I think that RS McCain gets why we lost in 2006 and 2008 exactly right:
…the Democrats did something very smart after 2004. Instead of freaking out over those “values voters” and getting all down in the dumps, they got busy organizing and raising money so that when the GOP hit a long streak of bad moves and bad news in 2005-06, the Dems were ready to take advantage of it. A day of organizing is worth a week of blathering about “strategy,” and an hour of fund-raising is worth far more than a month of navel-gazing op-ed columns pumped out by the punditocracy.
But the pundits always want to over-intellectualize everything, because that’s what they get paid to do, and the consultants always want to talk “strategy,” because they’s what they get paid to do. Grassroots organizing, candidate recruitment and fundraising — those are the three things the GOP needs to focus on in the near term.
Read that, and read John Hawkins’ helpful six keys… and then actually do something about it.
Moe Lane
PS: Whining does not count as “doing something about it.” Neither does demanding that the Party drop everything to concentrate on your pet issue, stapling your hand to your forehead about how the awful Party never listened to you, and/or threatening to move out to the countryside with a full load of ammo and survival gear. All any of that does is depress people who are trying to actually fix things.
PPS: No, I don’t particularly care if you like that characterization or not. Was there anything else?
Crossposted at RedState.