Natalie and Scott were recruited for high-stakes sales jobs.
They both received hundreds of hours of coaching. Their communication skills and psychological awareness were sharpened.
Natalie, 26, is a beautiful young woman.
Natalie used her corporate skills to win "Survivor" on a 7-to-2-to-0 vote. $1,000,000 pay day. "I won fair and square. People will always underestimate me, which is fine. That worked out to my benefit in this game."
My my my... HERE
Senator-Elect Scott Brown... will get a lot more than $1,000,000.
They were selected as well because they are disciplined and smart, without intimidating people.
Very high quality corporate products....
Their organizations -- a pharma and the Republican Party -- can share pride of victory. The GOP's Team started in earnest in 1972, followed by a hard right turn in the 1980s.
The Dems and Tim Kaine at DNC, even today, lack a substantial, organized defense.
Same could be said of centerist Republicans, if they weren't extinct. Much more BTF :::
IF you like looking at Natalie
A cutie.
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Crying in the populist pitcher of beer isn't going to do a whole lot of good, here. The Right have stolen a march on both the Center and the Left. The GOP Center politicians are indeed in the cemeteries.
Where seats are at all competitive, the Rightie GOP have the organizational advantage.
Left-Center efforts exist. Here is one of the better ones:
Camp Wellstone -- nice operation. Less than one 1/100th the resources and span of the RNC Powell-based effort.
Its like seeing a half-dozen people go up against Johnson&Johnson or Glaxo.
Democrats can hire Media Consultants at $5,000 or $10,000 a day. Multiply that by the number of seats and you can see why doing a retail operation at DNC must needs pay for itself.
Move the operation to DNC and save millions of dollars overall -- plus getting strong quality control and cross-fertilization for good ideas.
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GOALS
A sustained effort is needed at DNC to defend House and Senate seats against these GOP corporatist candidate-development projects.
At the least, a competent defense should combine these goals:
1.) A permanent home in the DNC and the DNC organization chart -- so's to match up with the status of the attackers in the GOP.
2.) Resources to cover primary research, outreach to experts, and development of Case Study knowledge. Track in detail what the GOP is doing for every national seat.
3.) A library and object database similar to a smallish Presidential Library system. Take seriously the task of obtaining and cataloging all available materials from GOP, Independent, and Democratic Party campaigns. Do more than pulling clips off YouTube. Prepare for candidate research.
4.) Training materials and courses for candidates. This begins with the sales job training that you see with Natalie and Scott. The campaign efforts can be enhanced with specific materials -- such as the JFK videotape for Massachusetts -- that come from the local research efforts.
The start for the GOP came with a plan from then-Circuit Court Judge Lewis Powell in 1972. Powell had a good mind for organizational strategy. At a time when young people were experimenting with drugs, sex, rock-and-roll, and just coming off massive demonstrations on The Mall -- the Powell Memo set out to defend a traditional Republican view of America.
POWELL MEMO -- TEXT AND ANALYSIS
The Neglected Political Arena
Catch the notes of paranoia and self-pity. These ideas spread quickly, bringing support for a heavily funded and heavy handed operation at Chamber of Commerce, first, and then at RNC from 12975 on:
In the final analysis, the payoff -- short-of revolution -- is what government does. Business has been the favorite whipping-boy of many politicians for many years. But the measure of how far this has gone is perhaps best found in the anti-business views now being expressed by several leading candidates for President of the United States.
It is still Marxist doctrine that the "capitalist" countries are controlled by big business. This doctrine, consistently a part of leftist propaganda all over the world, has a wide public following among Americans.
Yet, as every business executive knows, few elements of American society today have as little influence in government as the American businessman, the corporation, or even the millions of corporate stockholders. If one doubts this, let him undertake the role of "lobbyist" for the business point of view before Congressional committees. The same situation obtains in the legislative halls of most states and major cities. One does not exaggerate to say that, in terms of political influence with respect to the course of legislation and government action, the American business executive is truly the "forgotten man."
Powell's system started with the focus on propaganda and coordinated lobbying. After the debacle of 1976, followed by dozens of GOP retirements, the operation expanded to candidate recruitment.
MEDIA FOCUS
From the start, RNC had experts doing analytical analysis -- screen tests, as it were -- for how candidates presented on television. They had learned from the Kennedy-Nixon debates. They were never going to lose another election that way.
Then Right-to-Far-Right Republicans took over the RNC Powell-based systems when they came to Washington in the 1980s. They built specific DNC-connected organizations to win elections at the House. These teams have well-defined, proven methodologies to recruit candidates, train them with substantial effects, and then support them with perfectly camouflaged campaigns to knock off centerist Republicans and Democrats.
Scott Brown's victory was produced by a Team Effort. He was the product. The Team developed him. The Team sold him.
All of these recruits out of the RNC Powell-based system are striking. If its not a Miss Alaska, then its the girl who came in First Runner Up. The new class of GOPer Senators and House Members look and sound like Top 50 market area news anchors.
THE JOHN KLINE PROJECT
Attacking a moderate Republican area -- a House District -- is the simplest type of operation for these teams. Success means getting another 20% to 30% uniformity for votes and elimination of a possible vote for a Centerist in the Leadership positions.
