Georgia Republicans are being flooded with the best campaign money can buy. But money can buy ads, consultants, mailers, and slogans. It cannot buy a record.
I have been interested in politics for as long as I can remember. I have been involved in the actual Georgia Republican Party organization since 2009 — about seventeen years now, in addition to studying politics in college, before law school.
That is long enough to notice a few patterns.
There is the general public — We the People — who usually vote for the party that most closely reflects their values. They may not attend conventions. They may not read every platform plank. They may not know every county chairman or district officer. But they generally know which direction they want the country to go, and in November they vote for the nominee of the party that best represents them, and that party, statistically, tends to be the same one year after year.
Then there are the grassroots volunteers.
These are the people who show up for free. They go to county meetings. They knock doors. They read legislation. They fight over rules. They hold elected officials accountable. They care about whether candidates actually believe and enact what they say. They care about the platform. They care about promises. They care about whether politicians remember the party that sent them once they get into office.
And then there is the paid political industry.
That industry is not primarily made up of statesmen, philosophers, constitutional scholars, or public servants. It’s not made up of people who understand political philosophy, or policy, or history. It is made up of people who say they 1know how to win campaigns. That is a different skill.
They know how to poll test a phrase.
They know how to cut a flattering ad.
They know how to buy enough television time to create a rags to riches story to make a stranger feel familiar.
They know how to make a candidate with no record sound like a movement.
They know how to make a man with a voting record look worse than a man with no voting record at all.
And most importantly, they know this: if they spend enough money, repeat the same message enough times, and flood enough mailboxes, a certain number of voters will eventually believe whatever they are told.
That is the whole business model.
The paid political industry does not need you to be informed. It needs you to be impressionable.
It does not need you to remember what someone has done. It needs you to react to what someone’s ad says this week.
It does not need a candidate with a history. In fact, a blank slate is far easier to sell. A blank slate has no bad votes, no hard choices, no public record, no years of decisions to defend. A blank slate can be whatever the consultants say it is.
That is why this governor’s race matters. …
