These are much shorter questions which need answering.
If the MB is what the author claims then explain why we are sending them 25 of our latest aircraft?
What, if anything, have we extracted from Morsi for this shipment?
What will Morsi do with these planes and does he need them?
Is it simply a way to ship money to Egypt to buy planes from American manufacturers and thus, a way of laundering tax payer money to employ Americans?
Sen.Rand Paul posed many of these same questions recently to an empty Senate.
Our foreign aid has generally bought us few permanent friends, seldom gets to the people and mostly lines the pockets of corrupt leaders who eventually get overthrown leaving us holding the bag in terms of our popularity. This has been the case from Cuba's Batista forward in my lifetime.
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I have been involved in the stock market for 54 years and what I know you could put in a thimble.
That said, I believe the current market is a reflection of the fact that the various world central banks have flooded their economies with currency and this money is finding a home in stocks as bond rates no longer provide adequate returns.
At some point the world economies will begin a co-ordinated recovery. In fact this has already begun. The U.S. economy is probably a year ahead of Europe and China is back on track for 7 % or more growth.
Two unanswered questions are: a) how will the various central banks mop up all this induced liquidity and b) what will be the effect?
I believe markets will lead when it comes to interest rates rising and the various central banks will follow. As this phenomenon occurs the next challenging question is what level of inflation can we expect and will inflation be contained? Historically our own Federal Reserve has done a poor job of engineering a soft landing.
I am posting two articles. The first is about an opportunity which is premature but inevitable and is the story of Liquid Natural Gas and the second is one man's view about the future of gold. (See 1 and 1a below.)
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Most oppressive and restrictive monarchies eventually go the way of all flesh. This analyst predicts the same happening to the Saudi Regime. (See 2 below.)
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Home front challenges! (See 3 below.)
And yet, as bleak as the outlook is, Obama was re-elected. Why?
Newt offers some thoughts about what Republicans must address in this abbreviated version of his extensive report. (See 3a below.)
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Dick
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| The giant natural gas boom is "the single biggest game changer of the next two decades." This week, I spoke with Dr. Kent Moors on my S&A Investor Radio podcast. Dr. Moors is an energy expert and a consultant to the world's largest oil companies. He is also editor of the energy investment newsletter Energy Advantage. And this week, he confirmed what longtime readers already know… America's huge new energy supplies have opened up an amazing opportunity for American companies to make "an absolute fortune internationally." Let me explain… The big picture will be familiar: Advances in drilling technology have fueled an awesome boom in North American natural gas production. In fact, Dr. Moors estimates the U.S. has enough recoverable, unconventional natural gas that we could increase production 25% each year into the foreseeable future. As he explained, all that gas is about to find "a new, very profit-intensive international market." He's talking about the market for liquefied natural gas (LNG). Two weeks ago, I explained how shipping natural gas across the ocean requires extremely expensive, extremely complex terminals and ships. Because of these costs, we don't have an extensive transportation network for natural gas. Thus, while natural gas prices can be low in North America, which has a very large supply, they're still high in other parts of the globe. With so much demand for the clean fuel coming from India, China, and Europe, these price gaps could fuel a huge boom in U.S. LNG exports. Some energy analysts are skeptical of this market's potential. It will only be economical if natural gas prices remain cheap in the U.S. and expensive overseas. In short, prices of natural gas could push sharply lower once these countries use similar technologies to extract natural gas from shale. But that isn't likely to happen anytime soon. Dr. Moors explained, "The U.S. is about eight years ahead of the rest of the world in that. In this business, eight years is like light years." You see, it's extremely difficult to find natural gas in shale areas that have never been tapped. "Mother nature has an irritating habit of indifferently placing the hydrocarbons inside the shale. You have to [begin] several wells before you get an idea of what the return is likely to be in a given area." The U.S. has 42 major shale basins with hundreds to thousands of wells drilled in each. Every discovery gives producers more information on where to find additional natural gas. On the other hand, Poland is just beginning to tap its five known basins. Some foreign companies have already been involved in early drilling there. But energy giant ExxonMobil recently pulled out of the country after hitting several dry wells. Huge environmental hurdles are also delaying the discovery of shale gas deposits in the international markets. New drilling technologies, like fracking, have been banned by France and Bulgaria. Other European countries may follow suit. In other words, the price gaps should stay open for a long time. Right now, the U.S. accounts for zero percent of the LNG export trade. But Russian energy giant Gazprom estimates that figure will drastically change over the next 10 years. By 2020, up to 12% of all the LNG traded in the world will come from