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Technology Gap
Just how far has the GOP fallen behind the Democrats in terms of technology? Well, they sent a telegram.
There are many ways to measure how screwed Republicans are after the last election.
You can look at the avalanche of swing states that broke big for Barack. You can look at the demographic shifts that left McCain-Palin with decisive wins only among voters over age 60 and towns with populations under 50,000. Or you can look at my emergency telegram from John McCain.
For the uninitiated—and that would be anyone under 60—telegrams were the instant-message of the horse and buggy era, the Internet boom of the 1850s.
Telegrams don’t exist any more. Western Union sent its last telegram without much fanfare in 2006, after modern technology (beginning with the telephone) left it nothing more than a sentimental novelty.
But nostalgia is apparently alive and well at the RNC. They’ve been sending these same fundraising letters since at least the 1970s, when a portion of the population could still equate “telegram” with “urgent.”
How quickly the Republicans recognize their need to modernize will depend on how much they like losing. It’s not an impossible task to catch the Democrats, but it will require a cultural revolution inside the GOP.
Because, like generals fighting the last war (or campaigns re-running culture war scripts that riff on late-1960s divides), the right-wing direct mail “gurus” who profit from every GOP campaign didn’t feel it necessary to update their templates for the third presidential campaign of the 21st century. Or, arguably worse, they were actually aiming for the very, very old among us.
Either way, it illustrates a comment made to me by a top GOP strategist during the campaign: “Our voters don’t use the Internet.”
No doubt this was a well-researched fact. But accepting it is also the kiss of death, because it becomes justification for inaction. It’s an acceptance that the GOP has become that party that pridefully plays to the low tech, an inevitably declining slice of the demographic pie. They have become the “Party of Memory” that Emerson wrote about in the early days of our democracy, versus “the Party of Hope” as re-branded by Obama.
The Obama campaign’s pioneering use of new technology is already well-established legend. It hired one of the founders of Facebook to connect to a new generation, revolutionized grassroots fundraising, pulled unprecedented Get-Out-the-Vote efforts, and, with an army of 10 million registered supporters, is about to introduce Presidency 2.0 to the American people.
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GOP pollster Frank Luntz was recently quoted as saying, "The right controls AM radio. The left controls the internet. I'd much rather have the internet."
The reason the internet is so effective is that it is a two way medium that keeps the user involved whether he agrees with the message or not. Thereby persuasion and conversion are possible. All other forms of communication are one way. If I don't agree with the message I can easily tune it out. I won't stick around long enough to be persuaded.
John,
You are so smart that it is scary. Great piece.
It's simple: you write it, I read it.
Hey, there is still telegrams - look what I found:
http://www.iTelegram.com
Thank you.
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