A New Public Relations Firm

After the 2006 and 2008 elections some are counting out the GOP. I for one am not. Recently, the Republican party voted former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele as new the Chairmen of the Republican party. Being Chairmen of the Republican party puts Steele as at least one of three leaders of the Republican party along with House Minority Leader John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

I personally have enjoyed hearing and watching Steele in his various radio and TV appearances since rising in prominence from his 2006 senate race. But, I applaud Steele's chairmanship more for the the change that he represents (not what you think). I was actually almost glad to see former Chairman Mike Duncan fail in his bid to be reappointed. I don't get any pleasure from a persons failure but rather I think it's healthy for a party to see change, particularly the Republican party. Steele represents something different because he has not spent his career as a party representative but rather a public official. Most of the other candidates for the chairmanship were previous or current heads of various state republican parties.

With Steele as the Chairman there is now an opportunity to change the Republican presentation. I believe that Republican principles are great and a good thing for this country but we have not been winning the public relations battle and if we do not make adjustments we will continue to lose.

Steele has already shown he is aware of some of the Republican party faults. Tomorrow the Republican party will host a Technology Summit and figuring out ways how the party can better utilize the web (things like blogspot, twitter, facebook, myspace, etc) . I believe President Obama was so successful in part because of his grasp of technology. The best part about using the web to get out the message is that you can reach a massive audience in a short period of time for a very minimal cost.

In terms of candidates embracing technology I believe it should be mandatory for any candidate to update and maintain facebook, twitter, and myspace pages. They should also maintain a blog. I must give kudos to Zach Wamp, current US Congressmen, who has been very active on Twitter as he works to lay the foundation for a gubernatorial run. Wamp stands out to me as a tech friendly candidate and I am sure I am missing others (hopefully).

To be honest though technology itself will not win us elections. We need to rephrase our arguments and our points for or against something. I am reminded of watching the Republican presidential primary debates last year, every candidate was talking about being like Ronald Reagan. I love Ronald Reagan for everything that he did for this country but he finished his presidency 20 years ago. Candidates must run forward and talk about the future. Americans don't always vote on how the past 4 years have been, they vote on what they want the next 4, 8, or even 20 years to be like.

Republicans have proven they can win elections on their ideas not on a distaste for the opposition. I argue Democrats have been successful the last two elections because Republicans were unpopular and not because the American people wanted Democratic ideals. People are shocked at the actions of President Obama because he is doing things that they don't really agree with or that weren't really talked about during the campaign.

The 2010 election cycle is crucial because we cannot afford to allow Democrats to gain any more control or to control the campaign language. I will write more specifics in the future but I wanted to get my opinion out because it is something that has been bothering me for sometime now.

By the way, to prove I am a man of action and not just words I have recently created a "political" twitter. You can find my tweets at www.twitter.com/talkingelephant.