the U.S. This is an amazing number – which Dr. Moors describes as a "major transformation of the global energy balance." As I've explained before… right now, only one company has been licensed in the U.S. to build an LNG-export facility (Cheniere Energy). But there are at least 16 in the pipeline awaiting government approval. The government should approve several of these projects in 2013. Sure, it will take years before America actually exports large volumes of the clean fuel. But it's going to happen… And if you're interested in making the biggest possible gains, you have to take a position soon. Focus on the companies that specialize in building LNG terminals, pipelines, and all the rest of the infrastructure the world is going to need. Once the U.S. government approves the LNG permits, these firms will be first in line to get big contracts. The shippers will also do well as the next leg of this energy megatrend plays out… Only a handful of companies can transport the clean fuel using vessels. Dr. Moors is right… The U.S. exporting natural gas is one the biggest "game-changing trends" in the world. Whatever way you decide to trade it, act soon… Good investing, Frank Curzio |
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 Germany's central bank – the Bundesbank – recently announced it would bring back within its borders 300 of 1,500 tonnes of gold it currently stores with the Federal Reserve (and all of the 374 tonnes of gold it stores in France).Germany repatriating its gold is one of the many warning signs we've had that the entire global paper-money system is collapsing under the weight of the colossal debts it has enabled. We've predicted that the dollar will eventually lose its status as the world's reserve currency. And as we lose the power to print money to pay our debts, America will face a severe financial crisis… And that's the biggest reason why I don't use any leverage to buy real estate. I don't want to owe money to anybody in a world where the dollar could collapse overnight. This isn't the first time our allies have demanded we return their gold…In the late 1960s and early 1970s… as the Vietnam War was ratcheting up domestic spending and inflation… the world lost faith in the U.S. to cut its budget and reverse its trade deficit. Keep in mind… This was a time when foreign governments could legally redeem their paper dollars for gold. So French President Charles de Gaulle began doing just that. In 1965, he took $150 million of his country's dollar reserves and redeemed the paper currency for U.S. gold from Ft. Knox. De Gaulle even offered to send the French Navy to escort the gold back to France. Spain did the same… redeeming $60 million of U.S. dollar reserves for gold. Many other nations followed suit. To stop a run on Fort Knox, President Nixon ended the direct convertibility of the dollar to gold on August 15, 1971. I described what happened next in the January 2012 issue of myInvestment Advisory:
Of course, at the time, the U.S. was the world's largest creditor… Today, we're the biggest debtor in history. So the consequences will be much worse… Germany is clearly questioning if we're still a reliable borrower. Essentially… it's asking for its gold back because it has doubts that the Federal Reserve still has it. It's terrifying when one of our long-term allies essentially says, "We don't trust you anymore. Give us back our gold."That's a big deal… It means that we're on the way to losing our ability to finance our government spending with debt. And when that happens, it's going to be an absolute nightmare. I don't want to borrow money from banks because I'm afraid that they will have to call it back in an emergency. And I don't want to lend money to banks because I'm afraid they will all collapse.And I sure as heck don't want to put my gold in a bank because I don't want them to seize it. So where do I hide my gold? I store it in places where I know it's safe. And I keep it in multiple locations. Of course, I'm not going to tell you exactly where it is. But I will tell you… it's never in my house. So don't rob my home looking for gold. It's not there. I don't put my kids and my gold in the same place because I'm not stupid. It's not going to be anywhere someone's likely to look. The other thing to remember… gold doesn't rust, so you can put it virtually anywhere. Put it in a shoebox and hide it in the back of your barn. It'll be fine. No one is going to look for it there. I think anytime you've got a country that's as bankrupt as ours… that has a trillion-dollar annual deficit and no political will to stop the spending… it's a good time to buy gold. By the way, this just came out last week… The U.S. Mint has run out of silver.It ran out of silver Eagles and had to suspend sales. When the mint cannot keep up with demand for physical bullion (gold and silver), something is totally wrong with the spot prices. It makes no sense that there would be so much preference for physical bullion that the mint can't keep up with demand, unless the spot price is being manipulated to keep it artificially low. Now I'm not a giant conspiracy theorist. But I know how economics work. The demand for physical bullion is a sure sign that the marketplace does not trust the futures price, period. The futures market pricing for gold and silver is becoming more and more irrelevant. And the shortages you're seeing in physical gold are sure signs that something has gone terribly wrong…Regards, Porter Stansberry ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2)ANALYST EXPECTS COLLAPSE OF SAUDI MONARCHY Shift in power could profoundly affect U.S. Middle East interestsEditor’s Note: The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, the premium online newsletter published by the founder of WND. Subscriptions are $99 a year or, for monthly trials, just $9.95 per month for credit card users, and provide instant access for the complete reports.
