Blog Challenge: How can Republicans overcome self funding celebrities or popular businesspersons and become the party of the majority again?

by Alex Patton | Dec 6, 2022 | Political Research

This is a question that needs to be broken apart.

How can Republicans overcome self funding celebrities or popular businesspersons?

Why would we?

A celebrity or popular business person begins with one or two the most valuable things in politics – name ID & money.

If a celebrity brings multi-millions in name ID then that is money a campaign can spend on other things other than establishing a bio.

For example, I don’t know Tim Tebow outside his press, but if he wanted to run for a Congressional seat in NW Florida, he would start with a massive advantage. He would start on third base and sometimes depending on context that is enough. Would he be a good candidate? No idea.

If a self-funding popular business person brings millions to the table that is valuable time a campaign can spend on other things. Early money is one of the largest early strategic advantages a campaign can have.

I think what you are really asking is how can we overcome running terrible self-funding celebrities or terrible popular businesspersons, right? The answer is stop supporting them.

How can Republicans become the party of the majority again?

In some places the Republicans are a majority and in some places even a super-majority, but I think you are asking about national / presidential politics.

A multi-part answer:

• Better candidates: As we have seen, and will likely see today, name ID combined with terrible candidate quality isn’t a great combination.
• Govern: The American people want their government to look slightly better than a middle school cafeteria food fight (well most of us do). A Congress that can govern would go a long way.
• STOP the stupid shit: Stop enabling the antisemitic, racist, 4chan crowds.
• Suburban Women : right now this seems to be the vote most in flux. They are picking of the less of two scary versions and you never want to mess with moms.
• Embrace the Democrats mistakes. As they have shown, there will be many.

Conclusion

Celebrity or self – funded candidates aren’t necessarily a terrible thing, and they can offer tremendous advantages. Let’s just stop picking and promoting terrible ones.

Blog Challenge: Regulators and Authority

by Alex Patton | Dec 5, 2022 | Political Research

The question asked is “What will it take for federal regulators to actually exercise their authority? (e.g. DoJ & Antitrust, SEC & insider trading, EPA & fracking/pipelines)?”

Ahhhh, regulators.  One the most boring, yet critical functions of government. 

Government Regulation

Conservatives have a default answer for most federal regulators – fire them all or weaken them to the point of irrelevance.  They often say ‘no’ or ‘maybe’ ad-nauseum slowing us down, and they seemingly have zero interest in the time value of money.   Frankly, some of this reputation is 100% earned.  I once walked into a meeting with a client to meet with a regulator/government staff, and my client was greeted with a “Man, we haven’t bankrupted you yet?  Ha Ha.”  It wasn’t funny.

But I don’t think me railing against government bureaucracy is the point of your question.   So, to explore your question, lets agree that the federal regulators that you speak of are fine upstanding government servants carrying out their charge to the best of their abilities. 

Our agency has done work in the clean energy space and land development space and this comprises most of our experience.  I will say for the record, most of upper staff members in these spaces are smart as heck and understand the bureaucratic process.  I am almost always appreciative of their expertise in their fields.

BUT…..the appointment officials of regulatory bodies often leave a lot to be desired for because of the concept of “regulatory capture.”

One must never forget, at its heart, the appointed officials were appointed because they at the time of their appointment aligned with the current administration.    These are political bodies.   Three phrases: Pipelines, Joe Machin, FERC Chairman.

And it is the politics that leads to regulatory capture. 

Florida: An Example of Regulatory Capture

Let me give you an example in Florida – The Florida Public Service Commission (PSC).   This body is to regulate utilities in the State of Florida.  They are to be the safeguard, patrolling if Florida’s monopoly utility industry is justified in their actions & requests.  These people are routinely making multi-million if not billion-dollar decisions, and in my opinion are 100% captured by the utility industry. 

Here is my evidence: 

• In the recent past, any commissioner that stood up to Florida Power & Light has been unceremoniously thrown off the commission.
• Florida’s monopoly utilities dominate/control the Legislature (in lobbyists hired, private hideaways and donations, donations (b), drafting of bills,  and other assorted ruthless, shady tactics that have some calling for a federal probe), and the Florida’s legislature controls the nominating process for new PSC Commissioners. 
• Florida’s monopoly utilities dominate the communities they operate in by steering philanthropic donations to key groups, sponsoring everything from business conventions to little league teams.
• The PSC is to have a citizen’s advocate or the office of public counsel.    The legislature promptly removed the lawyer who kind of, tepidly fought against utility rate increases – at least making them work for it.   Yeah, he was replaced by a lobbyist from the utility industry.
• And finally, this system of Legislative nomination, executive branch appointment, and PSC regulation allows everyone to shirk any responsibility.  Especially, with elected officials getting to blame the faceless bureaucrats at the PSC avoiding any electoral blame.    

