Just A Rant

I am from the Chicago suburban area. I grew up within the operations of the Dem Machine of Chicago, and in reality now, Cook County. As a Republican operative since 1982, I have seen the Dems pick off pockets of previous GOP strongholds in suburban Cook County and the collar counties, precinct by precinct. The problem has been that GOP leaders never even see it coming. They always seem to want to cling to an "old boys network" and never look to fresh blood, new ideas, or new constituencies.

What we saw happen November 4, 2008 was the culmination of a campaign that took Karl Rove's model of 2000 and 2004 and add Chicago style machine politics. This election was not won during the months preceding the Presidential campaigns. The campaign started year prior when Obama sent his ACORN (and affiliated) troops to places like Missouri to elect Claire McCaskill and Virginia's Fairfax (Asian) and Prince Williams (Hispanic) counties to insure the defeat of George Allen as Senator.

Since 2004, they have been micro-targeting precincts, wards, and counties. Their targeted bases? Constituencies ignored by the GOP (see Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and other Red Turned Blue states).

Sorry for the rant, but I am not happy about current GOP operations.

There are constituencies out there ripe for the GOP to court and win over. George Bush did it in 2000 and 2004. Unless we learn from our mistakes, we will follow the slide started in 2006.

Paul