Every dime of this $500-million-a-year moves outside the legal campaign contribution limits. It is also largely tax deductible as contributions to nonprofits and to intermediate foundations. Foreign money mixes in.
"Research" is entirely at the service of political campaigns. Corporate Politics, Inc. has functioned since the 1970s as the GOP's Propaganda Ministry.
There is an old Cap Hill nickname: the Powell System. Since the first money from Joe Coors to start the Heritage Foundation, the Powell System has been a good buy. The Bush tax cuts redistributed more than $1-trillion. Federal privatization exploded. Gawd... the "defense" budget.
The diary focuses on a live piece of tactical psychology: Natalie's Memes.
Application of these ideas in the Mass. Senate campaign grabbed hold of the single strongest Republican weakness... and flipped it to being an attack item. Natalie's White's discoveries constitute an astonishing psychological fulcrum.
Now a threat to pro-democracy candidates... you betcha.
Build a pro-democracy counter to the Powell System ??? A pro-democracy defense to the GOP twist on Natalie's Memes ?
Diary gives a rough strategic Case Study, plus pics... BTF:::
MONEY IS POWER
Effectively, the GOP is a business. It works for the large corporate interests and for wealthy Rightie philanthropists who can pay for its services. Campaign contributions do matter, of course.
Still, over the years the Powell System has received more money than all of the contributions to all of the national Rightie political campaigns, combined.
Sustained Rightie investment in the Powell System is extraordinary. By 1994, the inflow was close to $300-million a year. Since 1972, the total investment has to be over $10-billion.
We'll consider some of the resources that Powell System organizations have constructed over the years, compared to the Democrats. Its like comparing Fox and Fox News and the Wall Street Journal to Air America and Mother Jones.
The System can mount a crisis management team of the first order, plan campaigns irrespective of candidate selection over years and years, turn on a dime when a novel tactical opportunity presents, and bring the full force of the Powell System's experts to bear -- bashing pro-democracy campaigns with Ad Biz versions of Shock and Awe.
When was the last time that the Democrats threw a Cosmopolitan centerfold bimboy into the ring, covered over an empty resume, attacked an ordinary public servant as a culture-troll, and stole a Senate seat in the heart of conservative territory ?
The Powell System is tasked, today, to move America to corporatism, to modern fascism, to status as another China. They do indeed memorize Sun Tzu and they see politics as war. Not an allegorical form of war, but war.
Candidates are now recruited similar to the factors that are applied by the pharmas, when they pick sales people. The pharma sales training materials are carried over -- sharpening communication skills and the psychology of decision making.
Throw in a pick-up truck for the union vote and you've got Scott Brown. More on Scott down below. Yeah... a crop of the centerfold.
The Mass. campaign, aimed for the first post-Teddy election, looks to have been planned in detail before they had any idea who the candidate would be. Then, as things got rolling, a new opportunity appeared.
Never underestimate the Powell System. What they did when they got Natalie's Memes is what gave Scott Brown his "surge."
A COMPLEX PSYCHOLOGY: DESERVING YOUR VOTE
Scott Brown had been rebranded to make him look like an Independent. His web site fails to mention that he is a Republican. His issues page is bluer than most Blue Dogs.
Brown's big problem was the he had never done anything. There was no case, nothing factual to present, to show that Scott Brown had earned anyone's vote. Brown had been little more than a professional candidate in training, a bench warmer with potential. Typical for many younger Republicans these days.
Like Scott Brown, the GOP has one 800-pound gorilla of a problem:
-- The party has not done one important, useful thing in more than a decade.
-- Republican candidates, generally, have done nothing to earn votes.
And then along came Jones... Tall thin Jones... Slow walking Jones....
NATALIE'S MEMES
Its not really "Jones." Its White.
Natalie White faced pretty much the same problem as the GOP and Scott Brown as a candidate, when she was a player on the reality television show Survivor Samoa.
Natalie got toward the end of Survivor and had done nothing to earn votes. It's not that she was a one-girl Party of No. She was lazy.
"I won fair and square. People will always underestimate me, which is fine. That worked out to my benefit in this game."
She hadn't worked around camp, done much on challenges, or found food. She attached herself to one strong player, Russell Hantz, and kept breathing. She was so lazy about finding food that she was starving on a tropical island -- dropping close to 20 pounds in 39 days.
Then her application of Natalie's Memes made all the difference.
Whining and Special Pleading.
