As a movement, we have enjoyed unparalleled growth over the past few decades, particularly, over the past few years with the advent of the Tea Party. We have more conservative thinkers, writers, talk radio hosts, and organizations than Ronald Reagan would have ever imagined. Most importantly, we have more passion and grassroots activism than ever. However, the most direct way to affect conservative change is to win elections; both primary and general. Writers, thinkers, and speakers help galvanize and unify the conservative movement, but we cannot win elections on superior ideas and arguments alone.
The seminal ingredient to electoral success has not changed; it all boils down to turning out the vote and establishing an efficient and effective ground game to connect with the most consequential voters in a given district. What has changed is electronic communication. The only way to run an effective campaign in this era of mobile devices and social media is to create the perfect synergy between the venues of communication, the voter information, and the GOTV operation.
Let’s face it; the left has been drubbing us in the race to harness technology for GOTV. The entire Google establishment is married to the Obama machine. In fact, they have been outgunning us in GOTV in general. We crushed the Democrats in the war of ideas and the political narrative in 2010, yet we dramatically underperformed our historic potential for success due to a lopsided GOTV disadvantage. We underperformed our polling numbers in key states because of the superior ground game of the leftist union machine. We will never fully succeed if we only seek superior ideas and passion, especially when we are already at a disadvantage in terms of time, treasure, and talent.
This is where American Majority comes into play. As Erick always says, American Majority and AM Action are among the few organizations that he wholeheartedly endorses without any reservations. They think of all the key elements of affecting generational change from the local school board on up to statewide office – and implement them with overwhelming effectiveness. And most importantly, in this era of intra-fighting between Tea Party organizations and personal egos, they are true team players.
Today, American Majority Action unveiled “Gravity,” the most advanced campaign management software and voter database system on the market. Developed together with Political Gravity TM , a leader in conservative political software technology, this all-in-one tool will allow Tea Party activists and conservative campaigns to communicate with and target the exact voters that are needed to win elections. The most unique aspect of this is that they are giving out free subscriptions to any authentic local Tea Party organization. National organizations and candidates can subscribe for a dramatically reduced rate. Freedom Works counts among the earliest prominent subscribers.
All of the information and the voter surveys were built from scratch to conform to the needs of conservative organizations and candidates. This was developed by conservatives for conservatives and will not be shared with anyone else.
Specifically, Gravity users can walk through neighborhoods with tablets or iPhones (and Droids) and have access to the most up-to-date information on any voter within the region, and can filter it based on any data point; from policy issues to income to voting history. Not only does Gravity display an instant Heat Mapping capability, it filters the heat map by voter intensity. Then, when the targeted audience is identified, Gravity provides the activist with the best route to canvass those voters. So if you’re canvassing for a Tea Party candidate against an establishment Republican in a low-turnout primary, you can instantly see all of the information about the most intense Republican primary voters and have access to the most efficient canvassing plan. In states that have early voting, you can track through the heat map which voters (filtered by any data point) have not voted yet. The entire operation can be monitored by the campaign managers with one bird’s eye view through the lens of this App.
There are numerous other features embedded into this one-stop shop that would normally cost campaigns thousands of dollars per item without the seamless connectivity, that Gravity provides for a rate that even a candidate for local office can afford. It contains everything from hard ID’ing micro-targeting technology, VOIP technology, to automatic direct mailing and even a function to file FEC reportings – all in one App. You can literally manage every aspect of a campaign from Gravity. American Majority Action is working on some new secret capabilities that will be added to the system and out in the field for this cycle. They will all be shared with Tea Party organizations that share their intrepid vision of limited government.
This is what it looks like to take conservatism to the next level. This is winning.
Cross-posted from The Madison Project
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Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL)
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