Weldon's Brain

Bush has Karl Rove. Weldon had...Drexel Hill's Alexi Vandenberg?

This headline recently ran on PoliticsPA: Read the March 2006 memo that Republican strategist Alexi Vandenberg wrote on how Congressman Curt Weldon should run for re-election [Link downloads a PDF document.] If you read it, you will be able to reverse engineer Weldon's 2006 campaign.

Some highlights:

International Politics does nothing but alienate the Congressman from local voters. Most of the voters couldn't locate Korea on a map let along be concerned about what they want to do to the US. [Later...] It also allows Sestak to tout his own background in military and international affairs.

Methinks we simultaneously give Weldon too much credit, and the voters of Delaware County too little.

Paint Sestak as a carpetbagger.

Attempted and failed, but it was the only strategy Curt really had, so he's not to be blamed for trying. Sestak supporters found him to have sufficiently deep ties to the community, but they were also looking for somebody with competence and a plan. This was a cycle where the issues were serious (Iraq) and large in scale (Iraq). A candidate who directly addressed those issues was going to do better than a candidate who resorted to name-calling.

Reformat the venerable GOP machine...

So we're finally acknowledging that it's a machine? That's a breath of fresh air.

Vandenberg's memo talks about techniques that are more akin to movements than machines, and those two forces do not co-exist peacefully. Machines use carrots (patronage, access, influence) and sticks (coersion, inaction) to exert and maintain power. Machines work, but people also eventually get sick of being manipulated.

If the GOP wants to reverse its current trends and grow its ranks, they should scrap all the vestiges of the War Board, recruit a bunch of fresh young faces, and rediscover the Delaware County that moved in while they were sleeping. Instead, Weldon had Campaign Manager Puppio.

Movements are fueled by a dedicated grassroots. And there was only one movement candidate in this election.

In addition, utilize the fractured nature of the Democratic Party in Delaware County to create fissures that can be exploited. This is easily done considering that Chairman Wilson seems hell bent on creating them without our help.

Easily done, eh? Another miscalculation created by Machine-think.

Political machines create internal power structures that are hard or impossible to buck. While it's true that there's a split in the Democratic party in Delco, that division has only to do with differing strategies about how the party should be built and operated. Politically, it's inside baseball.

But there is no ideological divide; no hardliners vs. moderates disagreeing about issues. By the end of his first week, Sestak had already transcended the intra-party disagreements. There was never a question that we were unified in our commitment to Joe's victory.

The campaign charted its own course, and the motivated volunteers--not all of whom were Democrats--helped to carry out the plan.