If there is no one far-right enough, or strong enough locally in a Republican-leaning House District, then you will see a multiyear, multimillion dollar project launched to take over that House seat.
One example is Minnesota-02. Solely to get a 100% reliable far-right vote pattern, a Texan named John Kline was moved to his wife's home state -- albeit 65 miles from her family's nearest property holding. This is the John Kline Project. Easily $10,000,000 was spent over 6 years to get Kline relocated, get him a house, set up a "Think Tank" to pay him a salary for the duration, to pay for staff, to build name-recognition from flat-zero, and to run unsuccessful campaigns before getting him in.
Kline also got nefarious assistance. Faux "volunteers" showed up for the Democrat Farm Labor (MN's Democrats) candidates' campaigns. These "volunteers" came from outside the District. In each case, the faux "volunteer" instigated a scheme that discredited character of the DFL candidate. This pattern has recurred three times in a row.
Kline conquered MN-02 despite having no initial local support. The people in MN-02 had never met the man. However, critically, the usual Minnesota GOP rivals did not have Kline's $1,000,000-a-year budget to promote himself, his "helicopter" paid staff, his RNC-connected promo materials, his training and development sessions, his press connections, and the Chamber of Commerce and RNC opening every corporate door.
Effectively, based on voting patterns, MN-02 is now TX-33.
Personally, John Kline is ex-military, handsome and soft-spoken in his very rare interviews. His web site looks all populist and smoothie. His votes get 100% ratings from the right. Zero ratings from such as the veterans' organizations and anything with a legalist or populist agenda.
We think that Kline is one of three dozen recruited/developed/financed Far Right "helicopter" invaders to get into the House.
The pattern shows up from New Jersey to California. Where the Far Right have to settle for a local, they will, grudgingly. But they do prefer to import these candidates -- makes it is easier to suppress youthful indiscretions. Makes it clear who owns whom.
STRATEGIC GUIDELINES FOR IMPLEMENTING A DEFENSE
There's nobody better than the original, Lewis Powell:
The Cost
The type of program described above (which includes a broadly based combination of education and political action), if undertaken long term and adequately staffed, would require far more generous financial support from American corporations than the Chamber has ever received in the past. High level management participation in Chamber affairs also would be required.
The staff of the Chamber would have to be significantly increased, with the highest quality established and maintained. Salaries would have to be at levels fully comparable to those paid key business executives and the most prestigious faculty members. Professionals of the great skill in advertising and in working with the media, speakers, lawyers and other specialists would have to be recruited.
It is possible that the organization of the Chamber itself would benefit from restructuring. For example, as suggested by union experience, the office of President of the Chamber might well be a full-time career position. To assure maximum effectiveness and continuity, the chief executive officer of the Chamber should not be changed each year. The functions now largely performed by the President could be transferred to a Chairman of the Board, annually elected by the membership. The Board, of course, would continue to exercise policy control.
Quality Control is Essential
Essential ingredients of the entire program must be responsibility and "quality control." The publications, the articles, the speeches, the media programs, the advertising, the briefs filed in courts, and the appearances before legislative committees -- all must meet the most exacting standards of accuracy and professional excellence. They must merit respect for their level of public responsibility and scholarship, whether one agrees with the viewpoints expressed or not.
As you might imagine, when this GOP effort was directed to the rebuilding effort, after the Nixon resignation and the House losses in 1976, strong organization and good quality control held them in good stead.
The GOP still has all of this in place -- every bit of it. Read "RNC" where Powell writes "Chamber." These guys know what they are doing. On the other side, not so much.
Defense ??? What defense ? Sometimes there is nothing useful happening.
BLUNDERING MASSACHUSETTS
Martha Coakley was a weak candidate, sure thing. No speaking voice.
But she got nothing. No candidate training. No support. No investigation of what was coming from Scott Brown. She got no staff out of national. No library of campaign materials and no research effort to analyze the Mass voters.
She got nothing.
When she gaffed and slammed hockey fans and Scott Brown for going to an outdoor hockey game on New Years Day at Fenway -- "It cold" -- she was already tipping over the edge.
Her other gaffe involved Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling. She helped Scott to boost his turnout and lost going away.
Scott Brown's team ran a professional campaign. Plainly, the Team at RNC had been working on the central themes for a post-Teddy campaign for that Senate seat for years.
Yes, years.
Tim Kaine has done nothing. He is a Make No Waves kinda guy. DNC remains passive in an environment where the opposition are doing everything they can to grab the initiative.
-- DNC needs a sharp change to its commitments.
-- Otherwise the Rightie GOP will win at least 5% more seats than they would win without this organizational advantage.
-- For the Senate, I'm saying that the difference in election results runs to 5 seats.
It could be more. If the Democrats run candidates like Martha Coakley and Michael Dukakis, guarantee it.
Training sales people is not rocket science. Al Franken went through the Camp Wellstone training and he ran a near flawless campaign. Knocking off an incumbent -- perfect.
Franken's upset over Coleman was as unexpected as the Scott Brown win.
If people are going to get Democratic Party money, they should have to put in the time to learn the trade.
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Any suggestions ???