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autopsy G o P republican

obama re-election sparked gop TP freakout/ crisis?

2022 red trickle it's baaaa-aa--c-c-c-k!  blake, swoboda2?

The Republican Party, trapped in a right-wing media bubble that bolsters its most extreme and alienating factions, blew its opportunity to make big gains in the 2022 midterm elections. And the party shows little sign that it is interested in changing course.

The Republican National Committee announced on Tuesday that it is commissioning a post-election review of the party’s dismal performance and launching a new “Republican Party Advisory Council” to help direct its strategy going forward. Both bodies are stocked with representatives of the GOP’s most extreme elements.

On the council, diehard Trumpists are repped by the former president’s longtime adviser Kellyanne Conway, Christian nationalists by evangelical leader and anti-LGBTQ bigot Tony Perkins, and fascists by Peter Thiel disciple Blake Masters. And the review will be co-chaired by Harmeet Dhillon, an election lawyer, 2020 election conspiracy theorist, and Fox regularwho has made at least 314 appearances on the network since August 2017, including at least 56 this year.

Dhillon discussed the review in yet another appearance on the network on Wednesday night and telegraphed that it would do nothing to disturb Fox personalities or their viewers. Prime-time host Laura Ingraham introduced her by celebrating that “someone with common sense is going to be leading the GOP’s autopsy." [vid ingr]

dhillon used the opportunity to debut “some very specific ideas of things that we need to change in order to win,” which were purely mechanical. She complained that “we are not doing what the Democrats do, which is making sure that we hunt down every Republican ballot and get it to the polls,” and said that the party needs to “get smart” about funding its candidates, pointing in particular to how Masters was “ripped off by Senate leadership.” She further called for moving the RNC’s functions “out of D.C. and back into the country” and conducting “more lawfare.”

She also nodded along as Ingraham said that “the America First folks at the RNC have to be more powerful and stronger than the old establishment types.”

In a Twitter thread after the appearance, Dhillon called for an “Elon-style review of consultants & culture” to weed out anyone who is not “totally energized & psyched to elect Republicans popular w/our base.”

Dhillon’s diagnosis is not that GOP primary voters picked bad candidates like Masters who failed because they creeped out the electorate, but that they selected good candidates like Masters only for the party establishment to knife them in the back. Her solution is to purge dissenters and shrink the size of the party’s tent down to true believers who are ensconced within the right-wing media bubble.

This doesn’t make sense. The GOP had popular outgoing governors who spent their years in office cultivating a more moderate brand – but the base wanted and nominated extremists to succeed them who ended up losing to Democrats. It put forward extremists for key swing state Senate and gubernatorial races who were popular with Fox hosts but couldn’t make the sale with voters.

The party simply can’t admit that it ran bad candidates because that would amount to an indictment of its base and the right-wing propagandists who influence their votes. No one should expect the GOP to exit its bubble any time soon.

post TP but pre-Trumpistas?

http://www.motherjones.com/documents/739865-redacted-groundswell-mtg-notes-3-20-2012-google

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/**2013/07/**groundswell-ginni-thomas-**war-karl-rove/**

groundswell, the recently created coalition of prominent right-wing activists and journalists, gathers weekly to coordinate messaging and plot strategy for “a 30 front war seeking to fundamentally transform the nation.” These sessions usually fixate on how best to battle the president, congressional Democrats, and progressive groups. But their 30-front war also includes something of a civil war: a fierce crusade against the Republican establishment and Karl Rove, the GOP strategistand Fox News pundit.

Rove is a regular topic of discussion—and frustration—at Groundswell’s Wednesday morning meetings, according to the documents obtained by Mother Jones. At these sessions, and in messages shared by participants on Groundswell’s Google group page, Groundswellers often gripe that the GOP’s inside-the-Beltway crowd wants to marginalize the party’s ideological die-hards and recruit, promote, and support political candidates deemed less strident and more electable. Rove especially ticked off tea-party-minded conservatives in February when the super-PAC he advises, American Crossroads, announced it was launching the Conservative Victory Project, which would try to block far-right candidates from blowing key races, as Missouri’s Todd Akin and Indiana’s Richard Mourdock did in Senate contests last year.