The Results:

• Residential customers to bear brunt of $1.5 billion FPL rate hike
• Brace yourself for Florida Power & Light bills to increase at least thrice in 2023
• Duke Energy Rates Will Increase Over Next Three Years
• Higher fuel costs to hit TECO customers after state approves rate hike

ALL APPROVED UNANIMOUSLY!

And they aren’t done:

• Duke Energy, TECO and FPL ask to hike electricity bills to combat increased natural gas costs

Put in the simplest of terms – the entire game is rigged.

Why does this regulatory capture exist?  Because the incentives are there and extremely high.   The monopoly utilities are going to act like monopolies by using all their power and money to reward supporters, punish defectors, buy the love of people who are indifferent, and influence the process.  The financial gains are too high (remember BILLIONS) for them to do anything else.  Monopolies and massive industries (pharma, energy, banking, etc) are going to do everything they can legally (and in gray areas) to win. 

As you see in Florida, we have a complete failure of Florida’s regulatory ‘system’ due to nearly complete regulatory capture.

Frankly, the PSC is so unresponsive to Florida’s ratepayers and Florida’s citizens this is why I wrote an op-ed calling for the way we organize this body – changing from an appointed position to an elected position.  It is unlikely to happen or even get off the ground.

Political Science hasn’t spent a lot of time researching this phenomenon and there are no simple answers. 

It is unlikely regulatory capture is ever eliminated; more likely we need to work to minimize it.   

Some have called for deregulation (my personal default), others have called for making these regulators answer to the public, but I would think that in this case, the lowest hanging fruit is the creating/making the watchdog or “Office of Public Counsel” more independent and interdisciplinary – almost like an Inspector General office.

You may also be able to tell, I am completely cynical about the odds of any positive change happening.  With most of these systems, the incentives are all aligned against the “exercise of their authority.”  

It could be argued that Florida’s monopoly utility industry had the absolute worst years with scandal after scandal.  They are likely to get most if not all, they are asking for from Florida’s ‘regulatory body.’

• Florida power companies ask for increase on electric bills

Sadly, it will take some massive, unfortunate event to create any appetite to trigger any real reform.  

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Blog Challenge: How do you change someone’s mind in politics?

by Alex Patton | Dec 2, 2022 | Political Research

This one is basically asking me to distill a seemingly lifetime of work into a blog post.    Let’s say upfront that I am going to speaking in sweeping generalities.  Human behavior is complicated, nuanced, messy, and at times unpredictable. 

Attitudes or Behavior

I find it important to mention there is a difference between changing someone’s mind and changing someone’s behavior. When talking persuasion, it is incredible how often they are conflated.   Often in the short-term transactional power politics, changing behavior is the goal; coercion is often the means. 

But for this blog challenge, we will assume we are talking about opinions. 

In most cases, I believe – and this may be blasphemy for most in the political world – we can’t change minds.   Only the target can change their own mind; as political practitioners we are trying to influence the process.   

Zone of Acceptance

It matters where someone starts on any topic, belief or attitude or how strongly held their opinion is.

If a person starts off with strongly held opinions, you’re going to have a hard time changing their opinion.  Franky, it may be impossible.   With strongly held opinions, it requires a trusting and personal relationship, and to have a trusting and personal relationship requires time and effort.  Without that, true opinion change is rare.    There is some interesting work (ignore that one scandal though) being done in the field of deep canvassing, and again that takes a lot of time and effort.

If a person has a weakly held opinions about a subject, they often acquiesce to the leaders of the group’s signals.  This is why the school of fish metaphor works.   If the opinion is not of great importance to the person, the groups we identify with and the cues from trusted leaders matter – a lot.

If a person has no opinion on the matter, they will pay attention to recency and somewhat still to trusted leaders.  If it is a new subject preferably get there first with a trusted leader.  But with no opinions, trust is likely less of a factor than frequency and recency.  Propaganda works.

Direct Assaults

One way not to persuade people is to challenge them directly.  This often leads to a boomerang effect that when the subject is directly challenged, they spend more time coming up with better arguments to refute. 

Same with calling people “idiots, knuckle-draggers, racists, dummies, etc.”  We are all guilty of it, and it is really counter-productive to persuasion. 

More often, rather than a direct, full frontal assault, we are better off trying to increase motivation and shaping the path / environment.

Trust

 As you read, you notice the importance of trust – especially in partisan politics. 

Without trust, there is no persuasion.  How many times has a news story been believed or discredited solely on the trust of the source?    

We observe it all the time in polling. We believe the polls we ‘trust’ and discount the polls that are ‘partisan hacks.’ 

