Everyone in the grassroots GOP is focused on our deficiencies in utilizing technology when compared to Obama and the Democrat Party. It is not the technology, but the vision upon which the “technology” is built and applied where we have fallen down.  We have tools, we have great “technology“.  What we lack is any clear vision of what the technology was supposed to do, what end result it was supposed to achieve.  That is why this not a debate on “technology“. Instead, we need to broaden the debate to “New Media” and its place in successful campaigns.

Too much of the technology development of the GOP was done in the atmosphere of “keep up”.  No visionaries existed within the leadership to anticipate the power and relevance of New Media in the successful prosecution of political campaigns.  Accordingly, we fell seriously behind in our ability to compete on this particular battlefield, which is where 18-29 year olds were watching the battle to decide on a course of action, thus our butt whooping.  Democrats latched onto New Media as a tool even though it could have brought disruptive change to the Party, what else could they do?    Things could not get much worse for them post 2000.  In the end the gamble paid off for them.

That is the critical element for us in “fixing this”.  We need to return the party to a true “grassroots” party so that these jewels of insight and knowledge do not get filtered out as they pass up the chain to the leadership.

That is why I support Saul Anuzis for Chair of the RNC.  He understands New Media better than any other candidate and he represents the best chance for us to bring the disruptive change we need in the GOP to move us towards understanding the weaknesses in our tactics and strategy.  Our core principles are not the issue, our execution and abdication of responsibility at the grassroots level are.  The grassroots walked away from our responsibility to drive and monitor the agenda and execution of the plan for victory.  We left this responsibility in the hands of a few people who lacked the vision and did not have adequate feedback loops.

I, for one, resolve not to let this happen again.  That is why I am trying to make my impact relevant.  I will no longer sit by and scream at my TV. I will be involved, either as part of a reinvigorated grassroots who understands, or as a thorn, poking my leadership from the local level on up on what we need to do and what we are doing wrong so they do not fall into the trap of believing their own “press”.

If you have tried to gain access to MY GOP you will find that it requires them to approve you.  In three attempts since January to gain an account there, no one has responded to me.  Elvis has left the GOP building and gone over the be the admin for MY GOP, it is the new dead zone.  Nothing is happening there at present, nothing.  The heavy barrier to participation, will prevent the site from ever serving any purpose.

The situation as far as local GOP partys understanding of new media is highly varied.  In my county the website is equally a dead zone,  at my State level (Florida) it is somewhat improved but you will find no ability to communicate with our leadership (except Sharon Day) as their understanding of Web 2.0 has some tie to spiders.  Across the states you need to look at your local party’s application of empowering technologies to see if they even have a grasp of what that means.

If you want to fix it, get involved at the local level.  If you have an understanding of the potential embodied in Social Media such as Twitter, Facebook, Ning and all the others, put it forward in your local party, push (or pull) them along to understand that these are not options for us, they are imperatives.