Yet as Rove kicked off this project, Groundswellers, in closed-doors meetings, initiated an effort to crush Rove, who they believed had helped shape a post-election post-mortemby the Republican National Committee that called on the party to temper its message to appeal to a broader swath of voters.

At the group’s March 20 meeting, Groundswell participants reviewed the details of this vigorous anti-Rove endeavor, according to notes prepared after the session. This memo referred to a “two front war” to tear down the prominent GOP strategist who engineered the political triumphs of George W. Bush. Under the subject head “ROVE PROJECT,” the memo reported:

Rove is still actively networking and building his financial capabilities, an indication that we are not yet being effective. His associates have quietly contributed to the drafting of the RNC document, Autopsy. The Autopsy Report…has drawn fire from the Tea Party, social conservatives and conservatives in general. It undermines the RNC platform…

The Two Front War: The two front war covers finances and reputation. Rove has relationships built over the last two decades. He must become toxic among the grass roots and among his base. His effectiveness has been called into question on Sunday talk shows and at CPAC. Regarding financing, the donors to his Crossroads [super-PAC] are public. They must be educated to the fact, Rove is not a conservative and his efforts are not effective.

Rove’s position as party spokesperson was established as a result of the Bush election. Rove gained the title and the credit for being the “great architect.” Fox has given Rove a platform and just renewed his contract. In truth, Rove no more represents conservatives then Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton represent all Blacks.

The memo cautioned that smashing Rove would take time: “Rove has been building his power base for decades. Change requires time and patience.” It suggested “powerful messaging points” to use against him: “Rove does not speak for GOP like Sharpton does not speak for black community” and “Who put you in charge?”

“Rove has relationships built over the last two decades. He must become toxic among the grass roots and among his base.”

The Rove Project was a key agenda item at other Groundswell get-togethers. At a February 20 meeting, Groundswell participants talked about how best to “continue efforts to educate conservatives to this real and present danger to our future success”—meaning Rove—and attendees were informed thatKen Blackwell, a former Ohio secretary of state now affiliated with the Family Research Council, was identifying donors to conservative causes who “need specific attention.” That is, Blackwell was compiling a list of conservative funders to pressure to boycott Rove.

During a March 6 meeting, it was announced that the Rove Project would be one of Groundswell’s 10 working groups. (Others included national security, messaging, ground game, immigration, and Benghazi.) Sandy Rios, a fellow Fox News contributor, was put in charge of the campaign to discredit Rove. Weeks later, though, a Groundswell memo noted that the Conservative Action Project—a coalition of more than 100 right-wing organizations that is chaired by former Attorney General Edwin Meese—would be “taking the lead” on the Rove Project.

Rove did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, one of the leading members of Groundswell and the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Through Groundswell’s Google group, members were asked in February to sign a letter organized by Diana Banister, a Groundsweller and a partner at the Shirley & Banister PR firm, demanding the firing of Jonathan Collegio, American Crossroads’ communications director. Collegio’s sin: He had called Brent Bozell, a conservative media critic, a “hater” in an interview. (Collegio had been reacting to Bozell’s attack on Rove’s plan to oppose unelectable conservative Republican candidates.) The letter, addressed to American Crossroads president Steven Law, proclaimed, “You obviously mean to have a war with conservatives and the Tea Party.”

The Groundswellers certainly seem to believe they are engaged in all-out combat with Rove and GOP insiders. In February,Blackwell posted an article on Groundswell’s Google group page and stated, “War has been declared on the conservative movement.” The article was about Rove’s effort to back credible GOP candidates.

https://thetriad.thebulwark.com/p/reading-the-republican-autopsy

last bulwark

Autopsy Is Happening Right Now

In the days after Democrats unseated an incumbent president and won unified control of Congress, the victorious party went though a round of self-analysis and recriminations.

The Republicans, who managed a trifecta of losing that hadn’t been accomplished since Herbert Hoover, doubled down. Then they backed up their bets, split 4s, and doubled down again.

People were confused as to why the losing party didn’t conduct an autopsy to try to figure out what went wrong.

