Hennessy's View

Ed Martin Jr. of St. Louis has redirected his fire to the Attorney General race, and this is great news for everyone except Chris Koster.

Back when Ed Martin was talking about running for the Republican nod to take on Claire McCaskill, I had another thought.  Well, a bunch of people had another thought: Ed would make an outstanding Attorney General.

*********UPDATE*********

HUGE list of endorsements on Ed’s official press release. 

******************************

I guess I was right.

I wasn’t disappointed that Ed chose to run for Todd Akin’s US House seat. Ed would make a great conservative legislator.  And as I said before, so will Ann Wagner, who can now focus on  . . . whichever Democrat decides to give a concession speech at 7:01 pm on November 6.

But, at this pivotal moment in history, as Attorney General, Ed Martin will be Missouri’s general in the war on Washington abuse.  Here’s why.

First, Ed has used his law license for the good of society, to protect life, to defend the wrongly accused, and to advance his—our—conservative principles.  He’s not a lawyer who’s in it for the money.  I’ve met some of the people he’s helped, and I’ve heard their stories.

In these battles, including a nationally covered battle against Illinois’s criminal Governor Rod Blagojevich, Ed Martin was tenacious, principled, and victorious.

Missouri needs an AG who will fight for the right things. 

Second, Ed understands that the battle for liberty over the next 12 years will be fought between the states and Washington. The states—and only the states—have the Constitutional power and the economic leverage fight Washington and win. 

The Several States vs. US Government will be ugly,long, and painful. [Insert your analogy here.]  Most people will lose their stomach before it’s over. People—even good conservatives—will want to throw in the towel and heel to the Washington monster.

Ed won’t.  He understands that Congress, with its entrenched establishment and elitist snobbery, is as close to a lost cause as you’ll find.  He wants to be one of 50 state attorneys general who, with their governors and secretaries of state, beat Congress into submission.(I said “ugly.”) 

Ed Martin has a clear path to take on turncoat Democrat Koster in November.  That fight begins today. When Ed prevails in November, Missouri will have an Attorney General who actually has read and understands the 10th Amendment of the United States Constitution—and a man who’s smart to know it matters.

Previously on Hennessy’s View about Ed Martin:

Give Me 5 Minutes, And I’ll Give You a New Friend

Name the One Tea Partier in the Race

11 Minutes of Exactly What We’re Talking About

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What’s the difference between a caucus and a primary?

Who’s allowed to attend a caucus?

How do I find out my caucus location?

When it the caucus?

How long does it take?

How to do I get ready?

This Is Important Stuff

These are just some of the questions I have about the Missouri Republican Presidential Caucus scheduled for March 17. And I’m not the only with questions. 

That’s why St. Louis Tea Party Coalition has asked caucus expert Ruth Carlson to begin preparing us for this journey.

On Thursday, January 19, Ruth will give us the fundamental, most important, basic information about the caucus process. 

Don’t Skip the Primary

Plan to vote The Missouri Presidential Primary on February 7, 2012. Plan to vote. Know why? 

Because Ruth told me it’s important.  Apparently, party insiders sometimes try to challenge caucus-goers they don’t know. Voting in the Republican primary will insulate you from these charges. Even though the law only requires that you be a registered voter in the district, the insiders sometimes try to put up barriers.

And that’s just one of the important lessons Ruth will teach.

So, mark your calendar right now.  Plan to be at The After Party on Thursday, January 19 at 7:00 pm. Location is:

Fallon’s Irish Bar and Grill
9200 Olive Blvd.,
Olivette, MO 63132

You can set a reminder here.

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It depends on how you score.

I see three scoring scenarios:

1. Best conservative performance
2. Best electability performance
3. Best positional performance

Conservative performance is pretty clear: whose answers appeal to conservatives?  (Does not mean conservatives believed the candidate meant what he said.) This is not Tea Party scoring, either. I’m not limiting my evaluation to the 3 core Tea Party principles of Constitutionally limited government, free markets, and fiscal responsibility.  This is broader conservatism.

Electability performance means the candidate appealed to general election voters. This doesn’t meant centrist—it means not scaring the crap out of people who aren’t politics wonks. (That’s most voters, by the way.)

Positional performance means the candidate did what what he had to do based one his current standings in he nomination process.

On conservative performance, I have to go with:

1. Santorum
2. Perry
3. Gingrich / Romney

Electability

1. Santorum
2. Gingrich
3. Romney

Positional

1. Romney
2. Santorum
3. Gingrich

If we give 3 points for first place, 2 for second, and 1 for third, we get this composite ranking:

1. Santorum: 8 points
2. Gingrich:  6 points
3. Romney:  5 points

What does it all mean? 

Santorum should move up a bit in the polls before the New Hampshire primary, but not enough to win.  He needed Romney to finish out of the top 3 in this debate. 

Gingrich needed to pull Romney out of the top 3 and get closer to Santorum than he did.  This hurt Newt.

Romney improved his chances, but he didn’t close the deal.  The longer he lets Santorum and Gingrich stay in the game, the more vulnerable his lead becomes.

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That’s with 88 percent of the counting complete.

