People who follow the political world have seen Charlie Kirk’s “Turning Point USA” rise from an almost cute frat club, one organizing conservative millennials, transition into a financial and influential powerhouse. It most certainly has enriched its founders – as all major political organizations do, but it’s now beyond messaging as a rally club and now a serious strategist organization with a get out the vote operation. That new strategic roll-out will be put to the test in this coming election – they’re starting big. Some Republican strategists are very worried about the direction they’re going.
Turning Point will now be held responsible for some of that money, and they know that the new strategy better work. With only tens of thousands of votes up for grabs in swing states they cannot swing and miss. But their plan is to swing to the fences by attracting hardline conservatives who tend not to vote, to do so for perhaps the first time. This effort comes with an inability to win over moderates.
According to the Associated Press, veteran campaign consultants are nervous about the strategy set out below:
Turning Point operatives honed in on churchgoers and hunters, citing statistics that purport to show how few of each group cast ballots in 2020. Their argument, which is questioned by critics, is if groups like Turning Point target such groups, Republicans will likely sweep the swing states for Trump, the recordings show.
Wow, one has to have an astute political ear to the ground to know that “Churchgoers” and “Hunters” are potential Trump voters, and yet have managed to remain elusive in not tending to vote They are appealing to the base within. The Trump vote is there if they can just pry them into showing up.
But they’re doing it at the expense of voters who actually have shown up in the past but don’t know how they want to vote, the moderate centrists. It has the veteran politicos nervous:
Their strategy is bad. They know how to talk MAGA, they know how to message the base,” said Tyler Montague, a Republican strategist from Arizona and a longtime Turning Point critic, referring to the former president’s Make America Great Again movement. “But they literally don’t know what to say to a swing voter. They alienate these people.”
Yes, well – Turning Point is a lot of things but they didn’t get rich by taking moderate, contemplative steps. This is all-in MAGA and yes, they speak it fluently. No one might speak it better because they invented the dialect. But it makes intuitive sense that it simply won’t work with the people who might be turned off by the hardcore message.
There is no obvious answer. The votes have to come from somewhere and one strategy is to simply push more votes from the pile that are already “there” with respect to Trump. Or bring in new people who don’t know where they might be. The choice to speak with moderation to hunters and churchgoers must not have been considered worthwhile.
Turning Point thinks it has hit the sweet spot and used Democrats as an example:
“We did this because we knew conservatives need” a way to identify and turn out voters, said spokesman Andrew Kolvet. He added that the effort reflects lessons Turning Point has learned from defeats Republicans suffered in Arizona in 2022 and elsewhere and how Democrats have embraced similar tactics.
It is probably all in the definition because it’s common for each side to see the other’s base as “extremists” so -it all depends on who is looking at what.
Turning Point has one advantage. In a 50-50 election they’re not likely to be held to account for their tactic after the votes are counted. If Donald Trump wins it will be because everyone is a genius. If he loses, then everyone will have their fingers pointing at everyone else and any concrete reason is likely lost in the fight. If Turning Point wants credit, they should start pointing to effective outreach and indices now. Worry about the after later on.
It is interesting to hear veteran politicos fears about this. It could be a legitimate worry and they’re trying to assist in a sense, trying to message Turning Point away from the edge strategy, especially given how little time remains. Or these old pros can be upset on having been left out and looking in. It is tough to tell. With so little time left it’s somewhat futile anyway.
But this is Turning Point’s problem and ultimately its solution. They will be held responsible right up until they’re not – which will likely be on November 6th.
God Bless: I can be reached at [email protected] and @JasonMiciak
Not to be a real downer to this turning point thing but here’s a newsflash: hunters generally HUNT in November. Some start as early as Sept/Oct (bow hunting for instance). The other newsflash: churchgoers are aging out and not being replaced by younger people. Congregations are shrinking, not growing, so efforts there are likely to have diminishing returns. It would seem this kirk person and his organization are as brain-dead as the rest of the pubes/magats. You can throw money at a problem but if you’re not throwing it in the general direction you’re going to miss your target. Looks like these fools are, once again, missing their target. I am reminded of when the pubes did some after election polling about what direction the pube party needed to go to actually win elections. Yeah, we saw how that went. Let’s face it, if they don’t cheat, they don’t win. It is as simple as that.
Oh, and trying to start GOTV efforts in October-not a real good strategy since some states do not have same day registration and require sixty to ninety days before an election. Given the abject stupidity of these people, I’m guessing they inherited their wealth?
The loathsome Kirk has established his personal MAGAt bona fides, so no matter what happens with this misguided effort, the money will keep rolling in from the dying GOP.
No doubt.
They are too late. I have also noticed how Trump is ramping up the crazy. It is like they don’t want to win legitimately. I guess they get a bigger kick out of cheeting.
Not sure if they don’t WANT to win legitimately or CANNOT win legitimately.
Both?