WASHINGTON – Bruce Riedel, a former U.S. intelligence official and a current adviser on foreign policy to President Obama, isn’t holding out much hope for the future of the Saudi monarchy, and he believes its downfall could profoundly affect U.S. interests in the Middle East, according to report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
The Saudi regime, says Riedel, has managed to prevent any democratic movements in any of the Arab Gulf states, preserving the monarchies.Riedel, who is with the Washington think-tank Brookings Institution, had penned a memorandum to the president that warns the Saudi regime is vulnerable to overthrow. He argues the monarchy maintains “complete authority” and the Saudi royal family “has shown no interest in sharing power or in an elected legislature.”
However, he warns that all of the monarchies could be in jeopardy if revolution were to come to Saudi Arabia.
“The Sunni minority in Bahrain could not last without Saudi money and tanks,” Riedel says. “Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are city-states that would be unable to defend themselves against a Saudi revolutionary regime, despite all their money.”
Yet, the U.S. continues to back the Saudi regime, and he urges Obama to do more to strengthen it as well as its neighboring monarchies in an effort to crush the “Arab Awakenings.” In effect, Riedel is urging the president to do what is necessary to ensure against democratic revolution in those countries.
“Since American interests are so intimately tied to the House of Saud, the U.S. does not have the choice of distancing the United States from it in an effort to get on the right side of history,” Riedel says.
Riedel instead proposes that the Obama administration “encourage” modest reforms while at the same time being prepared to not only prop up the Saudi regime but “be ready to shore up the neighboring kingdoms and sheikhdoms.”
Bahrain, for example, has a Sunni monarchy that rules over a Shiite majority population. Thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets over the past two years demanding reforms, but their efforts have been forcibly put down.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE even sent troops into Bahrain to shore up the Sunni monarchy, believing that Shiite Iran is behind efforts to extend its influence in the Gulf Arab countries.
Saudi Arabia itself has seen increased Shiite demonstrations in its most eastern province, which has much of its oil production. Saudi authorities have wasted no time in firmly stopping any opposition demonstrators.
While Riedel believes that support for the Saudi regime enhances the U.S. war against al-Qaida, sources say that the Saudis continue to finance foreign, radical Islamist efforts as long as they don’t carry out attacks in the kingdom.
Riedel, a strong backer of Israel, has made it clear that Saudi Arabia has been in the forefront of impeding the advancement of its chief nemesis in the region, Iran.
He points out that the Saudi kingdom has backed revolutions in Libya and Syria that were supposed to “undermine longstanding enemies of the kingdom, especially Iran.”
Since the 1979 treaty between Egypt and Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan have formed the foundation of the security arrangement in the region. Israel and these countries have regarded Iran as their adversary, but Egyp,t under the Muslim Brotherhood-backed president, Mohamed Morsi, appears to be leaning increasingly toward Iran.
The advent of the “Arab Spring” two years ago has brought the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, which even the Saudis find threatening, since the Brotherhood is against monarchies.
In the mind of presidential adviser Riedel, revolutionary change in the kingdom would be a disaster to U.S. interests. Continued instability in the kingdom also would wreak havoc on global oil markets, setting back economic recovery in the West.
To many observers, however, continued U.S. support for the Saudi monarchy amid movements for democratic change in the Middle East have further called U.S. policy into question.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3)President Obama and the 113th Congress have some major challenges ahead of them -- including facing the facts of our country's economy. The Next Generation Data Card puts the monumental economic challenges we face into perspective. 
3a)
THE CHALLENGE CONFRONTING THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
Newt Gingrich
December 2012
To Chairman Reince Priebus:
Thank you for inviting me to present an analysis for the Republican National Committee about the current challenges Republicans face at every level.
... Reforming the Republican Party so it can create a governing majority is an enormous challenge which includes every element of the party. However as you have observed the RNC has a key role to play in bringing together the ideas and the critiques and helping shape a clear vision of a successful GOP.
I begin with three famous quotes about solving problems.
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” Albert Einstein.
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Einstein
“When I couldn’t solve a problem I would always make it bigger until I could find the solution. I never solved it by making it smaller,” President and General of the Armies Dwight Eisenhower on problem solving in World War Two.
PROPOSITION
The scale of strategic thinking Republicans need is vastly larger and deeper than any current proposal recognizes. The Republican National Committee will play a particularly important role in gathering information, encouraging analysis, hosting dialogues about key changes, and helping implement strategies for victory in 2014 and 2016.
This will require a deep, bold, thorough, and lengthy process of rethinking.