The bigger story: Romney’s underperforming his 2008 results in key counties.  Santorum outperforming Huckabee in 2008. 

What does it all mean? 

Conservatives and libertarians dominate the caucuses. 

Romney is the choice of the Republican establishment. The cronies poured millions into his campaign even before he declared himself a conservative.  He’s won endorsements from just about every big name general election loser include Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush. (UPDATE: McCain to endorse Romney tomorrow.)

Yet Romney garnered only 25 percent of the Iowa caucuses (as of this posting). Rick Santorum, an afterthought two weeks ago, leads Romney by 13 votes. Ron Paul is in third with 21 percent. The Professor and Mary Ann and the rest, not so good.

So 75 percent want a non-establishment Republican candidate.

Every candidate except Romney is non-establishment in the voters’ eyes, no matter how you might evaluate their ideologies.

All this means that if the race were between Romney and two non-establishment candidates, Romney would lose.

That’s good news for the GOP and for the  country.

For the GOP because establishment Republicans have a weak record against liberal Democrats in the general.

Good for America because the GOP establishment is largely responsible for Republican loses in 2006 and 2008. And, of course, because the most important mission of a generation is changing who occupies the White House this year.

P.S.  You might hear a lot about the 17th Amendment and Cloture between now and South Carolina.

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Have you ever studied human networks?

I’m not talking about online social networks alone, but any kind of human network.

They’re amazing.

Networks tend to determine who we date, who we marry, and where we work. Our lives are more influenced by networks than we can imagine.

A network community can be defined as a group of people who are much more connected to one another than they are to other groups of connected people found in other parts of the network. The communities are defined by structural connections, not necessarily by any particular shared traits.

Christakis, Nicholas A.; Fowler, James H. (2009-09-09). Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives (p. 12). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.

Most importantly, though, networks determine who wins elections.

A large body of evidence suggests that a single decision to vote in fact increases the likelihood that others will vote. It is well known that when you decide to vote it also increases the chance that your friends, family, and coworkers will vote.10 This happens in part because they imitate you (as discussed in previous chapters) and in part because you might make direct appeals to them. And we know that direct appeals work. If I knock on your door and ask you to head to the polls, there is an increased chance that you will. This simple, old-fashioned, person-to-person technique is still the primary tool used by the sprawling political machines in modern-day elections. Thus, we already have a lot of evidence to indicate that social connections may be the key to solving the voting puzzle.

Christakis, Nicholas A.; Fowler, James H. (2009-09-09). Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives (p. 181). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.

Old fashioned, retail politics—knocking on doors, canvassing—creates human social networks.  By looking someone in the eye, you connect with them.

As Nicholas Christakis pointed out, Obama didn’t win because he connected with voters; he won because he connected voters to each other.

The After Party is how we’re beginning to build that network. One person acting alone is necessary but limited. One person acting in concert with one hundred others is powerful. Two or three 100-node networks quickly become invincible.

Above is my LinkedIn network. On the right is work. The orange is Tea Party. (Yes, I’m pulled in many directions.)

Seeing one’s network graphically helps you understand just large and important your networks are to getting anything done.  To give you some perspective, my Facebook network is at least 3 times the size and complexity of this one.

A recent study on social media confirmed and elaborated Christakis’s work. It found that two key social media roles can launch revolutions:  recruiters and spreaders.

Recruiters are highly influential starters, originators, movers.  They are not necessarily tightly connected to many people.  They are, however, connected and influential among very important types of people: spreaders.

Spreaders are connected to people with lots of connections.  They know lots of people. They have lots of Twitter followers or facebook friends. More importantly, their followers listen to them and respond. These are the people Malcolm Gladwell called “Connectors” in his fabulous book The Tipping Point.

From the research:

Researchers followed the posting behaviour of 87,569 users and tracked a total of 581,750 protest messages over a 30-day period. They found that the growth of the movement was driven by two parallel processes: the recruitment of users, started by early participants who provided what the study calls ‘random seeding’; and the diffusion of information, which made the movement grow from those roots by means of the ‘spreaders’. The latter were more central in the network not necessarily because they had a higher number of connections but because they were connected to others with equally good connections

Revolutions and movements start when a recruiter calls for a new action. Then the spreaders spread the call. People (nodes) in the network repeat the call. People start showing up—on the Arch steps on a cold February Friday.

Then the signal jumps to other networks. Recruiters in these other networks relay the signal to their own spreaders who pass along the call to action.

The Tea Party failed in 2010.  No doubt about it.

The reason The After Party is so crucial right now, is that networks, not heroic individuals, will win the 2012 primaries, caucuses, and election.  If you’re not in a network, your influence is diminished. If you’re part of a network, your power is magnified.

Sign up here for the exclusive After Party mailing list.  You’ll connect to all the right people.

*UPDATE*  I forgot to make a key point.  Each of us must be either a recruiter or a spreader. Lurkers—those who simply observe—make up the vast majority of people on the internet.  So, if you see something important on Twitter, retweet it.  If you see an important blog post, tweet it or like it on Facebook.  Post comments on blogs and Facebook posts.  Get involved.

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