Except that they did. It wasn’t a traditional autopsy in the sense that there was no formal committee and the project wasn’t centered around getting more votes in future elections. But it’s clear that Republicans are in the midst of a crowd-sourced attempt to figure out how to win the presidency in 2024.

There are three ways to capture the presidency:

(1) Win a lot more votes than the opposing candidate.

(2) Get fewer votes, but win pluralities in enough states to get 270 certified and counted Electoral Votes.

(3) Get fewer votes and fewer Electoral Votes, but prevent the official counting and certification of the Electoral Votes—and then win a majority of state delegations when the contest is shifted to Congress.

You can win the presidency even while getting blown out in both the popular vote and the Electoral College, provided your party:

Five years ago this scenario would have sounded like a nightmare designed to scare children; democracy’s version of the Baba Yaga.

Today it’s just an alternative path to power.

After all, it’s right there in the rules. How could anyone possibly object?

And if you ask Conservatism Inc. they’ll tell you how beside-the-point “democracy” is, anyhow.

[twt]

2. The Republican Game Plan

When Republicans conducted their autopsy, they skipped “How to Win Option 1” and went straight to Options 2 and 3—leapfrogging the question of how to get more votes and focusing on how to use institutional leverage to take power even while losing popular majorities.

Option 2—the path of least resistance—is for Republicans to change voting rules at the state level in the hopes that they can drive down the number of Democratic votes cast and win the Electoral College despite being a persistent minority. A lot has been written about these various initiatives, some of which are more grotesque than others.

But the real cutting edge work being done as a result of the GOP autopsy concerns Option 3: Figuring out how a Republican can win the presidency even while losing the popular vote and the Electoral College.

just go by the numbers: It is likely Republicans will have majorities in the congressional delegations of at least 26 states for the foreseeable future. They have a >50 percent chance of winning the House in 2022 and a pretty good shot at flipping the Senate.

So the first two preconditions for winning the presidency while losing the election are very much on the table.

Which leaves just one project: Mustering the political will to move past both the popular vote and the Electoral College.

In 2020, many elected Republicans lacked the will to use the means that would have been necessary to stop the certification and counting of Electoral Votes:

So the key parts of the Republican autopsy have been (1) building the political will to use raw power next time and (2) removing the Republican officials who were not willing to comply last time.

That’s why Republican state parties have censured nearly every Republican who did not participate in Trump’s attempted coup.

That’s why Brad Raffensperger is the target of a primary challenge in Georgia.

That’s why Michigan Republicans replaced Aaron Van Langevelde with a more reliable partisan on the state canvassing board.

That’s why Nevada Republicans are attacking Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, the only Republican to have won state-wide office in 2018. (Even though she is a Republican, Cegavske refused to go along with the attempt to overturn Nevada’s result.)

That’s why Republicans in Arizona have introduced HB 2720. Here’s the relevant section of the bill:

The Legislature retains its legislative authority regarding the office of presidential elector and by majority vote at any time before the presidential inauguration may revoke the Secretary of State’s issuance or certification of a presidential elector’s certificate of election.

Ladies and gentlemen: Behold the fruit of the Republican autopsy.

Meanwhile, Conservatism Inc. is doing its part to devalue and delegitimize democracy, seeding the ground for moving past both the popular vote and the Electoral College.

The Big Lie is actually the biggest insight to come from the Republican autopsy. Republicans and their enablers discovered that if they make false, evidence-free claims often and loudly enough, then the vast majority of their voters will believe them.

And then, once Republican voters were onboard, they found that the rest of the party elites would either join them or stay silent. Only a handful of Republicans dared to object. And those figures are in the process of being either defeated or coopted.

By insisting that Trump was the real winner of 2020, Republicans have created a trifecta of preconditions within their base going into 2024:

  1. There is a pent-up demand for retribution.
  2. These voters will not believe that election results unfavorable to them are legitimate.
  3. These voters will be primed ahead of time to demand that elected Republicans satisfy their desired outcome, by any means necessary.

Which is to say: Republicans are already well on their way to marshaling the political will to do whatever the law even theoretically might allow in pursuit of power.