I was so shaken by how wrong I was in projecting a Republican win on election night that I have personally set aside time at Gingrich Productions to spend the next six months with our team methodically examining where we are and what we must do.
In that context I was delighted when you appointed a distinguished team to lead the analysis for the Republican National Committee. I appreciate your invitation to work directly with them on a process that will be important to the entire Republican Party and ultimately to the country.
This paper is a step in that direction.
This initial analysis is direct, tough minded, and daunting.
As you recognize, the Republican National Committee is not merely the junior partner of whoever becomes the next presidential nominee.
The Republican NATIONAL Committee has a key role to play in every level of party activity including Congress, Governors, state legislators and local offices and activists.
That key role has often led to profound improvements in the GOP at a time of electoral disaster.
THE RNC ROLE IN KEY PERIODS OF CHANGE
The RNC has historically played a very important role in recognizing new realities and developing new strategies and new structures.
After the disastrous collapse of the GOP in 1964 Chairman Ray Bliss played a decisive role in rebuilding the party structure. Within two years President Lyndon Johnson had created such a mess and Republicans had rebuilt so rapidly that the GOP won decisive victories for Congress and for Governorships.
After the devastating Watergate defeat of 1974 Chairwoman Mary Louise Smith led a courageous rethinking of the party’s strategies and structures. Her Executive Director, Eddie Mahe, undertook an exhaustive in depth look at a party which had dropped to 18% support among the American people( the lowest since the Great Depression).
In 1977 Chairman Bill Brock built on that rethinking. He backed Congressman Jack Kemp’s concept of supply side tax cutting to create economic growth. In 1978 Brock paid for the “tax cut clipper” to fly Kemp and Senator Roth around the country. This was a very courageous step because many establishment Republicans ridiculed Kemp’s ideas and opposed his bill. Even when Reagan adopted it in the campaign it was derided as voodoo economics by some Republicans).
I campaigned on supply side tax cuts and won a House seat in 1978 after losing in 1974 and 1976. I know Kemp’s ideas made a big difference.
Brock invested heavily in party structure and in ideas. After Margaret Thatcher won the May, 1979 election, Brock brought her advertising team to the United Stares and we studied intensely how they had communicated complex ideas in simple, vivid language. I was honored as a freshman to be part of that group and I know it disseminated a new wave of ideas that along with Reagan’s adoption of them shaped the GOP for a generation.
After the 1992 defeat Chairman Haley Barbour was decisive in renewing enthusiasm, raising resources, and helping shape and implement strategy. Without Haley’s help we would not have had a Contract with America, would not have won the first House GOP majority in 40 years or re-elected it for the first time since 1928 in 1996.
Your leadership in creating the Growth and Opportunity Project sets the stage for exactly that kind of decisive impact over the next few years.
OUR CHALLENGE
There will be forces urging The Growth and Opportunity Project to develop a shallow, quick fix, small change approach to our current challenges.
There are very powerful, well connected, and prestigious forces who have made a lot of money out of the old system and have a huge interest in keeping it intact. It may be bad for the GOP but it is good for them.
There are a number of influential people who are simply uncomfortable trying to think through fundamental change. They like to raise money and spend money. Over the last six presidential elections they have been in the minority five times. If money were the answer by now they would have found a majority.
The committee has an historic obligation to insist on a very deep, through analysis of where we are, what we did, the challenges we face, and the strategies and structures needed to win in the future.
If basic rethinking doesn’t make a lot of people very uncomfortable it isn’t serious enough, thorough enough or bold enough.
This makes the Growth and Opportunity Project a central activity for the party in the next six to nine months.
THE THREAT
Too many Republicans underestimate the scale of the threat we face.
There is a combination of demographic trends, cultural changes, technological breakthroughs and intelligent, disciplined application of resources which could turn America into a national version of Chicago or California.
It is very unlikely Republicans will win in California without major changes.
It is very unlikely Republicans could win in Chicago even with major changes.
Those Republicans who assume bad events will beat the Democrats in 2016 underestimate the power of machines to survive bad performances.
In good economies or bad Democrats win in Chicago.
Throughout the decay and decline of Detroit (from 1,500,000 people with the highest per capita income in 1950 to under 800,000 and 67th in income today) Democrats won despite failure after failure.
In Argentina Peronism shattered the country’s political culture three generations ago and Argentina has never recovered.
The Democrats have been building a national machine while the Republicans have been running campaigns.
Four years of preparation (one could argue 20 years of preparation going back to the first Clinton victory) collided with a two to six month Republican general election campaign.
