Over the last few months, we've seen a concerted effort on the part of GOP leaders to embrace anything bright and shiny in technology, presumably with the dubious hope that relaying an old message through a new medium will magically result in electoral success.For example, here was House Minority Whip Eric Cantor on CNN this morning relaying how Super Serious the GOP is about embracing new technology:
"President Obama is a great communicator. We understand that," he said in an interview that aired on CNN's State of the Union Sunday. "He's also been very adept at adopting the technology of today to access the youth vote and the younger population of this country. That's the future, and I believe we've got a lot to learn. The Republican Party can't keep doing things the way it always has in terms of technology."Here's Steve Benen's take:
If this sounds familiar, it's because it's become a principal talking point about the GOP's future. We've been told the GOP will mount a comeback "with the Twittering." We've seen candidates for the RNC chairmanship argue over who has more Facebook friends. The Republican Party, rumor has it, is going to go "beyond cutting edge."
This all sounds perfectly nice, I suppose. Last year, the Republican presidential nominee described the vice presidential vetting process as "a google." It certainly couldn't hurt for the party to get up to speed.
But I continue to think GOP leaders misunderstand what's possible with these applications. Yes, the left has generally been more adept at making use of technological advances, but it's been effective, at least in part, because of the substance and vision behind it.
Listening to Republican leaders talk about technology is a bit like listening to an inept advertising agency promising a business that they'll have a strong "online presence" because it'll have a blog and its commercials will be on YouTube.
This is exactly right. If you're in the business of selling shit sandwiches, and have been having problems enticing new customers to your product using direct mail campaigns, the simple act of starting to send the same ads to people via Twitter is not going to get you any new customers. In order to make some money, you would probably need to consider selling sandwiches made of something other than shit.
For anyone who's familiar with South Park, Benen casts this in the perfect metaphor:
Let's call it the Republicans' Underpants Gnomes' Innovation Agenda. It's a three-part plan:
Step 1: Embrace blogs, twitter, and social networking websites
Step 2: (awkward silence)
Step 3: Electoral victory!
If the Republican Party is going have any meaningful role to play in our democracy anytime soon, it is going to need to stop relying on the incantation of spells, rubbing of magical amulets, and launching of urban-suburban, hip-hop technology platforms. They are actually going to need to do the hard work to modernize the GOP's policy positions to resemble something other than 1980's America.
