Get your message down, and then stick with it. A message from Ralph Reed to an early audience in the metro.
The experts will tell you to get your message down -- I call it you stump speech -- and repeat it until you are tired of hearing yourself give it. At about such as you are tired of your message, voters are just beginning to hear it. And forgetting all else, stay on message.
Is Ralph Reed going with what the experts say? If he does, this is the speech that Georgians will be hearing for the next several months as Reed has just kicked off his two-year marthon campaign for . . . .
And why post such? In politics as in life, keep your friends close but your enemies closer.
Address by Ralph Reed, Jr.
to the
Rotary Club of Gwinnett
Duluth, Georgia
March 1, 2005
I want to take a minute and talk about the 2004 elections, the meaning of that victory for the state of Georgia, and also provide a glimpse into how the outcome of the elections will affect public policy at the national and state level.
On November 2, 2004, George W. Bush received 62 million votes for President of the United States, 12 million more votes than he received four years earlier, and more votes than any candidate has received in history. He was the first candidate for President in either party to win a majority of the popular vote since 1988.
Turnout was up overall, but in the Bush states (the so-called Red states) turnout surged by an estimated 22 percent. This pattern prevailed nationwide. President Bush won a higher percentage of the vote in Massachusetts in 2004---even though it was his opponent’s home state. And he won a higher percentage of the vote in North Carolina than he did in 2000, this time with a member of the opposing ticket from the Tar Heel state, whereas four years earlier the running mate, Joe Lieberman, was from Connecticut.
President Bush won re-election as the first incumbent president to gain seats in the House and Senate since Franklin Delano Roosevelt did it in 1936. Any time you are mentioned in the same breath as FDR as President, that is very select company. The last time a Republican incumbent President gained House and Senate seats while being elected was Calvin Coolidge in 1924---so it had not happened in 80 years.
The victory was impressive and across the board. President Bush won a majority of the Catholic vote (52 to 47 percent) against the first Catholic nominee for President by either major party in 44 years. He won 40 percent of the Hispanic vote, the highest percentage by a Republican presidential candidate in history. In the all-important state of Florida, the President won 56 percent of the Hispanic vote. The gender gap, the traditional Democrat advantage among women voters, stood at 16 points in 1996, but fell to a statistically insignificant 5 points in 2004.
In the South the President carried all 14 states and their 173 electoral votes. The average margin in those states was 58 to 42 percent. Here in Georgia, the President’s margin of victory rose from 303,000 votes in 2000 to 550,000 in 2004. He carried 131 of Georgia’s 159 counties. This outcome vindicated the pre-election verdict of Senator Zell Miller, who correctly concluded that the Democratic Party is truly a “national party no more.”
This trend has potentially significant long-term ramifications. No Democrat has ever won the White House without carrying at least four Southern states. And failing to do well in the South is becoming more important due to our region’s growing population. In 1960 the South represented one-fourth of the national vote and the Electoral College; today it represents one-third of the national vote, and it continues to rise as its population grows.
Here in Georgia, Republicans added four new seats in the state Senate and elected a majority in the state House for the first time in134 years. This had actually been the desire of the state’s citizens since at least 2000, when Republicans won a majority of the statewide vote for state Senate and state House but were precluded from gaining a majority by gerrymandered districts. Johnny Isakson was elected to the U.S. Senate and for the first time since Reconstruction both Senators from Georgia are Republicans.
How did these victories occur? There are three main reasons, and they applied in the presidential race as well as the contests here in Georgia in 2002 and 2004.
First, Republicans built a stronger and more effective grassroots organization. At the Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign, we recruited 1.4 million volunteers, registered 3.3 million new voters, and re-energized 7 million Republican voters who had become inactive. Those volunteers made 15 million voter contacts in the final week of the campaign by phone, email, or door-to-door campaigning. Here in Georgia, we recruited 41,000 Bush-Cheney volunteers even though we were not a targeted state and had little in the way of national resources. In cooperation with the party’s 72 Hour Task Force, those volunteers were deployed in key counties and state legislative districts where they knocked on tens of thousands of doors and made hundreds of thousands of phone calls.