President Obama combined the lessons he learned as a neighborhood organizer with the principles and systems he learned from the Chicago machine. In Florida alone they had 800 full time staff by Election Day. In some areas they had paid people who had lived in neighborhoods for over three years before the election.
This was organizing unlike anything Republicans had imagined.
As a general rule Machines beat campaigns.
It will take a large coalition working year around to bring enough people and resources together to defeat a machine
Unless Republicans profoundly and deeply rethink their assumptions and study what the Democrats have been doing the future could become very bleak and the Clinton-Obama majority could become as dominant as the Roosevelt majority was from 1932 to 1968 presidentially and from 1930 to 1994 in the House of Representatives.
THE OBAMA ACHIEVEMENT
No Republican should kid themselves about the scale of President Obama’s political achievement.
I was one of those who thought he would almost certainly be defeated.
Election night results have forced me to rethink everything I understood about how America makes political decisions.
With a bad economy, high gasoline prices, radical policies, and a massive deficit, precedent suggested that President Obama would lose in 2012.
However the President’s campaign recognized the challenges and designed strategies and structures to overcome them.
Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher asserted that “first you win the argument, then you win the vote.”
The Obama campaign took her adage to heart.
Exit polling indicated that Obama won the argument over the economy and by a large margin the American people blamed former President George W. Bush rather than his successor for the economic mess.
Building on advantages they had before the campaign began, the Obama team sealed off African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans (amazingly, by a bigger margin than Latinos), younger Americans and especially young single women.
Look at that list.
If the Democrats sustain their dominance in those groups, how can we believe we will be building a successful Republican future.
From a geographic perspective how do we write off New England, New York, California, Illinois, etc and think we are going to compete. One analyst noted that the Democratic majority starts with about 250 electoral votes and simply has to find 20 extra electoral votes to win the Presidency.
This emerging Democratic machine helps explain why, in five of the last six Presidential campaigns, the GOP has failed to win a majority (and the 2004 Bush reelection was the smallest re-election margin of any President in our history).
If we were a sports team with that record every fan would be demanding profound change.
OUTSIDE KNOWLEDGE
The current Republican consulting class and their professional campaign acolytes simply don’t know enough to provide the level of knowledge we need.
Our effort should include reports from and dialogues with a number of people who have never been Republican consultants (see the “Questions” section below for some examples).
There should be special RNC meetings throughout 2013 to host day long workshops in which experts from a variety of areas immerse the committee in the realities of the world in which we will be competing.
The workshops should be streamed online and cached at an “RNC STRATEGIC THINKING” website so every Republican activist and concerned citizen can also learn and offer suggestions and comments.
We need a bottoms up rethinking involving many, many people, not a top down “expert led” process.
The experts just proved they aren’t experts so we should be very cautious about their reassurance that now they know what they didn’t know six weeks ago.
An open process would also fit more into the emerging nature of the Internet based, wireless, Information Age fluidity.
MEASURABLE CHANGE
When the analysis has been absorbed and the new strategies and structures adopted it is vital that the Republicans insist on changes that are measurable.
For too long we have tolerated consultants and staff promising change as they went back to their comfortable but losing ways.
For too long we have been intimidated by incumbents and candidates who promise to follow new strategies and grow new structures but promptly fall back into the same old habits and patterns.
Mayor Giuliani’s use of specific measurements to fight crime in New York is a case study of insisting on and getting real change.
The results of the Growth and Opportunity Project should lead to measurable differences in the GOP over the next few years.
REPUBLICAN ASSETS
As we enter this process it is important to remember we have a lot of assets.
Having lived through 1964 and 1974 I can personally testify that we are much stronger today.
In November 1974 only 18% of the country identified as Republican. It’s hard to believe that six years later Ronald Reagan won in a landslide and two years earlier Nixon had won re-election in a landslide- a note for those who think things can’t change rapidly.
The exit polls for Congress in 2012 indicated 33% identified as Republican, 39% as Democrats, and 28% as independents.
Republicans control the US House ( not true in either of those earlier disasters).
We have 30 Governors representing 315 electoral votes (45 more than it takes to win the Presidency).
In 24 states Republicans control both the Governorship and the legislature.
Those 24 states have 161,390,000 people or 51.2% of all Americans living under Republican government.
There are only 14 states with total Democratic control.
Overall there are 3863 Republican state legislators and only 3519 Democratic state legislators.
Thus we are in a period where there could be an alliance between 30 Republican Governors and a Republican US House of Representatives which could highlight better solutions and also highlight the failures of the federal government.
There is also a large bench of talent in the Republican state legislators which could lead to a future of very good candidates at every level.