Natalie developed a political novelty: a unique pattern for a combined attack:
1.) Whining. Her future voters were encouraged in subtle, framed sessions to whine about the main rivals. Natalie's remarks during these sessions presented moderate positions, while adding detailed ad hominem derogatory information.
2.) Special Pleading. Natalie's role of listener/encourager was made to do double-duty. Getting a victory required a disciplined form of Special Pleading. Natalie asserted a braod variety of associations with traditional virtues. The prime goal was to establish that she was intrinsically deserving, so that during the finals she would not be criticized for doing nothing to earn votes. In fact, the whole concept of earning votes was put to sleep.
As you can imagine, this is gold for today's GOP.
Natalie changed the way that her Survivor jury went about casting their ballots. She cast her rivals as aloof, uncaring, not connected, out of touch. We heard exactly these terms from the Brown campaign.
Natalie insulated herself from the central, most substantive factors for criticism. She showed the Brown campaign a way to the Promised Land.
Natalie's professional smile -- her pharma sales rep friendliness -- translated to a negotiable asset. She claimed to be a Prayer Warrior. She claimed to be jobless and carless, near impoverished to get a chance to play the game. She was both modest and a better person.
Natalie obscured the fact that she had not done one thing inside the game to earn votes.
Natalie's Memes turned her factual weakness into her dominant strength. No question, Scott Brown's team saw this as a gift and borrowed from Natalie, meme for meme... word for word.
"What rises must converge" sounds pretty.
What wins... really does converge.
Expect to see much more of Natalie's Memes.
Professionals know a winner when they see it. Scott Brown's "surge" came when his team went over from tax-cuts-and-freedom to the full force of Natalie's Memes and got the Mass. sports-talk shows to pick up on the whining pattern and throw in a set of detailed anti-Coakley slams.
PICK THE GOP CANDIDATES
Let's take a section for candidate selection.
First, the future of the Republican Party is not Sarah Palin. Rank outsiders with truthiness problems are not going to make it. For Senate and House races, there will be no such disasters... at least no one receiving RNC support.
The model for GOP candidates is the same HR screen as the pharmas use to pick successful sales reps, plus a preference for a law degree. If you want to see a living, breathing archetype, there's not much better than Natalie White.
Natalie White combines intelligence, ambition, but especially strategic discipline. This young woman is a prime example of what the pharmas send in to doctors' offices. That is one of the country's highest-stakes poker games. Good for her, her sales training focused specifically on the psychology of decision making.
Simple fact, not missed by the GOP: every Federal election has a sole survivor.
The pharmas are not copying the GOP; the GOP is copying the pharmas.
WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE DEMOCRATS
Democrats, generally ??? The DNC ? First off, there is no parallel on the pro-democracy side to the Powell System.
As soon as Howard Dean walked out the door at DNC his "50 State Strategy" went whoof. There are a half-dozen staffers maintaining the shell.
Long-term campaign support for every state and District -- lost in the shuffle. There is nothing permanent. DNC starts from a blank page every few years.
For example, Brookings was and is big. But DNC has minimal influence over them. The money that comes in to Brookings is focused to the issues of the left-center philanthropic foundations -- rarely to broader political strategy.
The Carter Center is enormous. Over $100-million a year. It does nothing for the Democratic Party. Bill Clinton is the same. More money, of course.
Meanwhile, the Powell System GOP has built a formidable and permanent strategic engine. This is still the same management structure, the same engine that pulled the GOP back from the grave after the Watergate scandal.
Over the decades the engine has gotten better. As long as a system has a memory, investing billions of dollars tends to do that.
THE POWELL SYSTEM
The money, here, is staggering. It seems to me -- a "gut" call, nothing scientific -- that this continuing Flood of conservative money is driven by individual insecurities and by the common prejudices of the anti-intellectual elements of American society.
The traditional left-center view of these conservatives -- particularly coming from preppies and Ivy Leaguers and Kossacks -- is that they are know-nothings and Deniers and/or hate-driven racists.
The broad unquestioning enthusiasm for Sarah Palin and this willingness of rich Righties to give huge sums, many hundreds of millions of dollars to the Rightie causes are fruits from the same tree.
The Money.
A dozen conservative foundations spread around more than $100-million a year. Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Carthage Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, the Charles G. Koch, David H. Koch and Claude R. Lambe charitable foundations, the Phillip M. McKenna Foundation, the JM Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Henry Salvatori Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. Altogether the foundations and private sources top $300-million a year. Corporations add another $200-million.
$500-million a year.
These are nonprofits. It is perfectly legal. Many are tax deductible. Considering that the Bush tax cuts gave these contributors more than $1-trillion -- a good investment. A great investment. Same for Federal contractors of all stripes.