Second, we simply had better candidates. President Bush, Governor Perdue, Saxby, and Johnny Isakson all motivated our core supporters but also ran as bridge-builders and unifying candidates who reached out to voters who had not always felt welcome in our ranks. That is why we did well among Hispanics, young people, women, veterans, small business owners, and seniors. President Bush is a strong leader who took clear positions and had an optimistic vision of where he wanted to take the country.
Third, we ran on a bold, conservative agenda that is also compassionate. President Bush believes very strongly that he was not elected to pass on to his successors the same challenges he inherited from his predecessor. That is why he is tackling the impending fiscal crisis facing Social Security in spite of the fact that the politics of the issue can sometimes be difficult. The truth is that Social Security begins to pay out more than it takes in from workers by 2018. By roughly 2027 the annual deficit between revenue and benefits will be $200-300 billion a year and by 2042 the system is effectively insolvent, unable to pay beneficiaries their promised benefits.
On terrorism, the President is committed to bringing human freedom and liberty to people who have only known oppression, tyranny and bloodshed. Think about this: in the past roughly 130 days we have seen over 100 million people on two continents---Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories---freely choose their own leaders in the first truly democratic elections that many of those nations have ever known. Now Egyptian President Hosni Mabarak has called for elections in his country, the Syrian-dominated puppet regime in Lebanon has been dissolved, and we are closer to true peace between a democratic Palistinean state and Israel than at any time since the Camp David accords were signed.
Like the President, Governor Perdue believes in governing exactly as he campaigned, with bold ideas and real solutions to the problems facing our state. After years of dramatic increases in state spending, Governor Perdue is restraining the appetite for further taxes and spending through fiscal restraint. The budget picture has improved, we have created about 40,000 new jobs in the past year, the General Assembly will soon pass real ethics reform, and we have fixed the gerrymandered state legislative districts, and I hope will soon repair the gerrymandering of Congressional districts. The Governor has also led education reform measures like the master teacher program and the virtual classroom initiative, which allows students in rural areas gain access to advanced placement and college preparatory classes.
The General Assembly has passed civil justice reform to lower the litigation tax that Georgians bear, a cost of nearly $800 to $1,000 per person.
Although the main focus was on common-sense limits on non-economic damages, an even more important provision was the offer of judgment, which states that if a plaintiff declines a reasonable offer of settlement and then fails to win a greater judgment in court, that plaintiff must pay the court costs and attorney fees for the person they sued. I believe this will restore confidence in the civil justice system, make it easier for Georgia to attract business and create jobs, and made it easier for physicians and hospitals to do their job of healing and caring for their patients.
I have recently announced my candidacy for Lt. Governor of Georgia. My governing philosophy is very simple. I believe that government should do a few things and do them well: protecting the borders, maintain a safety net for the least fortunate, keeping our neighborhoods safe, and, at the local and state level, educating our children. I would like to see us look at ways to restrain spending by tying the budget to increases in the population and inflation. In the 1990’s the population increased by 23 percent while the budget doubled. Right now our population is increasing at a rate of 2 percent a year, revenue is increasing at 6 percent, and Medicaid spending is increasing at 16 percent. We need budget and Medicaid reform to keep spending from exploding and potentially squeezing our ability to fund education.
A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the President’s second Inaugural in Washington. I know that the pundits and the press like to suggest that the President is inarticulate. I disagree. I thought his inaugural address was one of the most stirring and eloquent in our nation’s history.
In that address, the President said that we should believe the evidence of our eyes. What is that evidence? We have seen terrorists with hearts filled with hatred turn airliners into missiles and fly them into skyscrapers in the heart of the financial capital of the world. We have seen husbands and wives trapped on those airliners spend the final moments of their lives making a final call on a cell phone to a parent, a spouse, or a child, leaving a simple message on a tape machine that said, “I love you.” We have seen firefighters and police charge up smoke-filled stairwells to their deaths as they sought to save others. We have seen the bravery and heroism of our soldiers who are risking their lives every day to give freedom to people on the other side of the world that they do not even know.
The sum total of this evidence, in the President’s words, is that “Life is fragile, evil is real, and courage is triumphant.”
The President called us to “serve a cause larger than your wants, larger than yourself---and in your days you will add not just to the wealth of our country, but to its character.”
