It’s gonna be a hot one this week! Temps approaching 90° F.
Pray for rain!
Campaigning for Tim Michels last autumn, Blaska was entrusted with maybe a dozen yard signs and a list of willing recipients. To his distress, the addresses stretched from Hilldale Mall 20 miles west to the village of Black Earth WI.
A lot of fossil fuel to find loyal Republican voters! (Well, it IS Dane County.) As we know, our nominee lost to Mr. Peepers in what was supposed to be a Republican wave election. Insult to injury, our favored state supreme court candidate got buried under an 11-percentage point landslide to the pro-abortion Democrat(ic) favorite this past April. We’re still smarting over those two.
At Politico today the reliable David Siders asks: “Did abortion make Wisconsin a blue state again?” Spoiler alert: Probably!
“We got our butts kicked,” Rohn Bishop, former chair of the Fond du Lac County GOP and now mayor of Waupun, told Siders. “What the Republican base demands and what independent voters will accept are growing further apart.”
RINOs vote, too
The Werkes tried to get Republican legislators to defuse the issue by proposing a reasonable compromise: say, a ban only after several weeks of gestation. (“Will abortion defeat Dan Kelly?“) Would they listen? NO! But what intrigued us about today’s Politico autopsy was this insight from Ben Wikler, chairman of Wisconsin’s Democrat(ic) party and a rising star. Siders reports:
Up until just weeks before the April election, the state [Democrat(ic)] party had been operating on a traditional, lower turnout model — focusing its outreach on the most reliable voters likely to cast ballots in an off-year election. But volunteers kept running into something unexpected when they knocked on doors: Many times, when they encountered someone who wasn’t on their list, they learned those people were planning to vote, too. As a result, the party shifted its strategy, broadening its targets to contact more than a million potential voters as opposed to hundreds of thousands of them.
— “How the GOP lost Wisconsin“
That conforms to Blaska’s own, pathetically small universe of experience. In his first campaign of seven campaigns for Dane County Board of Supervisors, the novice candidate was given a list of likely conservative voters in Spring elections. Found himself walking 10 blocks to reach two households. Enough of that frivolity! Thereafter, the candidate hit every door. If the door opened, give a 15-second spiel, shove a handbill at the surprised occupant, and sprint to the next house. If the householder didn’t sic his Doberman on the campaigner, offer a yard sign. On doors unopened, nail my turgid screed to the door like the Rev. Luther.
No litmus tests!
Campaigns need to win hearts and minds, which is why the Werkes still cannot understand for the Life of Brian why our candidates refused to answer newspaper and League of Women Voter questionnaires! “No response” to the question “Why are you running for election?” is suicidal! (Read & weep!)
Candidates are missionaries trying to convert souls. Go where the heathens live and talk to them in their language!
(Another) which is why: Blaska happily participated in candidate forums such as those hosted by the East Side Madison Progressives. Several Progs sidled up to this school board candidate to confess, in hushed tones, that they would be voting Blaska but don’t tell anyone I have to live in this town.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Got to get voters where they live before they will go your way. Purists lose elections.
10 responses to “Republicans need to quit preaching to the choir”
[…] This post originally appeared at https://davidblaska.com/2023/05/30/republicans-need-to-quit-preaching-to-the-choir/ […]
agree completely. when I was running against an incumbent for the Mass. senate in a 4-1 D district, in 1972, I worked dem areas. i did a special mailing to all D registered voters. I won by 9 votes out of over 60K cast.
I be interested to see a list of Republican candidates who you think would appeal to independent voters in WI. I hope one of them is Rep. Mike Gallagher, young, articulate, experienced, with all the conservative credentials and none of the baggage/drama (or a record of losing like Kelly and Trump). He’d give Tammy B. and her Madison minions the vapours if he decides to run for her Senate seat.
Mikey is my US Rep. Doesn’t show up much in the district except to select gatherings with limited attendance or invitation only. Refuses to answer questions from the audience when he does peek out from cover. But his worst failing, and this will cost him votes in the Fox Valley, is that he won’t separate himself from trump. He gave us a minute or so of outrage on Jan. 6, then has gone quiet on the attempted overthrow of democracy. And to make matters worse, according to staffers in the Capitol, he is a wishy-washy Packers fan.
If you are talking Mike Gallagher, he’s been pretty strong against Trump.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/mike-gallagher-the-latest-wisconsin-pol-to-reject-trump/
That is pretty weak tea from Mikey G. Even you have been more forthcoming in your disapproval of trump. But you aren’t playing to a statewide base like MG. And he refuses to say anything to offend that base here in his own district. That is why he will have a tough time especially in the purple suburbs.
“Republicans” continue to go on conservative radio talk shows, and in print, and ask for common sense moderate-minded people to run for local offices.
When those folks step up and run for office, all they hear from the right is crickets, and that includes financial support.
It’s time for them to put their money where their mouths are. In other words put up or shut up.
Third party anyone?
Was foolish enough to start knocking nearly every door. Registered a lot of people. When you don’t have many voters to begin with, you gotta create them. Easier to do in a dense district.
The issue of homelessness … the folks Blaska likes to sneer at are always coming up with new euphemisms… but not solving the problem. I don’t like euphemisms whether from the right or left. We once called them hobos. Maybe we should go back to that nomenclature. You can’t solve problems with euphemisms.
The purpose of euphemisms is not to solve a problem but to convince people that none exists–or that it’s not as serious as you think.