Dear TVP Friends,
Those of you who have followed us from the start may remember one of the first things we did to analyze the state of the Republican Party of Virginia was to assess the status of online communications by party unit committees.
The original result, showing over 2/3rds of the Commonwealth's GOP units were functionally offline, played a major role in shocking the state party out of its pre-TVP complacency. It was hard, unignorable proof that the party was not functioning even to the minimum standards of a professional organization.
In the time since, you have all of course witnessed a dramatic turnaround in the direction of the state party. It went from a declining force, nearly obsolete, to a newly-invigorated and re-united team determined - and, as was demonstrated in November to dramatic effect - able to win.
However...
We must be realistic about how and why we were able to win. Building the party allowed us to attract a much healthier field of high-quality candidates than the party has been able to attract in the past, this is one improvement that, as long as we maintain this direction, will be durable. The unprecedented candidate recruitment campaign in the House of Delegates fielded 30 more GOP nominees than would have been fielded without. We know for a fact that our House of Delegates majority is directly due to this recruitment effort, as our 2-seat majority is accounted for among those 30 campaigns. We can reasonably speculate that having 30 more state legislative campaigns active contributed enormously - perhaps wholly - to providing the vote margin that won us a sweep of statewide races. We know that having those extra campaigns gave us the election integrity resources to enforce our rights at the ballot box, with an extra set of eyes that would not have been there otherwise poring over results and calling out anomalies to be addressed.
And of course, there was the deus ex machina events in Loudoun County, the Hiroshima (enemies' list) and Nagasaki (rape cover-up scandal) of our political nukes landing in the perfect place at the perfect time.
We cannot count on these extraordinary events to continue to occur. They are opportunities provided by the hubris and savage radicalism of Democrat activists, and the cowardice of the Virginia Democrats that stopped them from confronting and reining in these loose cannons blowing holes in the deck; we cannot be guaranteed they will continue to provide those opportunities. Virginia Democrats are not smart but they do have some sense of self-preservation.
Thus it is imperative that we not lose focus and stray from the mission of building durable, enduring party capabilities. As the ruling party it is more difficult to maintain that position, as we are now accountable for performance.
As per our mission, TVP has repeated the assessment of party unit committees' online presence as was done two years ago. The results are bad enough that we really don't want to share the data outside of the party; it is not much at all improved from two years earlier.
This chronic failing needs a solution, and it needs a solution now. We are giving up far too much potential advantage by failing to communicate at a level on par with the opposition.
To this end, we have devised a short-term solution and will be reaching out to unit committees to assess interest in implementing it.
In the meantime, we are developing a more robust, long-term solution that can not only bring us up to par, but provide capabilities superior even to that of the absurdly well-funded Virginia Democrat machine. If you've been following us on socials, you may have noticed some talk of firewalls and custom data processing solutions - this is a preview of game-changing technology that we will bring to the party, and with it neutralize much of the VA Dems' technological advantages.
I must impress on all that the lack of technology development and general lack of technical sophistication by Republicans is a crippling weakness and unnecessarily provides Democrats with huge advantages they have no natural right to enjoy. Consistent focus on developing both the public communications and the back-office systems that are present in any similar professional organization is the only viable route to neutralize Democrats' infrastructure superiority.
Those are not the only technological hurdles to overcome. The mailing list spam problem as discussed in our previous newsletter is a critical one that is not at all being taken seriously, and that must change. In addition, as we saw evidenced in the Loudoun enemies' list "call to action", unlawful cyberwarfare is a standard Democrat tactic, one against which few Republicans effectively defend.
If we do the right thing, if we raise the resources and money to compete, we can go into the 2023 state legislative election cycle with the Democrats' technology advantages neutralized or mostly so. This may be the key to securing control of the Virginia State Senate and maintaining control of the House of Delegates.
As always, we will never stop fighting tooth and nail to make sure that you are never ruled by tyrants again.
Sincerely,
David Gordon
Founder/Director, The Virginia Project
