I agree with about eighty percent of this Liz Mair post. Some of it is similar to the stuff I wrote yesterday, but better written and more detailed.
One area where I slightly diverge (not really disagree) is in her description of the Republican disadvantage in technology. Mair writes that many tech folks have a social liberalism-first view of politics that makes them a bad fit for the Republicans. The result is that relatively few tech people are enthusiastic about joining the Republican campaign team. You could hire high quality tech people, but the Republicans aren’t willing to make the investment.
I think that there is a lot of truth to that, but I think that the failure of Republicans to invest, and even more the failure to understand that they need to invest is the bigger problem (and not just on technology.) It has become common to describe Republican techniques as obsolete and out of date, but, prior to November 2012, a lot of right-leaning people (candidates, consultants, media figures, regular old conservative folks) carried around an idea of what it took to beat the Democrats under reasonably favorable circumstances. To put it crudely, this idea could be put as an equation:
big network television ad buy + unflattering picture of the Democratic candidate + graphic about tax increases + scary music = Winning
This illusion that this equation still worked was the single biggest obstacle to the Republicans putting together a strategy for assembling a majority coalition.
