Before getting into the content of this morning's post, I'd like to say that it's kind of an honor to fill in for Texas Toast. I know him from college, and he's a fierce thinker.  I'm really thrilled that we were able to recruit him, and I'm sure that you guys will love his writing.

If you look to the right side of this page, you'll see that we link to exactly two Republican blogs: The Next Right and Patrick Ruffini.   I'll give you one guess as to what both of those sites have in common. Okay, it's Patrick Ruffini.  For those of who don't know him, Patrick is the guy who used to run the online division at the RNC and then left that to go run it for Giuliani. Since then, he's started his own consulting firm and has also launched The Next Right with a few collabortators.  The goal of the site is to try and use data in interesting ways to make positive and normative statements about the trajectory of the GOP coalition.  It usually makes for a great read, and I heartily recommend it to anyone.

This morning, however, I read a post from Patrick that was just dead wrong, and disappointingly so.

There's more.

Patrick's thesis is that Palin is comparable to Dean because:

1. she represents the beliefs and ideals of the base of the party, as opposed to the leadership,
2. the party nominated someone who generates low levels of excitement in the base,
3. and simply by virtue of her candidacy, she's caused a civil war

Superficially, these would seem like enough to make them comparable, but he's dead wrong.  While I concede all of the above, I think that he's ignoring a few factors that absolutely invalidate that comparison:

1. Dean made himself into a nationally known and vetted figure by engaging the process at the grassroots,
2. Dean introduced new methods of organizing and fundraising into the Democratic Party,
3. Dean's election to the chairmanship was due to a well-defined, field-tested agenda that he wanted to implement at the national level.

I'm not going to make this too much about a defense of Dean qua Dean, even though he is somewhat of a folk hero to data-geek Democrats like us, but I do think that these things all make Dean's election to the DNC very, very different.   In short, because Dean had spent the better part of two and a half years studying up on issues, engaging state and local parties with speech after speech and coffee session after VFW Hall Q&A's, he was a formidable figure going into primaries because his lack of experience wasn't compounded by a lack of engagement with issues. Just about everyone who  knew of Governor Dean knew exactly where he stood on every major issue because Dean had travelled the country, building consensus around his ideas.

Compare this with Sarah Palin.  Her love from the right mostly comes from her status as "one of them", but not on ideas.  It's purely identity politics.  She hasn't spent two or three years traveling the country, talking to people about issues, buildling an issues profile through careful study. In fact, all we know about her affirmative beliefs, outside of what the McCain campaign has put in her mouth, is that she's firmly pro-life and that she believes that American sovereignty over Alaska is a moral abomination.  One could maybe surmise that her issue beliefs and identity are one and the same, and that, therefore, simply being known to people, she's doing what Dean did, but I don't believe that to be the case. We have yet to see any kind of issues based politicking from her, and I don't think that she's capable of the kind of sustained issues conversation that it would take.

More importantly, Sarah Palin hasn't introduced any new techniques or ideas to the organizational strategy. She is able to draw large crowds, but she hasn't introduced any ways to reach new voters, empower new organizers or consolidate new gains into action.  All that she's done is use existing methods in the campaign, if that, and rely on her celebrity status to draw people in.  Dean's candidacy for chairman was built on a specific agenda of creating a new national voter file, creating better relationships with state parties and building a small dollar fundraising operation for the party. His credibility on this issues was enhanced by the fact that he had demonstrated his capacity to execute these things during his campaign.

Most importantly, Dean's issue profile was in the mainstream of the Democratic majority that he helped build.  He was able to overcome institutional blocking only because he had a loyal following of people who saw his agenda, saw his potential for executing it and agreed with him that it needed to be done. In short, although, like Palin, he polarized the party, he did so on issues of style, not substance.

Does the GOP need  a Dean? Yes, of course. They need someone to help them adapt to the reality in which small dollar fundraising and  long term investment in bottom-up agenda building.  Is it going to be Sarah Palin? Not bloody likely.

Dirty D