Update: Michael Steele's One Year Job Review

Note: I posted this anonymously on The Next Right last month, but have decided to repost it in its entirety after reading this article in Politico today. Unfortunately, it's getting worse.

*Also, again, the RGA deserves credit for raising an unprecedented $13.5 million at their annual gala last night, which I was fortunate enough to attend with members of the DC College Republicans. Kudos to them-!

Originally posted 1/9/2010

What up, GOP?

I’ve never been to Grover Norquist’s Wednesday meeting. It is, for many, a mainstay of the middle of the week and, for others, a launching pad into a fruitful career in Republican politics. But, for all who know about it, there’s no question that it is regarded the de-facto braintrust of the center-right coalition that makes up the Republican Party. Thus, when I woke up Wednesday morning after Tuesday’s two-count of Democratic retirements, I couldn’t but imagine that the coffee at ATR tasted a little better than it did yesterday.

But, on a day that should be regarded as a pretty good one for Republicans, it’s very likely that this group was a little distracted by, to borrow a little from the French, our faux pas du jour—our great Chairman’s tactful use of the phrase “honest injun” in describing a platform that nobody knows about. Or, perhaps, to digress a little further, the news that, under his leadership, the money to run the races that just became within our reach just may not exist (at least not under the RNC’s control)?

This is not an ad-hominem attack on Michael Steele—God knows the left has a monopoly on those. But, at some point, shouldn’t somebody step back and objectively evaluate, today almost one year after he was elected, how he’s performed in our party’s top job? Tragically, at this important moment in the history of our party and our nation, it’s very possible that, with seemingly endless embarrassments coming out of a cash-hemorrhaging RNC, Michael Steele has become a distraction worth dumping.

Notwithstanding the “honest injun” incident, the main political stories this year involving the RNC have centered on intra-party conflict and poor decisions by Mr. Steele. Most recently, The Washington Times reported on the disturbing trend of major donors fleeing the RNC as Steele makes paid appearances and prepares for his book tour on his six figure salary. Think about this for a second—in his capacity at the RNC, which pays him to give speeches and raise money, Chairman Steele has routinely collected speaking fees to stuff his personal bank account rather than fund our candidates. In many ways, this is tantamount to the CEO of a public company charging money to speak to his shareholders. Here’s a wake-up call, Mr. Chairman--- the shareholders have noticed, and they’re no longer buying.

The RNC has started the year off in the worst financial position in over ten years. Spending record amounts to win a race in Virginia by a whopping eighteen points, we now find ourselves wondering how to fully fund this year’s races (although, to be fair, Chairman Steele isn't sure that we can win them). In the real world, a company losing its stockholders after spending wads of cash would experience declining share values. In Washington, where we all know there is no accountability, inertia dictates business as usual. Except, of course, for Trevor Francis, the former RNC communications director who was fired for failing to get Steele enough credit for said victories—sorry, Trevor.

It's hard to believe that, just one year ago, we were arguing over Chairman Steele's conservative credentials. Now, it's astonishing that we ever believed he had any credentials at all. If, in the 2008 elections, Barack Obama was the most idyllic image in his party’s history, Michael Steele may have become our party’s greatest liability. Republicans, at the very least, were relieved that, at the end of the Bush years, we would no longer have to hold our breath every time our party’s leader opened his mouth. Alas, that was life before “honest injun,” “hip-hop Republicans,” and, of course, “what up.” If we can’t trust Michael Steele to represent Republicans well, much less effectively manage our party, than why do we keep him around? I was at last year’s winter meeting, and the largest single justification for electing him was his communication ability. How do his passionate advocates of yesteryear feel today? Satisfied? I’m imagining some of you will read this, so please comment below.

Of course, there is life after the RNC. The RGA under Nick Ayers’ great management demonstrated this past November that we’re nowhere close to the depression that we felt in 2008. Donors that once donated in masse to the RNC have redirected their money to the campaign committees. And, in large part because of Democratic policies, personal fundraising by candidates is looking strong. But, is that the point? Should there be an adversarial relationship between the various parts of our larger party? Or, should they move in unison as a well-oiled machine, with a common message and a common goal? Just ask the Democrats of 2008.

Many comparisons have been made of 1994 and this upcoming cycle and—believe me—I hope to God they’re all true. But, there’s a part of me that wonders, when I think back to the spectacular year of the Republican Revolution—what would Grover’s Wednesday meeting have looked like then? Led by folks like Haley Barbour and, of course, Newt Gingrich, I want to imagine that the party of then was far more united than the party of now, if there were disagreements along the way. But, that’s not now. And, it certainly isn’t an environment that’s encouraged by Michael Steele’s leadership. So, what now, GOP? Happy New Year, it’s 2010--- What up?