And even though the success of such a gambit is a longshot given all of the various failure points, since political power is derived from their voters, many Republicans politicians will be incentivized to embrace the challenge anyway, since they will gain power within the party from the voters who have been primed to demand such a fight

The difference between the 2020 and the 2024 elections will be the difference between a reactive Republican party focused on trying to flip the Electoral College and a proactive Republican party prepared to move past the Electoral College to the next pathway to victory.

Those are the lessons of the 2020 Republican autopsy. Ignore them at your peril.

This is how authoritarianism starts. A society goes from the rule of law, to rule by law—where the minority gets just enough power to change the laws so that they can amass more power.

And here is a serious question: If Republicans managed enough votes to sustain an objection to counting Electoral Votes, what would our recourse be? Crossing our fingers and hoping that the Supreme Court steps in?

What we are seeing—in broad daylight—is another proof of the idea that democracy runs on the honor system. If you have two parties and one of them is openly attempting to subvert democracy . . . well, good luck.

The time to fight against authoritarianism isn’t December 2024. It’s now.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/demint-marks-a-new-sharper-edge-for-heritage-foundation/2012/12/06/

Politics

DeMint marks a new, sharper edge for Heritage Foundation

By Karen Tumulty and

Allen McDuffee

December 6, 2012

When the Heritage Foundation set up shop in a red-brick Capitol Hill townhouse more than three decades ago, it represented the cutting edge of conservative thought. Ronald Reagan himself once lauded it as “that feisty new kid on the conservative block.”

Now, as the think tank hands over its leadership to Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a tea party icon known more for his confrontational political style than his policy chops, the question is whether Heritage can catch up to the movement it once helped lead.

The changing of the guard comes at a crucial moment, when conservatism itself is gripped by self-doubt and angst in the wake of back-to-back Republican presidential defeats.

“This organization is in a position to do more to save our country than any other organization I’m aware of,” DeMint told more than 200 Heritage staff members shortly after it was announced that he would succeed Edwin Feulner, who co-founded Heritage in 1973 and has served as president for the past 36 years.

“I believe that we have put together here the power, the muscle, the ideas to turn things around,” DeMint added.

What you need to know about Sen. Jim DeMint

View Photos

The GOP senator from South Carolina has announced his retirement to lead the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Measured in dollars, that muscle is enormous. According to Heritage’s financial report, the foundation brought in nearly $70 million last year.

:{

And Heritage remains deeply embedded in the DNA of the Republican establishment. Nearly half of the advisers to Mitt Romney’s presidential effort were former or current Heritage scholars — among them Lanhee Chen, the campaign’s policy director.}:

But the intellectualism that was once the Heritage hallmark has become somewhat suspect in an era in which the insurgent passion of the tea party sets the terms of political activism.

During the 2012 presidential campaign, for instance, Heritage was often cited as the originator of a concept that most conservatives now find heretical — the “individual mandate” in the Obama health-care law requiring people to buy insurance coverage if they do not receive it from their employers or government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

Heritage had already begun to retool its brand for the tea party era by setting up a separate political and lobbying arm it called Heritage Action for America.

That activist effort has received mixed reviews. Many congressional Republicans were dismayed when it put out a scorecard dinging them for being insufficiently conservative for what the lawmakers regarded as relatively insignificant votes.

DeMint, on the other hand, scored a near-perfect 99 percent rating by Heritage Action — the highest of any senator.

The selection of DeMint to head the foundation “kind of moves Heritage firmly into the anti-establishment, conservative, populist side of the equation,” said Craig Shirley, a Reagan biographer. “It’s going to push that argument that the party needs to have with itself.”

In an interview, DeMint said that by taking the job, he was also taking a side in that argument.

:{“The election showed me that my party was not doing a good job and that we weren’t going to win another national election until we got control of our message,” DeMint said.

“We need to separate the conservative movement from the Republican Party,}:” he added. “We didn’t do a good job. It wasn’t a failure of conservative ideas; it was a failure of the Republican Party.”

Heritage is not the only conservative organization to face an identity crisis during this turbulent political season.