The Big Think Tanks.
Heritage Foundation, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, George Mason University (the Mercatus Center), the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Hillsdale College, Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation, Judicial Watch, the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation, the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, and the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. The lists get to hundreds of operations, each drawing in more than a million dollars a year.
These are not political campaigns under the rules. Not a dime counts against campaign finance laws.
When the many thousands of Think Tanks and issues group employees work on campaigns and do candidate development assignments, its off the clock.
Just time off, don'tcha know.
HOW THE POWELL SYSTEM GOT STARTED
I knew Paul Weyrich back in the day. He had founded the Heritage Foundation in 1973, along with Ed Feulner and a pile of Joe Coors money. During the 1980s he and Ed were just as pissed as we were at irrational Federal projects -- and then the bizarre deficit spending that G.H.W. Bush ran up for no apparent reason.
Paul was able to get the Coors money because Lewis Powell -- in 1972 a judge, then elevated to SCOTUS by President Nixon as an Associate Justice -- had written up a strongly worded call for Republicans to circle the wagons and finance a coordinated array of what we now call Think Tanks.
Here is the text of The Powell Memorandum.
Powell also developed an interesting vein of paranoia, relating the upheavals of the 1960s and the tail of the Vietnam protests in the early 1970s to all-out revolutionary assault on the American Free Enterprise system.
This pitch worked to beat the band. You don't have to more than a 5% rewrite to see it cast as a prime donation collector, today. The Rightie ultra-rich fall for it every time.
During the 1980s, Heritage grew to a staff of over a hundred. Their people connected to every reporter at every major news outlet in the country. Paul focused to domestic issues. He hated busing. He hated abortion. He had a picture of an in vitro fetus in his office. It was a Black kid.
Frankly, what the Democrats need, now, is their own Paul Weyrich. And they do need to read the Powell Memorandum, because that is still what is killing them.
Not Everything Was Bad.
By 1994, Paul's guys worked on what became Newt Gingrich's Contract with America. A lot if it was fully bipartisan.
Tell me that a lot of DKOS wouldn't vote for the most of this ???
- Require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress;
- Select a major, independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse;
- Cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third;
- Limit the terms of all committee chairs;
- Ban the casting of proxy votes in committee;
- Require committee meetings to be open to the public;
- Require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase;
- Guarantee an honest accounting of our Federal Budget by implementing zero base-line budgeting.
And there were another ten items, a conservative hodgepodge of legislative initiatives, a few of which got done:
- THE AMERICAN DREAM RESTORATION ACT: A $500 per child tax credit, begin repeal of the marriage tax penalty...
- THE SENIOR CITIZENS FAIRNESS ACT: Raise the Social Security earnings limit...
"Zero Base-Line Budgeting" was in there. It is pretty much the same idea, in practice, as Pay-As-You-Go. There was no wiggle for "Black" private armies or a Congress with no labor rules. Newt Gingrich wasn't a bad guy for getting this proposed. He was able to implement about 1/3 of it.
One other interesting step, the Heritage crew gave their publications and transcripts away free. And then all the Rightie D.C.-based research shop discovered the D.C. motorcycle delivery services -- perfect for getting the right position paper to the right deadline-driven reporter.
Powell System operations developed to become competent, well-entrenched, connected presences in Washington. Brookings was still selling their papers and using snail-mail.
Matters have gotten worse rather than better in the 16 years since then.
FROM REFORM TO CORPORATIST FASCISM
The Contract with America was about the end of simple good works. The Far Right and the militarists had decided to take a confident, largely Christian, at heart isolationist country and use it to make an empire. Big Oil knew what it wanted, Wall Street had its agenda, and the "McAllenization" of medical care was also on the horizon.
The Powell System resources were already, in 1994, going where the big corporatist contributors told told them to go. Democrats carried too much baggage to oppose their efforts to polarize the country. White suburbanites and rural Scotch-Irish, particularly, had moved by the millions into the G.O.P.
Busing school children to strange schools to force integration had killed Liberalism -- the dumbest political idea of the Twentieth Century. Worse than Prohibition.
That gave us the Reagan presidency and then G.H.W. Bush. With the centerist Liberals bashed flat, the G.O.P. Base got dragged over to Lee Atwater's Angry White Males.
From there, the Powell System shops found themselves supporting everything from Phil Graham destroying the Depression Era protections for the banking system, to the calls out of Hoover Institute for "another Pearl Harbor," to the bait-and-switch plan for invading Iraq, to setting up the MediCare/Medicade payables system to facilitate fraud, to the very engine for military takeover that is Blackwater/Wi.