The question is if we can identify a strategy and structure which enables us to turn those assets into a victorious future majority.
THE REPUBLICAN CAUSE
Learning how to win in the 21st century is vital to the cause of freedom. The Republican Party remains dedicated to the cause of Liberty as described by our first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln when he described the source of American prosperity:
“All this is not the result of accident. It has a philosophical cause. Without the Constitution and the Union, we could not have attained the result; but even these, are not the primary cause of our great prosperity. There is something back of these, entwining itself more closely about the human heart. That something, is the principle of “Liberty to all”—the principle that clears the path for all—gives hope to all—and, by consequence, enterprise, and industry to all.
“The expression of that principle, in our Declaration of Independence, was most happy, and fortunate. Without this, as well as with it, we could have declared our independence of Great Britain; but without it, we could not, I think, have secured our free government, and consequent prosperity. No oppressed, people will fight, and endure, as our fathers did, without the promise of something better, than a mere change of masters.”
We remain dedicated to the cause of freedom and liberty but we have to master the technologies and systems of the 21st century to ensure that that cause is victorious. We have to apply the principles of freedom, safety, prosperity, and liberty to helping Americans of all backgrounds understand how our approach will lead to their having better lives.
QUESTIONS
The key questions are about Republicans, not about Romney. It is a big mistake to focus the blame for this defeat on Governor Romney. He did not lose the majority in 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2008. This is a much bigger, deeper problem than an analysis of 2012 in isolation will solve.
The following are examples of the kind of questions the Growth and Opportunity Project should be exploring. This list is not inclusive but is merely illustrative of the depth of knowledge we need with which to begin our exploration of strategies and structures for the future.
Many of these questions will require a dialogue over time rather than a single meeting or single report. Some of them may remain works in progress over a number of years.
Start with what the Democrats have been doing right. Build a library of must reads starting with books like Plouffe’s The Audacity to Win, Bai’s The Argument:Inside the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics, and Witwer and Schrager’s The BluePrint(: How the Democrats Won Colorado(and why Republicans Everywhere should care). A small team should be assigned to pull together every book, article, and interview which helps explain what the Democrats have been doing and to organize them into topics for analytical access by every interested Republican. A working group should also issue a report on lessons to be learned after thoroughly reviewing all this material. Someone should become the chief researcher and archivist on our opponents’ systems and activities.
2. We need a map of the Democrats’ coalition and the scale and intensity of their coalition. Their organized efforts and networks simply dwarf anything Republicans and conservatives have developed. Furthermore, their coalition is a permanent system of activism while the Republican consultant model is campaign focused and therefore both episodic and isolated. An ongoing coalition can mass and focus more energy and resources than isolated short time-horizon campaigns,
3. We need a clear distinction between coalition-based campaigns and consultant-based campaigns. There are profound differences in systems, styles, structures, and attitude. The last three big Republican Presidential victories (1980, 1984, 1988) were coalition campaigns. The House victories of 1994, 1996, and 2010 were coalition victories. The Republican consultant class, many campaign professionals, and many Republican staff are deeply opposed to the coalition model. This choice is decisive in growing a bigger, stronger, and more robust GOP. The RNC should insist on this debate and force the transition to a coalition model including within the RNC structure itself. This question of strategic doctrine and the culture and structure which implements it is central to the future of the party. Another billion dollars spent on the wrong strategy and structure will be another billion dollars wasted. As an analogy, the French had more and better tanks in 1940 than the Germans. However they had the wrong strategy and structure for using the tanks. They were routed in days by a more modern doctrine. Doctrine defeats dollars and the bulk of the professional GOP is wedded to the wrong doctrine. This change will be painful but unavoidable if we are to become a truly competitive 21st century organization. The problem is not consultants, campaign professionals, and staff as such. We need solid professionals and experts who can develop complex strategies, build complex structures, and run complex campaigns. The challenge is to convert the culture and doctrine from one that is focused on candidate centric, consultant defined campaigns to one that is built around coalitions, long term party building and team efforts.
4. We need a timeline and analysis of the Obama Presidency and campaign. Some components of the campaign go back to 2006 and have been growing and evolving ever since. Micro-targeting, micro-leaders, micro-communities, and micro-issues all existed within a larger narrative. There was solid connection between campaign needs and Presidential and Executive Branch activities (including policies, appointments and schedules).
5. Infotainment is a world Democrats enjoy and use and Republicans either disdain or fear, and as a consequence avoid. The View, the Daily Show, the Colbert Report, Leno, Letterman, ESPN, Nickelodeon, MTV, and on and on, represent patterns of communications Republicans often disdain, seldom appear on and as a consequence are simply invisible to their audiences. The same could be said for most ethnic media. We need a report on the appearances of Democrats and Republicans in these areas in 2011 and 2012 and then we need a strategy for Republican engagement.