Note: Michael Steele's response to recent criticism (which has surely not come just from me):""I'm looking them in the eye and say, 'I've had enough of it. If you don't want me in the job, fire me. But until then, shut up. Get with the program or get out of the way.'"

Thoughts?

How #capandtraitors have (unwittingly) made the case for Marco Rubio.

Wasting no moment after seeing the list of those eight wretched souls who betrayed us Friday on what could be the most important vote of their careers, I immediately started my search for primary challengers. Like many Republicans, I watched the vote with bated breath, wondering if Eric Cantor's whip team could deliver the final blow after John Boehner's triumphant parliamentary smackdown earlier in the day. Thus, when the final result came in, there was only one thing on my mind: vengeance.

I searched the internet until I found my prize: a self proclaimed political consultant and budding perrenial candidate in Delaware by the name of Christine O'Donnell. The uncontested Republican nominee was destroyed by Joe Biden in the 2008 race for Senate, even as Biden ran for Vice-President. However, I thought: Mike Castle, one of those wretched souls, is considering running in the upcoming special election to replace Ted Kaufman. Maybe we could support her... Maybe O'Donnell was underfunded... Maybe, with the right campaign, with the right support, she could be our weapon to give Mike Castle the electoral punishment he deserved--and show him that we hold people accountable...

The desire to find someone to run against Castle was immense. But then, reality set in: O'Donnell could never win, the GOP bench in the NE is virtually nonexistent, Beau Biden will soon return to attempt to claim his father's seat, and Mike Castle could be our only chance to stop him. This sniveling, traitorous bastard who just voted for, among other things, the largest tax in history, could be our only chance.

And, it was at that moment that my thought was completed: our only chance to defeat Cap and Trade will come in the early fall at the hands of the U.S. Senate. Post 2010, as we prepare to deal with the second half consequences of the President's term, can we afford to count on people like Mike Castle and Charlie Crist in the Senate to deliver for our principles when it really counts?

John Cornyn says that his justification for supporting Governor Crist was purely political: a crunch of name ID and popularity. Concurrently, with the notable and honorable exception of Senator Jim DeMint, the party establishment has rejected Marco Rubio as a hopeless candidate and a political liability. Through it all, our party leadership has clearly revealed itself as obsessed with the concept of electoral success and increasingly unconcerned with what this win-at-all-costs mentality means to not only our principles, but our chances of actually ever becoming a majority again.

It is clear that, should Charlie Crist be elected to the U.S. Senate, he will immediately cast himself in the mold of Mike Castle, and the Democrats will have one more ally on the other side of the aisle to betray his party's principles when they need him most. And, unless we can change, we will continue to support and (sometimes) elect candidates that will leave us at the altar. Instead of adhering to the true "big tent" values of the Republican party, we're whoring out the label of (R) to anyone who wants it, and paying big for the consequences. We've backed ourselves into a corner, and we have to find a way to get out.

What Marco Rubio represents is not just a return to conservativism, nor is it just a younger generation picking up the torch-- it's a collective realization that recruiting folks that are unwaveringly committed to a core set of values is the only way that we can both elect new Republicans and count on them once they're on the floor.

Ronald Reagan's famous 80/20 quip is a great justification for the big tent philosophy we should have as a party. Sure, many of us disagree on social issues, even a little on fiscal policy. But, as Republicans, we need to know where to draw the line, and we need to see the consequences that are playing out in front of us for failing to see where it is.

And, thus, the Republicans who voted for Friday's bill, including Rep. Castle, have shown us these consequences-- that, when you support lame candidates, you pay dearly. Who knows how Governor Crist will betray us if he's elected to the Senate-- the more important question: is there anyone who thinks he won't?

To me, one of the most depressing things about Friday's vote is that we're already locked into the consequences of this failure in Delaware in having to support Mike Castle. In 2010, I'm not stepping a foot inside the state of Delaware for any candidate. In public, I'll support Mike Castle. But, if Beau Biden wins, at least we're not fooling ourselves.

Twitter: Worst. Management. EVER

It's a tad ironic that a blog post critical (spoiler alert) of Twitter would find its origins from a tweet, but I have yet to read an article so astonishingly revealing of the lack of business acumen (or common sense) held by the founders of Twitter. In a nutshell, the geniuses behind Twitter (who seem to have the problem of repelling revenue) have abandoned the idea of advertising in favor of paid services.

With the capability to integrate ads into search, tweets, and their main interface, Twitter has an absolutely golden opportunity in their hands to turn explosive growth into explosive profit by developing (even with Google or Facebook, who both derive most of their revenue through their respective ad platforms) an ad platform, and they're throwing it away simply because, in their own words, they don't know any better.

"There are no people at Twitter who know anything about advertising or work in advertising. So we don't have anyone there to make or take those calls," said the executive, whose real name is Christopher Isaac Stone.

