and it was peddling the same, tired establishment
bullshit. In other words, they
totally misjudged the give-a-shit basis for their audience's mood, which was poor-paying jobs, no jobs, shitty jobs, and
Mexicans taking all the shitty jobs that they didn't want, but were
unhappy to see said Mexicans making money at. But the elephant in the room was named 'Xenophobia' -- a fear that the white person's place atop the slag heap was in danger of toppling. So yeah, "Fuck you, RNC,
we'll vote for an asshole, that'll teach you!"
And voilà -- Donald Trump.
And then came Russia barreling down the Fulda Gap
Now this rather too-long piece is about my 2016 assessment of the Republican strategy for wining the election, not why Hillary Clinton lost -- there have been
plenty of hand-wringing analyses of that. What I want to express is how embarrassed I am for missing what turned out to be a key ingredient in the Republican strategy, viz, Russia. I didn't see Russia coming. Did you?
Ultimately, our Intelligence agencies ferreted it out and not long after Trump's inauguration,
their findings led to the Mueller investigation looking into whether the Trump Campaign and Trump himself had been colluding with Russia (remember, “
Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing"?).
Is it too far fetched to think that the RNC itself was colluding with Russia. After all, the
RNC watered down language in the Republican Platform
supporting U.S. assistance to the Ukraine in its efforts to resist
Russian interference in their internal affairs. And according to reports, the
RNC was also penetrated by Russian hackers, but their data were not released. More recently, Republican lawmakers faced scorn when they decided to celebrate July 4th in Moscow. Did they have favors to return?
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| Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) led the eight-member Republican delegation on a
multi-day tour of Russia. |
Donald Trump claims the Russia investigation is a "witch hunt."
Well, a lot of witches have been rounded up. It will be interesting to see what the latest witch,
Maria Butina, revealed about her contacts with the RNC and with her handler,
Alexander Torshin when questioned by the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and by Robert Mueller.
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| Scott Walker between Walker stood between Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin | h |
We now know that Russia deployed active measures to influence the 2016 Election, and they did so to aid Donald Trump. There is growing evidence that members of the Trump Campaign colluded with Russia, with the latest revelation being that
Paul Manafort shared campaign polling data with the Russians before the 2016 Election. Certainly this aided the Russians social media blitz. What we don't know for sure, and may never know, is how much Russia's interference impacted election results. Opinions?
The Mueller Report was released to the public on April 18, 2019. Despite the Attorney General, William Barr, covering for the President in the form of a misleading 4-page summary of the 448-page report, followed by an equally misleading press conference the day the report was released, an actual reading of the report presents a damning picture of the President and his campaign.