6. The strategic nurturing over time of micro-issues with micro-organizations and micro-communicating ( a pattern much richer and more powerful than micro-targeting) to create micro-communities that support their team and their candidate has been vastly better done by Democrats. This deserves its own study and a strategic response that will require very different systems and structures. There is a huge difference between the strategic development of issues over time (often lasting through several election cycles) and the Republican consultant and professional staff focus on tactics with very short time horizons.
We need at least three case studies of the growth of strategic issues on the left. The contraception issue ( which none of the GOP candidates understood when first raised in a debate by George Stephanopoulos in December, 2011) grew into the War on Women and became a major coalition message by the time of the Democratic National Convention. Post-election polling indicates it was very effective in mobilizing and solidifying one segment of the Obama coalition. It is a good example of a case study we need. How do we grow our issues? How do we recognize and trump their issues?
What other strategies should be studied as examples?
7. The 47% comment by Governor Romney reflected a deep belief by many conservatives and Republican consultants, campaign professionals, staffs, and activists. The entire psychology of writing off vast parts of a country or state and focusing narrowly may make some sense for a specific campaign. but it is a formula for permanent minority status when adopted by a party. The GOP should end red-versus-blue and narrowly focused targeting models. What would a 100% Republican Party be like if we planned 2014 and 2016 with no reference to red or blue states or counties. It is true that President Obama ran a deliberate class warfare divisive campaign. However if you analyze his winning coalition it is amazing how many components were bonded by micro-communities and a sense of inclusiveness that transcended a narrowly class warfare approach. We have to understand this pattern of defining differences while being openly inclusive.
8. California should be a test of the new inclusive solutions-oriented GOP. Having our largest state dominated by the other party is an enormous disadvantage for Presidential elections and for controlling the House. Furthermore a one-party California has proven to be economically and educationally a disaster for Californians. Finally, a GOP which includes minorities will by definition be competitive in California. A special California victory project should be developed and sustained by the RNC until California is robustly competitive again (think of it as the equivalent of the long RNC investment in growing support in the South).
9. A truly national party also has to learn to compete in urban America. The 87.5 per cent turnout in Milwaukee, which shocked Wisconsin Republicans, should also be seen as a rebuke to a GOP which has atrophied in urban America. The RNC will need an urban operation that recruits, trains, and supports candidates in urban environments. One of the RNC’s great contribution in the 1970s and early 1980s was an aggressive local candidate program. The local elections division was crucial to the growth of the post Watergate Party. In the mid-1980s it was reinforced by GOPAC. Without the work of those two systems we would not have won a majority in 1994. The RNC is NOT the presidential committee. It is the NATIONAL committee. As such it should methodically build the party at every level. This requires a structure and budget to make the commitment real.
10. Washington is going to be a mess for the next four years, but there are 30 state capitols with Republican Governors achieving positive solutions. In 24 states there is Republican control of the executive and legislative branches. There should be a close, daily alliance between the RNC, the RGA, and House Republicans. Every effort should be made to move Republican achievements from the states to the national media. House Republicans should host hearings led by Republican Governors with success stories and other hearings with Republican Governors reporting on waste and failure in the federal government in their states. In addition, a thorough analysis should be undertaken of successful Republican Governors. How do thy win? How do they govern? How do they hold their coalitions together? Washington has a lot to learn from the states.
11. The challenge of Latino, Asian American, Native American and African American supportI must be met or the GOP will become a permanent minority party. We must think through inclusion and not outreach. Out reach occurs when five white guys have a meeting and call minority activists. Inclusion is when the activists are in the meeting. As a start, the RNC should bring together minority elected Republicans and those white Republicans who do best in minority communities. New strategies and systems have to be built starting with listening to the people we want to recruit and attract. This challenge is so big, so hard, and so central to our success that it should be one of the top three items at every meeting and have one of the larger budgets at the RNC. Anything less will simply fail as it has for the last 50 years. The same model of inclusion has to be applied to expanding Republican strength among women and especially among younger single women. We should establish specific goals for increases in support within each group for 2014 and 2016.
12. How did the Obama team manage such enormous turnouts? What components of message and mechanism went into that historic result? Could it be matched by a Republican effort, and if so, how?
13. Data science Obama-style has no relationship to the Republican model of Internet politics. The Obama system is helped in data science by its 85 to 90% dominance of Silicon Valley. If you have the founders of Google and Facebook helping you design your system you have an enormous advantage over your competitors. The challenge of social networking, micro-community building and citizen mobilization may be second only to the challenge of including minority Americans in the GOP in determining whether Republicans decline into minority status for the next several decades.