Maybe one of the most amateur and childish things I've ever read from a chief executive. So, what do they plan to do?

Stone said on Monday that Twitter would remain free for consumers and businesses, and that the company's main focus at the moment is developing new features for commercial users, such as "lightweight analytics" and a directory of commercial accounts that would verify that businesses on Twitter are legitimate.

Ever heard of HootSuite? Tweetburner? Any of the other thousands of Twitter tools out, for free, on the internet, that make Twitter so great? To any observer, it doesn't make sense for Twitter to branch out into paid tools simply because thousands of other people are already doing, probably better, and most of all--free, thanks to their innovative API. Anyone who thinks that Twitter can generate the amount of revenue that they need to become profitable by marketing paid services that already exist for free is terribly misguided.

Overall, I think this confirms two themes in Twitter's epic explosion over the past six months:

1. They need an Executive: While Larry Page and Sergey Brin invented the genius algorithms behind Google, Eric Schmidt made it the giant that it is today. If Twitter is going to become more than just another web service (which, I think, it has the potential to do), it needs to move beyond the startup phase and into the realm of a serious business that makes decisions on more than intangible emotions. By hiring an Executive with the experience and education necessary to make tough decisions and run an effective company, Twitter can move to the next step and start to realize the potential that it is brimming with. While creative and tech guys are the hearts and souls of their companies, businesses still need brains; if they want to be successful, Twitter needs to graduate from the minors and hire an executive.

2. Twitter's growth could be astonishingly useful: One of the first things that I thought after reading the article was that, maybe, Twitter's founder's don't understand what they hath wrought. Twitter's pure, unbridled growth over the past six months suggests that they struck a goldmine in creating a platform that is easy, fun, useful, and highly adaptable. However, by abandoning the idea of advertising, it's almost as if they don't understand where they are. In advertising, information is power, and Twitter's growth has given them more information than they could ever use. Through pulling abstract data from ongoing conversations, Twitter could create a more attractive advertising platform than even Google AdWords.

Mr. President, We Expect More From You

Crossposted at crnc.org

Abc News reports that President Obama called Tim Shriver, chairman of the Special Olympics board, last night to apologize for comparing his "notoriously bad bowling skills" to the Special Olympics. Not surprisingly, Shriver accepted the President's apology, calling it "very moving," and noted that the President will soon be entertaining Special Olympians at the White House. Standard gaffe procedure.

Time out here: did anybody actually think that the President was malicious in last night's megagaffe?? Let's take a second, regardless of your opinion on the President, and ask--could anyone actually entertain the thought that the President of the United States would intentionally demean the mentally challenged? Obviously, absolutely not.

But, that's not the point, now is it? And, once again, the media has missed what really matters.

To quote Toby Ziegler's insightful comment to Will Bailey before Bartlett's second inaugural address on The West Wing (yes, I'm a nerd, leave me alone), "The Dow plummets because of casual conversations with this man." Herein lies the point: For a number of reasons, the presidency demands discretion. This president has not provided it.

It demeans the Office to talk about how "cool" the jacket they gave him on Air Force One was, and it's beneath the Presidency to make derogatory comments about those with special needs. Although our former President was known to make an oddball comment or two, he was always compassionate, never offending such a special group of people with such a rash choice of words.

President Obama needs to learn, teleprompter excluded, that what he says matters. Regardless of apologies, post-hoc comments, or visits to the White House, the President of the United States will be on record for the remainder of history, in the White House archives and elsewhere, comparing his bowling skills to the Special Olympics (which, if it mattters, has a pretty amazing bowling program). Mr. Obama, grow up to the office that the people, however misguided, gave you.

As If They Had Never Known

America is buzzing today--coming from a thousand different angles, but I believe that today, and yesterday... and tomorrow... may signal the first pangs of buyers remorse for those who chose to elect President Obama.

Like most news, the story you get on AIGate (cute, right? came up with it myself) depends on the source. If you're listening to the Administration, Congressional Dems, or, even Congressional Republicans, the entire situation is a populist outrage-- someone's at fault, and they're going to pay. As a matter of common sense, failed corporations shouldn't be doling out bonuses, especially on the government's dime, right? Here is the situation as I see it:

1. The Democratic majority is focusing their anger at AIG, trying to figure out how they can conjure up the biggest amount of anti-corporation (read: anti-Republican) populism to aid them in their 2010 races, many of which aren't as safe as they looked four months ago.

2. Congressional Republicans see this as the first opportunity to cast the Administration and Congressional majority as sleeping on the job. In the past, they've had to contend with the shadow of President Bush, but, this time, this one is all Barry, Nancy, and Harry.

