Virtual Vs Real World

Doing vs. letting others


What we Conservative/Republicans should learn from this election is simple.

We definitely need to get out of our comfort zone.

By that I mean we need to stop continually surrounding ourselves with those who think like we think. I’m an alcoholic and that is exactly what I would do when I was drinking. I would sit in a bar with other drunks and we’d talk of how great things were. Things got worse.

Ask any football coach; sure we need the occasional rah-rah speech and pats on the back but if we really want to win we have to face up to the reality of what is. What went wrong and our part in it. We have to accept that we missed that tackle or dropped that pass, only after that can we see how to get better.  In other words it involves alot of work along with the right attitude.
We have to admit our part in it. More precisely, that what we worked at so hard didn’t work.

I’ve already heard too many people tell me that they did all they could do.

I’ve told myself that. It’s a way to shift the blame, blunt the harshness of the reality that was this election, to make myself feel better. We did work hard, and to some extent our efforts were rewarded. Examples abound but look at this one. President Obama and Andrew Jackson were the only two Presidents in history that won re-election with fewer votes than they received their first time. But Obama was still elected regardless of our efforts.

Maybe it was not that we didn’t spend enough time doing things but that we should have been doing different things, smarter things in different ways.

Our first job is to admit that all the efforts we made didn’t do the trick. This admission opens the door to the possibility that there may be other ways to change things. It then becomes our job to find those better ways.

We need to look at the basics of what we do to try to win elections. As an example that most of us can sympathize with; do we need to make even more robo phone calls or should we look at whether robo calls give us the “bang for the buck” we need and for that matter whether we should be after the bang or the buck?

The title of my blog is Bottom Up Politics and so I turn to what I/we can start to do to immediately change from the bottom rungs of our Party. This is where we have to think out of our comfort zone.

I just today got a call from a lady in another county who was pretty upset with the election both nationally and in her own county. We decided we needed to sit down and brain storm some out of the box ideas on how to change things. That can be a start in our little neck of the woods if we keep to the task at hand and not call up a political analyst to tell us what to do. LOL.

First as with most things, getting back to basics seems, well basic. It is time for us to clear the brain and start putting in new information from the real world. I need to not listen to Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity every day then sit down in the evening to watch Fox. That is a “virtual” reality, I need to get into the real world more. As a Precinct Delegate I need to be getting into my neighborhood more and find out what makes it tick. That is my elected position after all. Simply listening to people is the greatest tool we have. It is a simple way of doing a good thing for others. I am always amazed what valuable information I learn by simply doing that – especially listening to people as people and not just to those who are in my “Political” comfort zone. Doing that has its own rewards, one of which is I start to learn some new facts from which I can create new “out of the box” solutions.

Above all I must realize that I need to keep an open mind and try to base my actions more on the real world than the virtual world.

George Will in the linked article below touched upon this when he talked about the Hispanic vote and the role it played in the last election. Mr. Will also brought up the idea that “Immigration reform” will be the reef President Obama will build which we can wreck our ship upon if we let it.

-----Quote from Will’s Article-----
"Republicans can take some solace from the popular vote. But unless they respond to accelerating demographic changes — and Obama, by pressing immigration reform, can give Republicans a reef on which they can wreck themselves — the 58th presidential election may be like the 57th, only more so."
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-----link to Mr. Will’s article-----
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will110812.php3
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How do we do this other than target more robo calls in Spanish to the appropriate addresses?

We simply put our beliefs into action. We don’t talk about how some of our friends are Hispanic or African American. We talk about our beliefs in the strength of the individual. We talk about the greatness of America where anybody can get ahead and how that is slipping away through over regulation and ever expanding government. We need not talk so much about Harry Reid as we do about the local zoning board that won’t let their son and daughter set up a lemonade stand or that they can’t plant a garden in their front yard.

Politics is personal, all politics from National to local. The more personal the contact the bigger the impression will be upon that voter. To turn an old expression upside down – This is personal this is politics, it ain’t business.

Mitt Romney finally seemed to have it right in the end when it was too late, (or perhaps he had it all along and I couldn’t see it through the fog of my virtual reality) when he talked about making our decisions more for the love of Country not so much for the love of self. That was great stuff but if it was played from the beginning it could have been the reef that Obama and the Liberals could have wrecked their ship upon as they tried to make fun of American values, and Romney could have built upon that. Coming as it did at the end was as I said too late.

So after we lick our wounds and begin to realize that though we didn’t win we came closer than the historic model would have predicted. Though we lost the electoral vote handily the actual vote was pretty close. So what do we do next?

The first thing is to change our attitude. Try a smile for a change. Talk of the joy of freedom not the harmful actions of a tyrant. There are others that will do that and the people know that when they see it. Keep a great vision as our bedrock and let the Liberals make fun of that all they want to. Remember we and all people are creatures of habit, and habits die hard. This kind of thing however is labor intensive and is best done a little at a time. Also we are all human and in our day to day squabble to make a living and feed our families, we need to remember to think of the bigger things. When I do make that effort, I’m always amazed at how I feel better. The reward earned by the doing is a righteous reward.

For an eye opener look at the following link which says that voter turnout was down in most every state in this 2012 election vs. 2008. I checked, it was down in mine.

http://www.kypost.com/dpps/news/national/turnout-shaping-up-to-be-lower-than-2008_7991483

From my comfort zone as I prowled the polling precincts election day I was positive turnout was up and the Republicans were turning out in droves to vote. OOOPS.

Welcome to the real world.

Live Dangerously Be A Conservative.

Postscript.


Marco Rubio wrote this piece.

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/marco-rubio-romney-election/2012/11/07/id/463197?s=al&promo_code=109C5-1

Here is a quote from it.

“In the next Congress, I am committed to working on upward mobility policies that will ensure people who work hard and play by the rules can rise above the circumstances of their birth and leave their children better off,” he said in statement Wednesday. “The conservative movement should have particular appeal to people in minority and immigrant communities who are trying to make it, and Republicans need to work harder than ever to communicate our beliefs to them.”

Senator Rubio summed up in a paragraph what I needed 2 pages of fluff to say not quite so well.

Perhaps most more succiently -- We need to get off our High Horse and concentrate on practicing what we preach.

Regards