:{

Earlier this week, former House majority leader Richard K. Armey left the conservative tea party group FreedomWorks during an internal dispute over its future direction.}:

And in March, the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch filed a lawsuit seeking control of the libertarian Cato Institute, which they helped establish and fund.The legal dispute was resolved after Edward H. Crane, Cato co-founder and its only president since 1977, agreed to step down.

Though Feulner had long ago signaled his desire to relinquish the day-to-day operation of the Heritage Foundation, many had expected his successor to be David Addington, who had served as chief of staff to former vice president Richard B. Cheney and who had joined the foundation’s top ranks in May.

DeMint’s selection is likely to be popular with many of the foundation’s conservative financial backers, particularly the legions of small donors who contribute in response to its direct-mail solicitations. But it remains to be seen whether he has the temperament or connections required to manage many of its bigger benefactors.

“Bringing DeMint in makes more ideological sense than others, including David Addington,” said James McGann, director of the Think Tanks and Civil Society Program at the University of Pennsylvania.

“But that might not be best for Heritage in the long run,” McGann said. “Feulner has a long history of strong relations with Heritage donors, his senior staff and Washington political elite, and it’s not clear DeMint has those same qualities outside of his time in the Senate.”

Alice Crites contributed to this report.

Karen Tumulty is a Washington Post columnist covering national politics. She joined The Post in 2010 from Time magazine and has also worked at the Los Angeles Times. Follow

Allen McDuffee writes about politics and policy and covered think tanks for The Washington Post from 2011 to 2013. He freelances and hosts a podcast at governmentality.net and is currently working on a book about the influence of think tanks in Washington.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/what-you-need-to-read-in-the-rnc-election-autopsy-report/274112/

no lnx

What You Need to Read in the RNC Election-Autopsy Report

It's an astonishingly frank document that calls for major changes in how the party addresses minorities, women, and its own campaign processes.

By Garance Franke-Ruta

March 18, 2013

The Republican Party on Monday released a 100-page autopsy of how its 2012 presidential campaign was conducted. I've picked out the key sections you need to read from the analytic recommendations and critiques made by the party in this "Growth and Opportunity Project" report. The project report also has a long section of recommendations for GOP friends and allies -- read, PACs and Super PACS -- which I've not excerpted from below.

***

The GOP today is a tale of two parties. One of them, the gubernatorial wing, is growing and successful. The other, the federal wing, is increasingly marginalizing itself, and unless changes are made, it will be increasingly difficult for Republicans to win another presidential election in the near future.

Republicans have lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. States in which our presidential candidates used to win, such as New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Iowa, Ohio, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Florida, are increasingly voting Democratic. We are losing in too many places.

It has reached the point where in the past six presidential elections, four have gone to the Democratic nominee, at an average yield of 327 electoral votes to 211 for the Republican. During the preceding two decades, from 1968 to 1988, Republicans won five out of six elections, averaging 417 electoral votes to Democrats' 113.

Public perception of the Party is at record lows. Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the Party represents, and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country. When someone rolls their eyes at us, they are not likely to open their ears to us.

At the federal level, much of what Republicans are doing is not working beyond the core constituencies that make up the Party. On the state level, however, it is a different story. Republicans hold governorships in 30 states with 315 electoral votes, the most governors either party has had in 12 years, and four short of the all-time GOP high of 34 governors who served in the 1920s.

Republican governors are America's reformers in chief. They continue to deliver on conservative promises of reducing the size of government while making people's lives better. They routinely win a much larger share of the minority vote than GOP presidential candidates, demonstrating an appeal that goes beyond the base of the Party.

It is time for Republicans on the federal level to learn from successful Republicans on the state level. It is time to smartly change course, modernize the Party, and learn once again how to appeal to more people, including those who share some but not all of our conservative principles.

At our core, Republicans have comfortably remained the Party of Reagan without figuring out what comes next.Ronald Reagan is a Republican hero and role model who was first elected 33 years ago -- meaning no one under the age of 51 today was old enough to vote for Reagan when he first ran for President. Our Party knows how to appeal to older voters, but we have lost our way with younger ones. We sound increasingly out of touch.

