Since their devastating defeat on November 4, Republicans have been working to rebuild and turn the tide of the past two cycles.  They took major steps in doing so, including replacing RNC Chairman Mike Duncan with Michael Steele and becoming involved with national organizations such as Rebuild the Party that focus on a complete reformation of the Republican Party. There are many major goals that Republicans must accomplish in order to truly get back on the right track.  Here is a look at a few of these goals and the progress the GOP has made thus far in accomplishing them.

Building an an effective grassroots network that can quickly be mobilized, represents a vast array of constituencies, and is of the national scale of Obama’s campaign network.

It has already been clearly established that “the network” is vastly superior to “the list.” Obama’s use of his campaign network to build support for his various agendas is proof of the power of such a network. I recently opined that Republicans need to “make noise,” and in order to do so they need to build their own grassroots network not unlike Obama’s — one that they can call upon to take action, help elect candidates, and win crucial legislative battles both at the federal and statewide level.  Although there have been some promising signs, such as Fred Thompson’s use of his network to raise $20,000 for Jim Tedisco, there remains no network that has the numbers, participation, and broad-spectrum membership as the one Obama built during his campaign.

Grade: D-

Fully using peer production in all aspects of the operations of the RNC and other Republican Organizations.

The big story of the Obama campaign wasn’t his network or his use of technology — although both were unparalleled and impeccable.  Instead, it was the fact that this network peer produced 200,000 offline events, 400,000 blog posts, 3 million phone calls, and $500 million.  This model is crucial to winning in this new “Age of Participation.”  The RNC showed interest in taking advantage of this model with its Tech Summit, which was true peer production and suggests that newly-elected RNC Chair Steele may indeed wish to embrace this new model.  However, without the aforementioned network, it will be very hard to use peer production to make substantial strides in the crucial areas of fundraising and voter outreach.  Peer production also must have a role in policy decisions, which has certainly not been the case so far.

Grade: C-

Win over a large percentage of new young voters to turn the tide on a youth voting bloc that is increasingly voting Democrat.

This important tenet is the heart and soul of the NextGenGOP blog.  One of the most exciting parts of CPAC for me was seeing many young conservatives that were willing to fight to get back on the right track.  At the same time, however, these young conservatives are likely the same ones that turned out and voted for John McCain and Republicans in 2008.  Unfortunately, these young voters constituted a small minority of the total youth vote, and so the bottom line is that Republicans must strive to win the votes of new young voters — in other words, young voters who are not currently voting Republican.  I previously expressed cautious optimism with regard to Chairman Steele’s new leadership because of the lack of serious efforts to focus on young voters, and just over a month later there still do not seem to be any major efforts from the RNC to accomplish this.  This is quite worrisome, and and even more disconcerting is a new poll that suggests the following:

By a 59 to 14 percent margin, young people prefer the Democrats when it comes to “paying attention to issues that affect younger people,” a six point gain since 2007.

This is entirely unacceptable, and something must be done to turn the tide before it’s too late.  These young voters will soon no longer be young voters but middle-age voters, and Republicans can ill-afford to have a generation of voters that turns out to vote 4 to 1 in favor of Democrats.

Grade: F

Destroying the “Old Southern White Male” image.

This damaging image has indisputably hurt the Republican Party in elections; the good news is that the Republican National Committee’s new chairman only fulfills one of the words in the stereotype (male).  Unfortunately, the other guy that for better or worse has recently been synonymized with the Republican Party — Rush Limbaugh — meets all of the above criteria, and like him or hate him, he does little to help make forward progress.  Sarah Palin is one of the prominent female leaders in the GOP, but her tarnished image from the 2008 cycle diminishes her appeal to many non-conservatives.  Fortunately, a few other new faces have arisen in the party that also help dispel this notion, including Representatives Cao and Schock.

Grade: B-

Building new, state-of-the art technology that gives Republicans a competitive advantage over Democrats.

Many independent efforts have taken place to improve the GOP’s technology and tools, and the RNC’s Tech Summit suggested a commitment to building state-of-the-art technology by Chairman Steele. However, the RNC’s RFP (Request for Proposal) was scoffed at by many on both the right and left for being both “ludicrously ambitious” and “maddeningly vague.”  Beyond the initial talking stage, however, little seems to have taken place thus far in terms of using or building new technology at the RNC, and so there is still much to be seen as to the success or failure of the RNC in advancing its technology.

Grade: C-

These are but a few areas in which the GOP must catch up in order to effectively compete once again at a national level. But just from taking a look at this list, it is clear that Republicans still have a great deal of work to do if they want to compete and ultimately achieve electoral victory in 2008.

Last 5 posts by Aaron Marks

• Onward and Upward: Building a Sustainable Majority - January 22nd, 2010
• Dear Young Voters: This Is What You Get When You Don't Vote - December 1st, 2009
• The Youth Vote and the 2009 Elections - November 6th, 2009
• The Best of the Post-2009 Election Spin - November 5th, 2009
• Introducing NextGenGOP Executive Director James Kane - October 20th, 2009