That is what you do every single day as Rotarians, as Georgians, and as Americans. I urge you to continue to do so and in so doing we will build an even better Georgia and America. Thank you.
Is Ralph Reed going with what the experts say? If he does, this is the speech that Georgians will be hearing for the next several months as Reed has just kicked off his two-year marthon campaign for . . . .
And why post such? In politics as in life, keep your friends close but your enemies closer.
Address by Ralph Reed, Jr.
to the
Rotary Club of Gwinnett
Duluth, Georgia
March 1, 2005
I want to take a minute and talk about the 2004 elections, the meaning of that victory for the state of Georgia, and also provide a glimpse into how the outcome of the elections will affect public policy at the national and state level.
On November 2, 2004, George W. Bush received 62 million votes for President of the United States, 12 million more votes than he received four years earlier, and more votes than any candidate has received in history. He was the first candidate for President in either party to win a majority of the popular vote since 1988.
Turnout was up overall, but in the Bush states (the so-called Red states) turnout surged by an estimated 22 percent. This pattern prevailed nationwide. President Bush won a higher percentage of the vote in Massachusetts in 2004---even though it was his opponent’s home state. And he won a higher percentage of the vote in North Carolina than he did in 2000, this time with a member of the opposing ticket from the Tar Heel state, whereas four years earlier the running mate, Joe Lieberman, was from Connecticut.
President Bush won re-election as the first incumbent president to gain seats in the House and Senate since Franklin Delano Roosevelt did it in 1936. Any time you are mentioned in the same breath as FDR as President, that is very select company. The last time a Republican incumbent President gained House and Senate seats while being elected was Calvin Coolidge in 1924---so it had not happened in 80 years.
The victory was impressive and across the board. President Bush won a majority of the Catholic vote (52 to 47 percent) against the first Catholic nominee for President by either major party in 44 years. He won 40 percent of the Hispanic vote, the highest percentage by a Republican presidential candidate in history. In the all-important state of Florida, the President won 56 percent of the Hispanic vote. The gender gap, the traditional Democrat advantage among women voters, stood at 16 points in 1996, but fell to a statistically insignificant 5 points in 2004.
In the South the President carried all 14 states and their 173 electoral votes. The average margin in those states was 58 to 42 percent. Here in Georgia, the President’s margin of victory rose from 303,000 votes in 2000 to 550,000 in 2004. He carried 131 of Georgia’s 159 counties. This outcome vindicated the pre-election verdict of Senator Zell Miller, who correctly concluded that the Democratic Party is truly a “national party no more.”
This trend has potentially significant long-term ramifications. No Democrat has ever won the White House without carrying at least four Southern states. And failing to do well in the South is becoming more important due to our region’s growing population. In 1960 the South represented one-fourth of the national vote and the Electoral College; today it represents one-third of the national vote, and it continues to rise as its population grows.
Here in Georgia, Republicans added four new seats in the state Senate and elected a majority in the state House for the first time in134 years. This had actually been the desire of the state’s citizens since at least 2000, when Republicans won a majority of the statewide vote for state Senate and state House but were precluded from gaining a majority by gerrymandered districts. Johnny Isakson was elected to the U.S. Senate and for the first time since Reconstruction both Senators from Georgia are Republicans.
How did these victories occur? There are three main reasons, and they applied in the presidential race as well as the contests here in Georgia in 2002 and 2004.
First, Republicans built a stronger and more effective grassroots organization. At the Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign, we recruited 1.4 million volunteers, registered 3.3 million new voters, and re-energized 7 million Republican voters who had become inactive. Those volunteers made 15 million voter contacts in the final week of the campaign by phone, email, or door-to-door campaigning. Here in Georgia, we recruited 41,000 Bush-Cheney volunteers even though we were not a targeted state and had little in the way of national resources. In cooperation with the party’s 72 Hour Task Force, those volunteers were deployed in key counties and state legislative districts where they knocked on tens of thousands of doors and made hundreds of thousands of phone calls.
Second, we simply had better candidates. President Bush, Governor Perdue, Saxby, and Johnny Isakson all motivated our core supporters but also ran as bridge-builders and unifying candidates who reached out to voters who had not always felt welcome in our ranks. That is why we did well among Hispanics, young people, women, veterans, small business owners, and seniors. President Bush is a strong leader who took clear positions and had an optimistic vision of where he wanted to take the country.