***

The perception, revealed in polling, that the GOP does not care about people is doing great harm to the Party and its candidates on the federal level, especially in presidential years. It is a major deficiency that must be addressed.

One of the contributors to this problem is that while Democrats tend to talk about people, Republicans tend to talk about policy. Our ideas can sound distant and removed from people's lives. Instead of connecting with voters' concerns, we too often sound like bookkeepers. We need to do a better job connecting people to our policies.

***

If we believe our policies are the best ones to improve the lives of the American people, all the American people, our candidates and office holders need to do a better job talking in normal, people-oriented terms and we need to go to communities where Republicans do not normally go to listen and make our case. We need to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian, and gay Americans and demonstrate we care about them, too. We must recruit more candidates who come from minority communities.

***

We have to blow the whistle at corporate malfeasance and attack corporate welfare. We should speak out when a company liquidates itself and its executives receive bonuses but rank-and-file workers are left unemployed. We should speak out when CEOs receive tens of millions of dollars in retirement packages but middle-class workers have not had a meaningful raise in years.

***

If Hispanic Americans perceive that a GOP nominee or candidate does not want them in the United States (i.e. self-deportation), they will not pay attention to our next sentence. It does not matter what we say about education, jobs or the economy; if Hispanics think we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies. In the last election, Governor Romney received just 27 percent of the Hispanic vote. Other minority communities, including Asian and Pacific Islander Americans, also view the Party as unwelcoming. President Bush got 44 percent of the Asian vote in 2004; our presidential nominee received only 26 percent in 2012.

As one conservative, Tea-Party leader, Dick Armey, told us, "You can't call someone ugly and expect them to go to the prom with you. We've chased the Hispanic voter out of his natural home."

We are not a policy committee, but among the steps Republicans take in the Hispanic community and beyond, we must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform. If we do not, our Party's appeal will continue to shrink to its core constituencies only. We also believe that comprehensive immigration reform is consistent with Republican economic policies that promote job growth and opportunity for all.

***

When it comes to social issues, the Party must in fact and deed be inclusive and welcoming.

If we are not, we will limit our ability to attract young people and others, including many women, who agree with us on some but not all issues.

***

The pervasive mentality of writing off blocks of states or demographic votes for the Republican Party must be completely forgotten. The Republican Party must compete on every playing field.

***

If Hispanic Americans hear that the GOP doesn't want them in the United States, they won't pay attention to our next sentence. It doesn't matter what we say about education, jobs or the economy; if Hispanics think that we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies. In essence, Hispanic voters tell us our Party's position on immigration has become a litmus test, measuring whether we are meeting them with a welcome mat or a closed door.

Throughout our discussions with various Hispanic groups, they told us this: Message matters.

Too often Republican elected officials spoke about issues important to the Hispanic community using a tone that undermined the GOP brand within Hispanic communities. Repairing that relationship will require both a tone that "welcomes in" as well as substantial time spent in the community demonstrating a commitment to addressing its unique concerns. As one participant in a regional listening session noted, "The key problem is that the Republican Party's message offends too many people unnecessarily. We win the economic message, which is the most important to voters, but we then lose them when we discuss other issues."

***

It is also a fair criticism that Republicans do not do enough to elevate Hispanic leaders within the Party infrastructure. This includes not just candidates running for office, but also senior decision-makers in the RNC's infrastructure. These personnel should not be pigeonholed into demographic outreach, but should be promoted to positions to develop political strategy and provide input on all budgeting decisions. The RNC must rebuild a nationwide database of Hispanic leaders and donors that can be a resource to the Republican community at large.

***

The RNC must invest financial resources in Hispanic media. In a $1 billion campaign, much less than 1 percent of the total budget was spent on Hispanic or other demographic group oriented media. At one point during the 2012 campaign, OFA was outspending us 8 to 1 in these media markets. If we are going to attract these groups to our Party and candidates, our budgets, and expenses need to reflect this importance.

