Late yesterday I made a short post over at The Next Right (click here to read it) focusing on a random idea I got while walking to work: have the RNC or NRCC set aside some funds to pledge to offer to campaigns as grants to assist particularly creative efforts in campaign innovation. Given all the frustration some pieces of the Republican coalition have with the national party organizations, this would allow the national parties to leverage their resources for the good of the party without inadvertently stifling innovation and smothering local efforts.
The idea is in part inspired by the stimulus funding for the Department of Education’s Race To The Top program, where states are applying for federal funding that will be awarded based on the state’s demonstrated desire to enact true innovative education reform. Though I’m certainly no fan of the stimulus as a whole, I like the idea of awarding funding in this manner if the money is going to be out there.
There’s a big problem in the GOP now where campaigns are hesitant to really take risks and do cool, innovative stuff. A large portion of campaign cash goes to established consultants who got big winning with a playbook from 1996 or 2000. Thus, huge sums get poured into TV while we have to wait for folks like @PoliticalMath to come up with neat, low-budget video productions that can really make an impact. Given a little bit of seed money, there’s a lot of neat stuff that bright Republicans can do at a local level, and there are a lot of lessons that can be brought back and spread to campaigns across America.
I’m a bit disappointed there haven’t been any comments yet at The Next Right but I also admit I picked a bad news day to talk about anything that isn’t Chris Christie, Bob McDonnell, or Doug Hoffman. Even though the idea is still rough around the edges and has a number of weaknesses, I think it makes for an interesting discussion topic.
Commitment to Blogging!
This blog here at KristenSoltis.com is not my first time around the block blogging. Back in 2005, while interning at the NRCC during a rather slow semester (there’s a reason that the CCC’s staff up big right before an election but only keep a skeleton crew around afterwards), I started up Swamp Pundette. The blog was anonymously written at first; all of Washington was petrified of the idea of blogging interns following the unseemly “Washingtonienne” scandal. It wasn’t long before everyone knew who Swamp Pundette was, however. I posted links and bits of commentary about national politics and the things I was observing, but blended it with coverage of politics back home in Florida as well as the seemingly unending drama of University of Florida Student Government. It spawned a slew of other blogs about UF’s student government, some of which are still around in some form I believe.
At any rate, it was a chance for me to merge my adoration for politics with some of my less obvious interests: meteorology, video games, all things Condoleezza Rice, college basketball. Readership was decent but the time demands of a “real job” meant shuttering Swamp Pundette in 2007. I was approached about working at the White House and immediately went into panic mode, stripping everything off of the internet that could be construed as proof that I had ever had an opinion at all. Since then, I’ve blogged – under my own name, of course – at The Next Right, Pollster.com, and a variety of other spots online that will grant me a few hundred words of real estate every so often. Twitter has also been a useful blogging “replacement”, as I can blast out short, often poorly formed thought processes to the nearly 1000 people who follow me. (By the way, I am still just shy of 1000, so please follow if you aren’t already!)
However, at the request of my best friend Mary (who has a blog of her own!), I’m going to crank up the amount of content I produce here rather than leaving KristenSoltis.com as nothing more than a repository of links to old columns and a spot for a headshot and bio. For bigger, more formal thoughts and ideas, I will probably continue to post at Pollster, Next Right, HuffPo, etc., but for all of the less “tidied up” concepts, I’ll post here. Mixed in with some Gator Football, of course.
I hope you come to enjoy it!