That list is highlights....
MANAGING
Along with thoroughness, the left-center shops are in dire need of integration. Now that happens in sporadically.
DNC retains a tiny research operation related to Howard Dean's "50 State Strategy." I do mean tiny. DNC has a half-dozen people to cover the country.
There is nothing permanent, no independent quality control, so there is little high-quality about what happens -- as you could see from the Coakley disaster where she got literally nothing in the way of support from DNC.
DNC let Hillary Clinton's local organization take the critical positions in Coakley's campaign. I'd imagine that Coakley would have done better with Natalie White. Natalie would have understood what was hitting them.)
CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT
The Powell System research operation got built in force from Ralph Reed's Christian Coalition and their outreach program. He canvassed every single Fundie church in the country -- from the megachurches to store fronts in Black Detroit. His people talked to 25,000,000 church people face-to-face. Pushed shared ideas, took names. Built a precinct-level database of the country.
The labor unions had detailed databases for their members and families. Big city political machines had their people organized. but before Reed, nobody realized that you could do the same XXXXXXX thing for the whole XXXXXXX country.
Two amazing things can be noted: first, that Reed shared his database freely with other Powell System operations.
Second, Reed is the one and only Born Again Christian that I know of, who admits that his life-changing Come To Jesus moment occurred while he was in a bar, drinking, arguably drunk on his ass. Gotta love a guy for that. Reed is a genius at organization on a shoestring and upgrading his volunteer personnel.
Ralph Reed's sorriest little preacher/volunteer_leader with a 100-member No Denomination storefront is likely to have a good understanding of turning out his voters. This preacher/volunteer_leader is surely a more valuable resource than, say, Mark Penn, CEO of Burson-Marsteller, advertised as Hillary Clinton's "strategic genius."
Hiring consultants with no long-term quality control ??? Bad joke.
This little preacher/volunteer_leader gets to be the product of a decades old system. The tools were developed with strong quality control at every step. The likes of Mark Penn are elevated to advisory prominence among the Democrats on simple, personal impulse buying -- then by Hillary Clinton -- where there is no quality control whatsoever.
No quality control, no quality.
And Murphy's Law assures that bites you at the worst time.
CAMP WELLSTONE
On the pro-democracy side, Camp Wellstone is one of the better shops.
HERE is Camp Wellstone
Camp Wellstone shows what you can do to support campaigns -- despite that you have no strategic management at the top level, no extended system to aggregate resources.
Will Rodgers got it right: "I'm not a member of any organized political party. I'm a Democrat."
For DNC that is one pitiable excuse.
Camp Wellstone makes the best of their circumstances.
Here is an example of the Wellstone agenda for candidate training:
Track 3 - Being a Candidate: How to Run & Win the Progressive Way
-- Creating an Effective Message
-- Politics of Conviction - How to Lead as a Candidate
-- Campaign Plan & Budget
-- Running for Office, A First-Time Candidate's Perspective
-- Building, Maintaining and Growing Your Base
-- Grassroots Fundraising - The Candidate's Role
-- Earned Media
-- Paid Media and Direct Mail
-- Canvassing
-- Targeting
Simulation Exercises
-- The Stump Speech
-- Crisis Simulation
-- Door Knocking
-- Fundraising
Then, for everyone from Al Franken running for Senate down to a mayoral candidate, there is one contact point:
If you have questions, or still are unsure about which track in which you'd like to participate, please contact Jen Haut (at email and phone)
This Camp Wellstone is the best resource the Democrats have.
The Powell System, in contrast, has detailed tactical and research operations in place directed at every Congressional District and municipality in the country. Not one operation. Operations. There are several overlapping operations in place, going on year after year after year, to support Republican candidates.
Look at the Wellstone bullet points. Good stuff.
But they have 20 people. They cannot do detailed, tailored courses -- they have to do generic product development. They certainly have no way to carry out in-depth, localized tactical research to incorporate such as media design.
The Powell System has 5,000 people working, just at the Think Tanks. Double that for the issues houses and the regionals, another 10,000 bodies around the country. Then between the conservative Foundations and the conservative shops inside universities and participation of corporate marketing shops, you've got another 5,000 on call. That gets to 20,000 people -- which I think is light as a guesstimate.
If you include the religious groups as Fellow Travelers, the number has to be 50,000.
