Action Plan 2014

This is the time to strengthen the GOP. The mid-term elections give us a chance to slow down Obama’s march toward Progressive Utopia. We can do that by taking the Senate and strengthening the GOP In the House, and getting as many strong Conservatives elected to state offices as is possible.

By now you’ve seen NJ Libertarian’s article about Turning the Tables you’re pumped up about changing the GOP to reflect your values, you’re excited to really make something heppen! But…

That’s a lot of elections, too much to focus on, where do you start? You/we have to spend our precious time and money wisely. The first task is to get the BEST GOP Candidates through the primaries and ready to fight and win against a Democrat opponent.

We do need to get better at vetting our candidates – what are the important things to know about a GOP candidate before we put our weight behind him* and help him get elected?

How can we Learn about and Promote our candidates?

The Conservative Union, The Party of Choice, and Free Radical Network came together to formulate a plan of action. Interview the candidates ourselves and provide shorter comparison-type “meet the candidate” videos for people to view. You’ll get more information about the candidate that way than from reading a posistion paper on the internet.

We decided to come up with a few key job interview type questions – they’re applying for a sales position. They want to sell conservatism to the public and get elected in November, and then sell conservatism to their fellow Republicans and the Democrats via legislation that can serve the needs of their constituents. We need to know if they’re any good at that.

We’re not asking the standard questions about policy. We’re going around the talking points, to some deeper questions. We’re trying to find out if they can be the guy to sell Conservatism to a larger audience, to elevate our brand

The kinds of questions we will be asking:

• How do you differentiate yourself from your primary competitor, and how will you, after fighting against him in a primary, change gears to pull the party together to defeat the Democrat?
• How do you plan to carry that “winning GOP” strategy forward into the office?
• How would you grow the GOP once in office?
• What is your online presence and strategy for communicating with your constituents – talking and listening – once in office?

We’ve done two already, and the results are great – I feel like I have a feel for who these NJ Senate candidates are, MUCH more so than from a formal TV interview or an advertisement. It’s a real conversation.

New Jersey Senate Candidate Brian Goldberg  – Goldberg For Senate

New Jersey Senate Candidate  – Rich Pezzullo- Conservative Republican for US Senate

This is good for the campaigns too -they can choose to direct people to them, they can take bits and pieces and use them as marketing info, we can share them with friends and family who are wondering – who are these guys, what are they like?

We can even get some good excerpts ourselves to use whether we are pushing a candidate or just pushing the conservative message

[This is where I would’ve linked an excerpt video, if video editing were part of my skillset]

To make this successful, we need your help.

1. Point us in the direction of candidates or even party chairs who would be good to interview
2. Help us get to the candidates we’re targeting and get them to agree to an interview
3. Watch the interviews we’ve done so far, and promote THEM, so that the concept itself gets a bit more known – beyond just G+, it’s a YouTube thing!
4. Sit down and interview some folks yourself, and send us the video
5. Create excerpt videos from the ones we already have and share them with your friends – show that there ARE GOP candidates with good things to say
6. Other ideas – give me your ideas, I’ll steal them and claim them for my own!!!

*I use “he” and “him” instead of “he or she” and “him or her” because it’s easier, faster, and clearer. Also I find that the people who do that, or worse sometimes use “he” and sometimes use “she” are more interested in impressing you with their gender inclusiveness than they are in communicating clearly. I don’t suffer from that pretension. You think I’m a woman hater? Come at me.