***

The RNC must improve its efforts to include female voters and promote women to leadership ranks within the committee. Additionally, when developing our Party's message, women need to be part of this process to represent some of the unique concerns that female voters may have. There is growing unrest within the community of Republican women frustrated by the Party's negative image among women, and the women who participated in our listening sessions contributed many constructive ideas of ways to improve our brand with women throughout the country and grow the ranks of influential female voices in the Republican Party.

***

The Republican Party committees need to understand that women need to be asked to run. Women are less likely to run for office on their own, and we should be encouraging and championing their desire to seek elective office. Additionally, the Republican Party must recognize the unique challenges that female candidates face when running for office, as well as the unique opportunities female candidates provide in winning elections. The Party should provide training programs for potential female candidates that includes fundraising guidance, digital strategy, etc.

***

Another consistent theme that emerged from our conversations related to mechanics is the immediate need for the RNC and Republicans to foster what has been referred to as an "environment of intellectual curiosity" and a "culture of data and learning," and the RNC must lead this effort. We need to be much more purposeful and expansive in our use of research and more sophisticated in how we employ data across all campaign and Party functions. No longer can campaign activities be compartmentalized or "siloed" in a way that makes sharing resources and knowledge less efficient.

***

...we must develop a deeper talent pool that understands and can deploy data and technology/digital campaigning in decision-making processes and targeting efforts. More active recruiting on college campuses, providing internships and scholarships, and recruiting from commercial firms that may harbor talent with relevant skills sets is critical in providing the talent for future campaigns. The RNC should strive to establish working relationships and open lines of communication with thought leaders in Silicon Valley to ensure the Party is at the forefront of new developments and trends in digital technology. The Party can and should play an important role in building bridges between its digital operatives and the best minds in the Valley and elsewhere. And we must make an earlier commitment to field operations and ground game than we have made in the past to ensure a year-round, election-cycle-to-election-cycle presence that can improve the quality of our voter contact.

All of these areas of focus will require a reprioritization of resources through not only the RNC budget but also the budgets of the other national party committees, state parties, campaigns, allied groups, and Super PACs. But this is critical in order for us to move forward.

***

Identify a team of strategists and funders to build a data analytics institute that can capture and distill best practices for communication to and targeting of specific voters. Using the GOP's data, the data analytics institute would work to develop a specific set of tests for 2013 and 2014 -- tests on voter registration, persuasion, GOTV, and voter mobilization -- that will then be adopted into future programs to ensure that our voter contact and targeting dollars are spent on proven performance. These tests should be the first order of business of the analytics team and should incorporate pollsters, data managers, and messaging professionals at the table developing a variety of approaches that would be subject to measurement.

***

The number of early and absentee voters continued to increase this cycle, and Election Day voting continued to fall. In 2004, 76 percent of the electorate voted on Election Day; in 2012, 65 percent voted on Election Day, a decrease of 12 percent in eight years. The Democrats successfully front-loaded many of their votes this cycle, expanding their early vote and absentee reach and giving them a much better picture going into Election Day of who had already voted and who remained a target for their efforts. They continued to expand their advantage in early voting, and this cycle they ran a much more focused effort on absentee voting, which helped them close their margins.

This trend in early, absentee, and online voting is here to stay. Republicans must alter their strategy and acknowledge the trend as future reality, utilizing new tactics to gain victory on Election Day; it is imperative to note that this will be a critical cultural shift within the Party. Additionally, early voting should be factored into all aspects of political strategy, messaging and budgeting so that we understand that we are no longer working in an environment where 72-hour GOTV efforts will determine an election outcome. And again, we must test and retest what will work best with respect to contacts and persuasion of early and absentee voters.

The Democrats' effort on maintaining a year-round presence with field operations, and investing in infrastructure to support early and absentee vote programs, had a significant impact on the outcome of the election.

***

Our survey asked political professionals in what areas they would like to receive more training and education, and digital and social media were the second most popular items listed. In an open-ended question, 29 percent of all respondents mentioned one or both of these items in their comments.

Our challenge is less of a technology problem and more of a culture problem. As referenced earlier, we need to strive for an environment of intellectual curiosity, data, research, and testing to ensure that our programs are working.