14. The gap between Republican and Democratic pollsters is ominously large. The shock many Republican analysts and “experts” got election night was extraordinary and should lead to a deep, long rethinking of Republican assumptions about the country and the campaign. In my case, it is leading me to six months of in-depth questioning, learning and analysis at Gingrich Productions. If it is true that the Obama team was doing 9,000 calls a night internally, connected to their data scientists while also using traditional polling it represents a world no Republican can match today. This is at the heart of knowing reality better than your opponent and it has to be honestly and courageously addressed.
15. In story telling and narrative development, the mismatch of resources is as great as in Internet capabilities. Hollywood, New York City, academics, the news media and trial lawyers are the dominant story tellers in American life. Every one of them is overwhelmingly (80% plus) Democratic. Republicans have complained about the inarticulateness and communications ineffectiveness of the party for the entire time I have been involved (going back to August 1958). This is the third great strategic challenge along with minorities and the Internet community.
16. The cultural and language context of politics is being changed dramatically by entertainment and by the education system. A 30-second ad can’t offset hundreds of hours of sitcoms. A key speech can’t turn around years of indoctrination by left wing teachers and professors. Republican planning has to be much more aware of the context, especially for younger voters, within which we are messaging. In the long run there have to be strategic responses to the left’s domination of entertainment and education.
17. The key to success in politics as in war is the ability to stay on offense. There is a deeply destructive tendency among Republicans to fall into a defensive mode (watch the current “fiscal cliff” process as a depressing example). Learning to stay on offense requires a strategic vision that enables you to constantly orient to the future, an operational system that allows you to be inside your opponent’s decision cycle ( see Boyd’s work on OODA-loops for an explanation) and the tactical skill to dominate the media, which will normally be opposed to you. Republicans as a group have none of these capabilities.
18. What is the Republican vision of a successful America built by a freedom, opportunity, safety and prosperity majority? If we have no positive vision to attract people to and no positive vision toward which we can develop policies, it is impossible to stay on offense and impossible to build the micro-communities and coalitions which lead to victory. We have to translate that national vision into offering a better future in personal, believable terms that draw people away from a culture of dependency and enable us to offer a positive future rather than simply attacking the left. We need to become a party that people want to belong to. For example, we should have had a positive answer for lower cost, better outcome health care in addition to opposing Obamacare. People need to know what we are for even more than what we are against.i
19. These changes will require retraining or replacing much of the current generation of consultants and campaign staff. All too many of our current consultants and professional campaign staffs have very short time horizons built around negative campaigns of tearing down their opponents. This does not imply that we can succeed without consultants and campaign staff ( and knowledgeable counterparts in public office). Just the opposite. Their jobs are so critical we have to ensure they have the right doctrine and the right skills.
20. There should be an analysis of the Obama campaign compensation model. Is there a model of compensation which creates a longer time horizon? A model which encourages investing in a ground game as much as in television advertising? A model which has high rewards for winning or for meeting metrics (in some areas we may want to run starter campaigns to just begin re-engaging those communities and in those cases, the metrics of achievement may deserve rewards even while falling short of victory)?
21. What changes should Republicans make to maximize the effectiveness of their resources? There is a great deal of confusion about the efforts of the campaign, the committees, the superpacs etc. What do we need to learn from 2012 and how can we improve resource allocation in future campaigns?
22. What functions should be decentralized outside Washington? What lessons can be learned from the Obama-Democratic Party system.
23. There should be an honest, tough minded review of the campaigns, the party, and the super-pacs. There is a widespread view that money is not being distributed based on performance and proposals but instead is being distributed based on cronyism, favoritism, closed (rigged.) bids etc? This is a Republican issue not an RNC issue. Too much money was spent by too few people with too few victories to avoid these questions.
24. One test for the emerging new insights, strategies and structures would be to ask, if they had been in place in 2009 would they have enabled us to win in 2012? When the various studies have submitted their recommendations, it would be healthy this August or September to have a two day simulated 2009-2012 rerun using the new decisions to see what impact they would have had. That might be a powerful last step in developing a new model, Information Age, inclusive Republican Party capable of becoming the governing majority.
25. As we listen to the larger country and learn more about key groups we failed to win in 2012 a number of new issues will begin to emerge. We need an issue development process that will enable us to build micro-communities or supporters and appeal to many people who do not consider themselves Republican. However this process of issue development should grow out of the new lessons and not prejudge them.
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