3. The Administration is caught in a state of disarray, trying to figure out what went wrong, where it went wrong, and how to fix it. The President has accepted blame for the situation trying to assert servant leadership and has, of late, adopted a Truman-esque "buck stops here" rhetorical style. In the end, though, Geithner is seeing the political fallout of what was actually a sound legal and philosophical decision to avoid canceling standing contracts by exempting them from the no-bonus rule.

There's been a ton written about this mess, so I don't want to be redundant, but I do want to comment on something very important that's been conspicuously missing throughout all of the literature up until this point: perspective.

At this point, I'm done with details and I'm not going to come to a conclusion on who is right in this (although you can guess who I'm siding with). What I will do, however, is point out that this entire scenario is merely an externality of the disastrous decisions that we, as a nation, have made to cast away capitalism and subsidize sub-standard companies on the taxpayer's dime. The term "to big to fail" has been thrown around a lot as a political standard-bearer for the concept that the market could not survive the collapse of many of these firms. I would suggest, far from being the first to suggest it, that we haven't given the market the opportunity to do its job.

Countless businesses, public and private, around the nation have failed in our time, whether being swallowed up by bigger firms, restructuring, undergoing massive downsizing, or even meeting their ultimate demise because of poor business practices, corruption, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. What makes AIG any different? Without exception, these failures drive innovation, give opportunity to those who can do better, and make our economy more competitive.

Since September, we have fallen victim as a nation to alarmist rhetoric that tells us that there is no other option than to continue to subsidize failed corporations rather than watch the market run its course, even ignoring options like Chapter 11 designed to soften the impact of failure and help companies get back on their feet by addressing the problems that got them there. Why are we surprised, then, that AIG is... paying their employees? Not to mention the fact that the Washington Post reports that the credit default swap crew is long gone, leaving people who had nothing to with the mess What did we think would happen? Like most things, it's a lot more complicated than it looks at surface level. The real lesson is that, by leaving AIG alone, we could have avoided even the pretense of wasting taxpayer money and leave them to spending shareholder money, the way that private business is supposed to work.

Don't think that this is the end. In the coming months, I predict that we will continue to see the externalities of corporate subsidization and out of control spending, and that it will turn out to be more of a pain in our President's ass than he could have ever predicted. Maybe, it will clue him in to stop the spending.

What is more likely, though, is that the American people will start to realize that they're not getting what they paid for.

The 56th Presidential Inauguration

One of the great things about going to school in Washington, DC is the easy access that we have to events of great consequence. One such event, regardless of my feelings about it, was Tuesday's inaugural ceremonies. If you check my Facebook page, you can see the pictures we took of our space in

I'll spare a play by play of the day (if you really want to, you can check out my Twitter feed at @senrabsemaj, which lasted until my hands got too cold to type), but I wanted to comment on some basic conclusions which I drew from the day:

1. There are no words to describe the transfer of power from one man to another

As someone who actively campaigned against him, the ceremony inaugurating President Obama affected me in a way I would have never imagined. When President Bush took the stage (as the disgusting and classless crowd booed him), it wasn't surprising to hear the President's Own Marine Band play Hail to the Chief. What caught me off guard, however, was how they played it after Obama took the oath. In that moment, what I had been avoiding since November became real. Barack Obama became President of the United States.

2. An interesting look into the politics of crowds

The Wall Street Journal wrote a great piece in late October about the politics surrounding the crowds at Obama's campaign rallies:

America is a different land, for me exceptional in all the ways that matter. In recent days, those vast Obama crowds, though, have recalled for me the politics of charisma that wrecked Arab and Muslim societies. A leader does not have to say much, or be much. The crowd is left to its most powerful possession -- its imagination.

From Elias Canetti again: "But the crowd, as such, disintegrates. It has a presentiment of this and fears it. . . . Only the growth of the crowd prevents those who belong to it from creeping back under their private burdens."

Reading those words last October, I had never been to an Obama rally, and had never experienced first-hand the cult of personality surrounding him. As of now, with an updated headcount of 1.8 million in attendance, I am confident in saying that I witnessed his ultimate rally, and came to similar conclusions.

A scene I won't soon forget at Sunday's concert that is helpful in defining what I witnessed on a broad scale: a woman was literally singing a hymn to Obama. Looking back, it will be the single most memorable moment of my inauguration experience. Obama is obviously and thankfully not the Messiah (in fact, I've heard more of the opposite). But, despite its incredulity, it and two million people chanting his name on the National Mall paralleled something the Journal pointed out--at a certain point in a crowd, rationality exits and is replaced by imagination.

3. Washington is damned cold in January.

JB

Karl Rove is now on Twitter

As Twitter continues to grow, please welcome the newest member of #TCOT @karlrovechannel. Twitter has started to explode in the past month, and I'm incredibly excited to see where it goes from here.

A more detailed post on Twitter and the democratization of the internet (and what that means for conservative activists) is forthcoming.

JB
@senrabsemaj