Join with me in welcoming John Hancock to the world of blogging. Hancock’s forthcoming site is the Missouri Republican Party’s latest attempt to counter firedupmissouri.com (the MRP pulled the plug on the insipid “MOGOP Blog” a few weeks ago). Let’s hope Hancock’s site — unlike the others — won’t suck.
About a year ago, rightmissouri.com was terminated, a mere nine months after it was conceived — a late-term abortion we can all endorse. (Thankfully, the Missouri Republican Party still provides a link to the non-existent site. Surprised? Me neither.) (UPDATE: Link to rightmissouri.com removed from MRP website at 7:30 a.m. this morning.)
I don’t know who was responsible for rightmissouri.com, although I have a pretty good idea.
I’m not one to tell stories out of school, so you’ll have to forgive the obfuscation of details here: Some time ago, some people approached me about some things. Namely, creating a website to answer the Dems’ operation. I met with those people and floated some ideas. Those ideas apparently went over like a lead balloon, because none were ever implemented. No harm, no foul — while I believe everyone is entitled to my opinion, I don’t expect that everyone follow it.
Still, I think my broader principles are good ones, and I’d like to share some of them with you over the next few days. It’s far from me to think that John Hancock needs to take advice from anyone, much less me. He is probably the state’s top Republican consultant, and certainly the top consultant that the local media identifies as a conservative. And his price tag shows it — his consulting and polling operation was paid about a quarter of a million dollars to push last November’s failed 470% tobacco tax increase.
Let’s begin by looking within ourselves — it’s there that we’ll find the root of my first, and probably most important, suggestion.
1.) Get over Roy Temple. (Note: This suggestion is not aimed directly at John Hancock, but rather, at every current and aspiring GOP blogger.)
Boy, that Roy Temple was a real bastard, wasn’t he? Just when we thought we had him licked — Claire sent him packing when she took over the Dem state party in August ‘04 — he came back and started a website.
At first, he didn’t have much to work with — he made fun of Melanie Blunt’s outfits and wrote silly captions for goofy photos. But then something terrible happened — he started writing posts with substance. First Steps and fee office management diagrams and lobbyist disclosure forms and on and on ad-frickin’-nauseum. And instead of watching and learning from his actions, we did something very un-Republican — we got emotional and started whining about how unfair it was.
Disclaimer: My lack of personal animosity toward Temple became the source of concern to a couple people in 2006, so let me address it: Maybe if I had run campaigns against Roy Temple, I’d get all emotional about him too. But I was 14 years old in 1992, the year Hancock lost his first Secretary of State race and Temple got Mel Carnahan elected governor, so a longstanding professional rivalry isn’t something I can relate to.
Fast-forward to 2007. If you’ve been visiting firedupmissouri for some time and can’t list three lessons you’ve learned about political communication, you have let your short-sighted anger prevent you from seeing the bigger picture. And isn’t that what big-league consultants are paid to do?
Last year, Temple signed on with a DC-based polling and consulting firm, and today, he rarely posts on the site he created. He lives in DC, where he provides a comfortable living for his wife and little girl. (Update: Roy corrected me — he has two little girls, not one.)
Roy has clearly moved on. So should you.
Tomorrow: Where rightmissouri went wrong with their Claire McCaskill attacks.
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