CONQUERING AND BLUNDERING IN MASSACHUSETTS
There is no sharper example for the impact of Powell System strategic management than the recent senatorial campaign in Massachusetts. Two factors predominated:
- Candidate recruitment -- including training, development, marketability testing, and the practical factors that get lumped together under "work ethic."
- Campaign design -- the Powell System shops had had a years long research effort going, aimed to win the first post-Teddy Kennedy Senate race. This effort turned up chunks of campaign gold -- for example: the JFK tax cut clip that was used to jump start Scott Brown's race.
"Populist Anger" -- a brilliant, brilliant marketing discovery. A single meme that expands on defeating Coakley. The original form was "Conservative Populism" -- which is not half bad either. The version we saw at Survivor had Natalie smile sweetly and encourage other players to recount their problems with Russell Hantz and the other alpha-male rivals.
Anger can be managed.
"He Is Out Of Touch" -- the carry-over to attack Obama. Borrowed without attribution from every Maureen Dowd XXXX-spew since 2007. The Natalie White distillation went to issues of communication and the boundary issues with her other players. (I'm not good enough to understand what she was doing. She's the genius at it.)
These specific phrases are now being replayed as the core MSM memes for what happened. I am amused at the extent to which these themes echo Newt Gingrich and his then-accurate portrayal of Congressional corruption in 1994.
Here's the GOP recruitment operation's product. Tell me this is not a knock-off of pharma sales force recruiting... a knock-off of Natalie the Magnificent:
Cosmopolitan picked a winner in 1982. HERE for their web page.
Yes, you can get clothes on him. And here is immediate spread-out of the Brown campaign:
Republicans across the country are rooting for his team. They want to know the strategies his team adopted to trounce the Democrat from its bastion. For decades the seat was a sure win for the Democrats. That is why the Republicans praised Brown for the historic win.
A Hawaii congressional candidate has already expressed his desire. "Scott Brown has certainly put a lot of wind in the sails of my campaign," said Charles Djou of Hawaii.
Guarantee you, "Populist Anger" at the undeserving Democrats is going to get localized flavorings and then big appearances from Maine to Hawaii.
STRATEGY AND TACTICS FOR DNC
The simple plan for DNC starts with reading the Powell Memorandum.
Take the document seriously.
Don't whine about details. Screw the PC XXXX. Recognize that the Powell System -- by whatever name -- is what kills your candidates in close election after close election.
Top level strategy matters.
DNC needs to apply the Powell System's management principles to coordinate/organize the efforts of left-center foundations, left-center Think Tanks, left-center development resources such as Camp Wellstone, the big unions, and any and all sensible allies.
Where practice among the Republicans has shown better methods, adapt to what is proven to work.
Immediately: acquire the expertise of the pharma sales training programs.
Pro-democracy operations need to get better at developing candidates and other resources.
Then, get over personalizing strategic and managerial factors.
The Clintons, for example, get off on the phrase "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy."
Nice try. But that is paranoia speaking. It is not an analysis. It is not thinking that goes to historical roots, management methodologies, or to the facts of how the Powell System operates.
VRWC memes are essentially uncomprehending.
Superficial.
DNC -- IMHO -- will be better off if they can adopt two strategic goals as foundations for work over the next two or three election cycles:
Begin development on a long-term response to the Powell System:
- Adopt the Howard Dean "50 State Strategy" as the permanent and central organizing principle for all political efforts involving the Democratic Party.
Recognize the resource disparity that exists between the Powell System organizations and all of the left and center organizations:
- Adopt a defensive tactical posture aimed at fighting off what I label as Natalie's Memes. The posture will need to be defensive in nature to win in 2010, because the Powell System outmans the Democrats by about 20:1.
The GOP hasn't done a XXXX thing for the country.
But their system continues to hop right on it.
Defending against the Natalie Memes ??? Hard problem. Look at the White House today... Republican copies of Natalie's tactical ideas have Obama cast up on the PR rocks.
Politics is about winning. Lewis Powell understood that. So did Paul Weyrich. No one on the Democratic side has had the systemic impact that we saw on the GOP side from Lewis and Weyrich. They brought permanent changes to American politics.
Obama raised $800-million. He won. Obama has brought no changes to management of the Democratic Party. He watched Dean leave DNC and did nothing to compensate, to enhance what Dean had started.
Democrats want more than fleeting victories ??? The DNC needs management, quality control, and the same skills in their favored candidates that you see with the pharma sales reps. The Coakley loss was the worst for systemic incompetence. Camp Wellstone and the like deserve better.
Any other suggestions ?