Third, we ran on a bold, conservative agenda that is also compassionate. President Bush believes very strongly that he was not elected to pass on to his successors the same challenges he inherited from his predecessor. That is why he is tackling the impending fiscal crisis facing Social Security in spite of the fact that the politics of the issue can sometimes be difficult. The truth is that Social Security begins to pay out more than it takes in from workers by 2018. By roughly 2027 the annual deficit between revenue and benefits will be $200-300 billion a year and by 2042 the system is effectively insolvent, unable to pay beneficiaries their promised benefits.
On terrorism, the President is committed to bringing human freedom and liberty to people who have only known oppression, tyranny and bloodshed. Think about this: in the past roughly 130 days we have seen over 100 million people on two continents---Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories---freely choose their own leaders in the first truly democratic elections that many of those nations have ever known. Now Egyptian President Hosni Mabarak has called for elections in his country, the Syrian-dominated puppet regime in Lebanon has been dissolved, and we are closer to true peace between a democratic Palistinean state and Israel than at any time since the Camp David accords were signed.
Like the President, Governor Perdue believes in governing exactly as he campaigned, with bold ideas and real solutions to the problems facing our state. After years of dramatic increases in state spending, Governor Perdue is restraining the appetite for further taxes and spending through fiscal restraint. The budget picture has improved, we have created about 40,000 new jobs in the past year, the General Assembly will soon pass real ethics reform, and we have fixed the gerrymandered state legislative districts, and I hope will soon repair the gerrymandering of Congressional districts. The Governor has also led education reform measures like the master teacher program and the virtual classroom initiative, which allows students in rural areas gain access to advanced placement and college preparatory classes.
The General Assembly has passed civil justice reform to lower the litigation tax that Georgians bear, a cost of nearly $800 to $1,000 per person.
Although the main focus was on common-sense limits on non-economic damages, an even more important provision was the offer of judgment, which states that if a plaintiff declines a reasonable offer of settlement and then fails to win a greater judgment in court, that plaintiff must pay the court costs and attorney fees for the person they sued. I believe this will restore confidence in the civil justice system, make it easier for Georgia to attract business and create jobs, and made it easier for physicians and hospitals to do their job of healing and caring for their patients.
I have recently announced my candidacy for Lt. Governor of Georgia. My governing philosophy is very simple. I believe that government should do a few things and do them well: protecting the borders, maintain a safety net for the least fortunate, keeping our neighborhoods safe, and, at the local and state level, educating our children. I would like to see us look at ways to restrain spending by tying the budget to increases in the population and inflation. In the 1990’s the population increased by 23 percent while the budget doubled. Right now our population is increasing at a rate of 2 percent a year, revenue is increasing at 6 percent, and Medicaid spending is increasing at 16 percent. We need budget and Medicaid reform to keep spending from exploding and potentially squeezing our ability to fund education.
A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the President’s second Inaugural in Washington. I know that the pundits and the press like to suggest that the President is inarticulate. I disagree. I thought his inaugural address was one of the most stirring and eloquent in our nation’s history.
In that address, the President said that we should believe the evidence of our eyes. What is that evidence? We have seen terrorists with hearts filled with hatred turn airliners into missiles and fly them into skyscrapers in the heart of the financial capital of the world. We have seen husbands and wives trapped on those airliners spend the final moments of their lives making a final call on a cell phone to a parent, a spouse, or a child, leaving a simple message on a tape machine that said, “I love you.” We have seen firefighters and police charge up smoke-filled stairwells to their deaths as they sought to save others. We have seen the bravery and heroism of our soldiers who are risking their lives every day to give freedom to people on the other side of the world that they do not even know.
The sum total of this evidence, in the President’s words, is that “Life is fragile, evil is real, and courage is triumphant.”
The President called us to “serve a cause larger than your wants, larger than yourself---and in your days you will add not just to the wealth of our country, but to its character.”
That is what you do every single day as Rotarians, as Georgians, and as Americans. I urge you to continue to do so and in so doing we will build an even better Georgia and America. Thank you.
posted by Sid Cottingham | 9:30 AM
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