Monday, June 4, 2012

The Right...Revving Up For 2012

June 03, 2012 -- 6:16 PM
 
Hugh
Hewitt
Examiner Columnist
Five-Dollar Friday is one example. Since April, I have asked my radio audience to visit HughHewitt.com and hit the ActRight banner, which opens up to a variety of races and causes, beginning with Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. ActRight makes it very easy to give small donations, 100 percent of which are then forwarded to the campaign(s) selected.
My request each Friday is that they skip the soda at the movies or the double scoop thereafter and invest $5 (or $50 or $500) in the project to repair the country that begins in January of next year with a new president and a new Congress.
Nearly a thousand people have responded, and the average donation is well above $100.
The beauty of the technology is that it makes small gifts to multiple campaigns very easy to accomplish.
The power of the process is that small donations build networks of giving volunteers who, having engaged in a political behavior one step beyond voting, are much more likely to stay engaged and involved through November.
The significance is that my appeal is just one of scores of efforts developing on the Right in support of the conservative cause.
Team Romney has greatly improved on the standard GOP approach to Web engagement and messaging. And as his team has amped up the virtual campaign, so too has Gov. Romney stepped up the heat on the specifics of President Obama's record, which in turn energizes the volunteer base itching for a showdown with the president's disastrous policies.
Romney's appearance outside Solyndra headquarters this week was a certain sign of a combative attitude in the coming contest -- a necessity when Chicago Rules are going to drive the other side. This attitude will inspire Romney's supporters to double down on their commitments.
Networks of donor-volunteers can rise overnight, and are powerful once deployed. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, R, was initially pushed to a recall because of the Left's entrenched networks among public employee unions, and online via sites like MoveOn and DailyKos.
The Center-Right organized quickly, however, and pushed back. Walker's fundraising and his get-out-the-vote effort are amazingly strong as a result.
When Walker wins Tuesday night, it will be evidence that the online digital gap between Right and Left has been closed, even as the resources gap narrows.
How energized is the Center-Right? Imagine if you had been told one year ago that by June 2012, Mitt Romney would lock up the GOP nomination and find himself already in a dead heat with Obama in Iowa, Colorado and Nevada. What would your assessment of that hypothetical have been? Honest people admit that a year ago, such a situation was impossibly optimistic for Romney and, if it did come to pass, it would be a sure sign of chaos within Team Obama, the American economy, or both.
The Manhattan-Beltway media elite is discounting the reality of this incredible run for Romney, as it overpriced the prospects of a shattered GOP and of a brokered convention.
Voters, however, don't live in the D.C. bubble and aren't captives of a closed system where the conventional wisdom of liberal media elites rallies to the president's defense whatever the data show.
The president is in big political trouble, which explains all the White House leaks on drone warfare and cyber-attacks on Iran. It also explains David Axelrod's desperate trip to Boston last week, which was first undone by Romney supporters' chants of "Solyndra" and Axelrod's own pique, and then overwhelmed by Friday's awful jobs report. The president and his senior advisers are floundering, and their desperation is increasingly obvious.
Energy and contributions are rising on Romney's side of the political ledger, while the supporters of Obama are finding it increasingly hard to put on the brave face and nod approvingly when the president declares, again, that things will turn around with only a bit more "hard work."
Who'd have thought it would be this way a year ago? Who is willing to admit it is so even now?
Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.

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