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The GOP Has a Tech Talent Problem It Might Not Solve

13 points by rinze 11y ago

27182818284 11y ago
I'm glad Wired brought this up, because it is something that has been in the back of my head since 2008 and was reinforced with the 2012 election. For example take a look at http://awsofa.info/ http://awsofa.info/ Especially this from the article, “I don’t need 100,000 engineers,” he says. “I need 100 good ones.” And I think the GOP is going to have a serious time recruiting those engineers in the next few election cycles. I'm not convinced about what Moffat says here when he touches on name recognition and the GOP candidates being newer being a problem compared to Hillary: “I do envy the Democrats have had this six-year head start,” I think this is more than just name recognition. It is just far easier for me to imagine a young Stanford graduate or Google employee jumping onto the the Sanders, Obama, or Clinton campaigns because of issues rather than name recognition. I follow developers from big products like Firefox, etc, and they mock the GOP candidates—name recognition was not the problem.
Joof 11y ago
Then maybe the GOP should start listening to issues that tech cares about? They seem to oppose pretty much everything that tech people care about except maybe lowering taxes (but does that ever happen anyway?).
hga 11y ago
Shallow diagnosis of the real problem: at this level, the GOP operates as a set of almost fiefdoms of competing consultants who are only in it for themselves. There's no party wide effort to develop something like Obama's pre-election micro-targeting system. Romney's pathetic ORCA is a good example of an IT disaster, but it wasn't even playing most of the game the Obama's system(s) were. Heck, the 2009-2010 Republican National Committee's chairman Michael Steele inexplicably terminated the famed party-wide Get Out The Vote (GOTV) system, resulting in more than a few needless losses in the 2010 election and his subsequent immediate removal from the position. I can go into lots more detail, but right now, at the top, national level, the party is well-neigh hopeless, e.g. see the donor-riot which has that part of the party in vicious opposition with the base. I'm not sure what it'll take to fix this, besides, you know, leadership, but actually finding talent once one or more useful projects get started won't I think be a great problem. It's, well, even realizing the need for those projects by the powers that be in the first place that has to come first, and we could well see a third party replace the Republican Party like they replaced the Whigs for that to happen/by the time that happens.

13 points by rinze 11y ago

I'm glad Wired brought this up, because it is something that has been in the back of my head since 2008 and was reinforced with the 2012 election. For example take a look at http://awsofa.info/ http://awsofa.info/ Especially this from the article, “I don’t need 100,000 engineers,” he says. “I need 100 good ones.” And I think the GOP is going to have a serious time recruiting those engineers in the next few election cycles. I'm not convinced about what Moffat says here when he touches on name recognition and the GOP candidates being newer being a problem compared to Hillary: “I do envy the Democrats have had this six-year head start,” I think this is more than just name recognition. It is just far easier for me to imagine a young Stanford graduate or Google employee jumping onto the the Sanders, Obama, or Clinton campaigns because of issues rather than name recognition. I follow developers from big products like Firefox, etc, and they mock the GOP candidates—name recognition was not the problem.

Joof 11y ago

Then maybe the GOP should start listening to issues that tech cares about? They seem to oppose pretty much everything that tech people care about except maybe lowering taxes (but does that ever happen anyway?).

hga 11y ago

Shallow diagnosis of the real problem: at this level, the GOP operates as a set of almost fiefdoms of competing consultants who are only in it for themselves. There's no party wide effort to develop something like Obama's pre-election micro-targeting system. Romney's pathetic ORCA is a good example of an IT disaster, but it wasn't even playing most of the game the Obama's system(s) were. Heck, the 2009-2010 Republican National Committee's chairman Michael Steele inexplicably terminated the famed party-wide Get Out The Vote (GOTV) system, resulting in more than a few needless losses in the 2010 election and his subsequent immediate removal from the position. I can go into lots more detail, but right now, at the top, national level, the party is well-neigh hopeless, e.g. see the donor-riot which has that part of the party in vicious opposition with the base. I'm not sure what it'll take to fix this, besides, you know, leadership, but actually finding talent once one or more useful projects get started won't I think be a great problem. It's, well, even realizing the need for those projects by the powers that be in the first place that has to come first, and we could well see a third party replace the Republican Party like they replaced the Whigs for that to happen/by the time that happens.