[EL] The GOP adopting the Obama Playbook

[bzall at aol.com]

“G.O.P. Mulls a Strategy From Obama’s Playbook”
Posted on January 24, 2013 8:34 pm by Rick Hasen

NYT: “As Republican leaders gathered here on Thursday to consider how to rebuild their party, President Obama was at the center of the conversation. But the sharp criticism directed at him was replaced by something new: envy over his campaign. The Republican National Committee is reviewing the party’s deficiencies, particularly in technology and grass-roots organizing, that contributed to Mitt Romney’s sound defeat last year. The excuses and grievances that several top Republicans offered up after the election have been supplanted by pledges to strengthen the party.”
Quite true. And it's not just the party. Data is the future of campaigning; actually, it was also important in the past. In fact, my 1970's training by the DNC centered on what we called the Lincoln four-step: "Identify people's positions with particularity. Solidify your base. Have the undecideds talked to by someone they know and trust. And get your people to the polls." This mantra has been the basis for American campaigns forever, and it's also the basis for most successful issue advocacy campaigns. Data, of course, is important at each stage. 


With all the focus on whiz-bang technology or Big Data databases, however, what many people don't notice is that it's not just data, it's how the data is used. The Obama success story is how data, available these days for a relative bargain-price, became the driver of the campaign: http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/508836/how-obama-used-big-data-to-rally-voters-part-1/


But it's not all one way adoption: as we saw through the course of the election and continue to see, Dems are adopting the playbook of the GOP. For example, Stephanie Cutter, former Deputy Campaign Manager, explained to Politico what many observers often miss in the distinction between "political" and electioneering for c4s:
“This particular organization, the way it’s organized, legally, we can’t participate in elections,” Cutter said of Organizing for Action, a new advocacy group that builds on the Obama campaign’s Organizing for America. “That doesn’t mean that the issues we’re organizing around won’t mobilize the American people to vote for things. To vote for that economy we’ve been working toward, to vote for immigration reform… I think we can affect elections even if legally we can’t be involved with them for this particular organization.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/stephanie-cutter-ofa-can-affect-elections-86468.html#ixzz2IzkWbVuP


h/t Holtman Vogel Josephiak's blog. 



Note: Cutter is not quite correct. The question has never been whether c4s can affect elections; they clearly can even participate directly if they choose (meaning IEs, of course, since the coord. comms. rules still apply). The question is where the line is drawn as to whether particular activities are permissible (even encouraged)  issue advocacy or regulated electioneering. On that, standards change over time, context matters, and reasonable minds can always differ. 


And even if OFA says, publicly or in its application for recognition of exemption (Form 1024), that it "won't" participate in electioneering, that, under current IRS rules, is not a binding promise or contract. Like the proposed budget, it's just what they plan at the time; the IRS uses 990s and exams (audits of exempt organizations are "examinations") to judge actual operations. It used to be that organizations that changed their activities had to inform the IRS; big changes meant an immediate letter to the IRS, smaller changes required only a cover note or just a checkbox and explanation on the annual Form 990 information return. But now the IRS says that it only wants changes to be noted on the Form 990, and letters aren't encouraged (a function of workload, I understand). So the first notification of any OFA change in electoral participation (besides the campaign finance reports if required) would be on its 990 filed many months after the fact. Which also makes the breathless interest group reports that "so-and-so told the IRS it wouldn't be involved in politics" kind of weak sauce. Sort of like a weather report that didn't really pan out. 


Barnaby Zall 
Of Counsel 
Weinberg, Jacobs & Tolani, LLP 
10411 Motor City Drive, Suite 500
Bethesda, MD 20817
301-231-6943 (direct dial) 
bzall at aol.com 
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