***

The RNC should recruit and hire a chief technology and digital officer for the RNC by May 1, 2013, whose experience and background sends a strong and immediate signal that we are serious about growing our digital and tech operations and data integration. The chief technology and digital officer should identify, recruit and hire a working group of data scientists, tech and digital advocates to build a structure that can eventually be deployed during the 2014 midterm elections and the 2016 presidential race to provide a 21st century digital, data and tech operation for our candidates.

The RNC should begin the search for expanded technology and digital teams that can be deployed across every division of the RNC -- fundraising, political, communications, and so on to integrate the work of those divisions and increase the potential to use technology and digital in an efficient and effective manner. (These employees are separate and distinct from those described in the data section earlier.) Technology and digital should be treated as two separate but related functions in this process. The search for members of these teams should be expanded beyond the traditional political sphere and include individuals with significant professional experience in web development and marketing programs. Integration across all areas/offices/divisions is critical for success.

***

Programs such as the Republican State Leadership Committee's "Future Majority Project" (www.futuremajority.com) to recruit minority candidates and women candidates for the 2012 cycle have been highly effective and should be encouraged, and the RNC and state parties should expand their efforts in this area. In the 2012 cycle, the RSLC committed to spend $3 million to identify and support new GOP candidates of Hispanic descent and women for state office. Ultimately the RSLC identified 125 new Republican Hispanic candidates and 185 new women candidates. More than $5 million was used to successfully elect 84 new women and grow the state-level Republican Hispanic caucus. The RSLC has now established a Future Majority Caucus led by new Mexico Governor Susana Martinez and Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval along with a board of 10 rising stars from state legislatures across the country. Together, these leaders will help identify new candidates and develop even more ambitious goals for electing the new generation of GOP leaders.

***

There is a strong consensus that we have not invested the financial resources in a labor pool that can actively conduct and run "in-person" contact at the ground level. The Obama campaign budgeted its spending to ensure the most personal forms of voter contact were a priority. But they went beyond this. They gave volunteers and field staff flexibility in implementation and creativity in decision-making to get the most out of their field teams. And they acted based on information they received from volunteers through their voter contact operation. We need to write campaign plans that reflect an increased presence of field staff in states starting much earlier than we have done in the past.

***

By June 15, 2013, make an investment in field staff beyond traditional battleground states and make an earlier commitment to building the field team in all state operations. It is essential for the Party to grow the playing field. There are too few existing paths to 270 electoral votes for our presidential nominee under current trend lines. We need to aggressively work to put more states in play where we have infrastructure advantages over the Democrats based on our foothold in the governorships. And this requires an early commitment to building the team.

***

There is no consensus on the top problem facing pollsters, according to our survey, though it's clear that public pollsters and private pollsters of both parties faced several challenges during the 2012 election cycle. When asked to choose the single most important issue or problem facing pollsters when it comes to telephone polling accuracy, four problems (cell phones, demographics, refusals, and turnout) bubbled to the top in a close grouping, each mentioned by 18 to 21 percent as most important.

Concerns expressed by pollsters include the increasing use of cell phones, making contact on land-lines more difficult and accurate polling more expensive and expansive. Another issue of concern is the need to include more young voters and Hispanics in polling samples given the growth in the electorate in these groups. An additional challenge facing pollsters was a nonresponse bias that occurred as various groups reached different levels of fatigue in the elections process. 24 percent describe higher refusal and no-answer rates as a "very important" factor. For example, following Governor Romney's first debate performance, both public and private polling firms reported a drop-off in the number of Obama supporters who would agree to participate in surveys. Understanding this bias and correcting for it is a major challenge facing pollsters in the future. And finally, 36 percent of pollsters believe that "flawed turnout models" are a "very important" factor in poll inaccuracy. The concerns expressed in our survey mirror the concerns raised in specific conversations with pollsters during the course of our task force work.

Responses to open-ended questions in the pollsters' survey suggest that many pollsters would welcome regular meetings with other researchers to share best practices and pitfalls. It is important that GOP pollsters share information on a regular basis about sampling and weighting of samples, as well as assumptions made in interpretation of survey research, to ensure more accurate data that can be used in allocating campaign and Party resources.

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