Our agency has been conducting on going research into how energy policies are received by conservatives. It is clear that source plays a huge deal. If the policies are advocated by the “Global Green Commies”, it won’t get far. In fact, it won’t get heard at all.

Conclusion

Almost everything about this subject can be taught by parents of teen-agers. 

First, the difference between changing minds or behavior.  Does a parent care if a kid has a deeply held belief in the importance of a clean room or does that parent just want the damn room cleaned – even if it is under the threat of massive grounding? 

If the teenager, for whatever reasons, has deeply held beliefs that his room is his space and keeping a clean room is stupid, calling him a troglodyte leading to slammed doors is unlikely to change his mind or his behavior. In fact, this little ingrate will likely sit in his room and write a list of the top 10 reasons why a clean room is leading to the deterioration of America. In this case, you may want to enlist the person he is crushing on to share with him that a clean room is super attractive and indicates a responsible person.  If that doesn’t work, threaten to take away the car keys or turn off the wifi until the room is clean.    

If the teenager, for whatever reason, has loosely held beliefs about a clean room, enlist the help of their friends, coaches, YouTube influencers, etc.   Best to make a clean room the norm and have those cues received from multiple sources, only to see it all reversed when he walks into his friends’ messy rooms. He will likely flip flip back and forth depending on the accumulation of cues seen most recently.

But the absolute best way to convince a teenager the importance of a clean room is to get there before they become teenagers. Early, repeated, consistent signals that a clean room is normal, important, and that the behavior is expected.   Spend time with them, associate a clean room with other positive experiences.    Develop a relationship around a clean room.

But even then, with all these strategies, it still maybe freaking impossible to get a hard-headed teenager to change their opinions or behavior.     

Once the opinion / behavior is set and coercion is no longer available because they moved out and pay for their own car & wifi, the teenager/young adult will have to change their own mind when they decide the time is right, if ever. 

Blog Challenge: Religion in America

by Alex Patton | Nov 30, 2022 | Political Research

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

I am basking in the USMNT win and advancement, and leave it to my brother to dive right in with the following question / comment: I’d like for you to explore how we went from a country founded on the specific separation of church and state to a country where one party is openly trying to force the entire country to be Christian and made it front and center of their platform.

What we CaNt StArT WiTh An EaSiEr ToPiC LiKe RaCiSm?

The short answer: The rise of Christian nationalism.

This ideology has a lot in common with the evangelical movement, but they are different. Christian Nationalist believe that the United States was founded as a Christian Nation and they should be working to “restore” or “take back” our nation through government action, if needed.

The rise of Christian Nationalism across the world seems to have taken off with the COVID pandemic, the rise of self-proclaimed Christian Nationalist Marjorie Taylor Green, and assorted alt-right wing talk show hosts like the Nick Fuentes. Pew Research has conducted some polling on the topic asking people to describe Christian Nationalists. Here are some examples:

“Fanatics distorting Christian values for self-serving opportunities to further their perceived righteousness.”

Born-again/evangelical Protestant, age 50-64

“Excessive pride in White Christian identity, often trying to impose their own religious beliefs on the rest of the nation and attempting to transform the U.S. into a Christian theocracy.”

Jewish, age 18-29

“Christian nationalism means to me applying the principles of Christianity into American society without being compelled to believe in Jesus as the savior of the world.”

Born-again/evangelical Protestant, age 18-29

If you want a close look into this, look no further than Mike Flynn and the Hallow. Frontline took an in-depth look ““Michael Flynn’s Holy War.” If you have an hour and want to learn more, the video is below. It is eye-opening.

Like most things that start on the fringe and get traction, you can observe Rep politicians and right wing media picking up phrases, laundering it for mass consumption. Look no further than Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ re-election campaign and the release of “God Made a Fighter.”

What is bringing all this about?

Religion in America

Pew Research is the main place I go when I look for quality research on Religion in America. They have been studying it for years.

There is not much worse than a loss of status of a once majority group. They do not go quietly. They fight back, often violently.

At some point I feel, some in religion saw their efforts in churches to persuade people begin to fail they turned to legislating and lobbying.

They recast history as American being ‘founded as a Christian nation’ rather than a nation founded by some Christians who made a point of establishing a government that could protect us against factions.

So, How did we get here?

1. Loss of Status of Religion and religious leaders.
2. Move to extremism assisted by the Internet.
3. Political “Leaders” sending signals and flirting that Christian Nationalism is “okay.”
4. Political organization.

Personally, I have always found that trying to live up to my own faith difficult and fraught with failure. I’d recommend more people worry about themselves and their walks and less with legislating. Being a good example is more persuasive than forcing people to do something, right?

I am not sure liberty, christian nationalism, and legislating can co-exist. But between you and me, often, the debate on “freedom” isn’t really about freedom rather it’s about who has the freedom to make the rules.