If that is possible, then analysis and consideration of right wing candidates and their positions and the demographics of their supporters must be a part of that strategizing.
For example, let's consider Ron Paul's support for Habeus corpus. What if, there were a way to get other republican candidates to take a stand on this issue? It starts with Paul and then, the organizations holding debates would need to be persuaded to raise the question. Getting positions on this out, in the clear, could be very useful, later, when the primary races are over and decided.
What about all those anti-war Ron Paul republicans and independents? Whose campaign will they flock to when Paul is rejected by the religious right, when the MSM tear him apart, and mock him with three second Howard Dean Scream high rotation replays, if he even comes close to pulling double digits in Iowa or New Hampshire?
Does the DNC have a plan to pull them to democratic candidates? They should.
Of course, there are all those dailykos people who attacked me with nasty name calling when I suggested that there could be value in endorsing and supporting Ron Paul as the republican primary candidate. I guess they all do not want to think about the possibility of persuading hundreds of thousands of people without a candidate, people who believe in issues that are more closely aligned with democratic candidates.
I can see how some activists, even most activists would want to focus on supporting the campaigns of their chosen candidates. But I choose to defend the value in also considering and exploring strategic opportunities to use the Republican primary process and candidates to further the progressive cause. Holding a conversation on this approach offers promise of fruitful results. That means getting beyond just commenting on how all the Republicans are bad.
If, for example, Huckabee, who is a wacko on evolution, shows some positive direction on capital punishment, or some nuance on another issue, why not try to push it, to get the mainstream media to explore it, so other GOP primary candidates feel pressure to soften their positions. Who knows how far this approach could go? I surely hope that somewhere, DNC strategists are thinking along these lines. They ought to be. With billions to be spent on this election, every nook and cranny of opportunity should be explored.
Of course, I expect the majority of progressives to put their efforts into helping their chosen candidates to win. But I don't think it is a mistake for some on the left to look at the forest, the wind, the weather, as well as the trees.
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Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
Check out his platform at RobKall.com
He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity
He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com
more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)
