"It is time to sit down practically and say where are we going to add pieces to our coalition. There just are not enough middle-aged white guys that we can scrape together to win. There's just not enough of them."
~ TOM DAVIS, former Republican member of Congress cited in the New York Times, 11/8/12
Hold on there, Tom! I'm one of those guys you're trying to scrape into your party, and I'm ready to be courted. I'm always looking for new friends. I've been known to "flip" on various issues now and then during the past 30 years. Before you start snooping around for recruits in other demographic slices of the American pie you should re-focus on MAWMs like me and try scraping a little harder.
What's it going to take? Well, for starters, I can't stop thinking about the Koch brothers and the tons of money they spent on TV ads and billboards that I couldn't care less about. A much better idea would be to use a direct mail system. I want the Koch boys and the other big time donors to put some of their campaign cash into a plain white envelope and mail it directly to me.
Hey, I'm not making any promises. I can't predict how my vote might be affected by monetary rewards but I'd very much like to find out. As to the exact contents of the envelope, well, that's up to the people supervising the outreach effort. But I will say for the record that one of my favorite American Presidents is Ulysses S. Grant.
After the mail goes out there needs to be a follow-up gesture, something that shows the initial contact was truly sincere. That's something every public relations intern learns on the first day at work, right?
I think a nice dinner out would be appropriate, and this one's a no-brainer. You get some party leaders together for a fund raiser, one of those $25K per plate wingdings, and then you clear everybody out, re-set the tables and bring in my crowd for the second sitting, gratis. My only caveat here is the food MUST be first rate; I'm not settling for spaghetti-in-a-bucket from the local Pasta Barn.
This is no time for the GOP to quit on MAWMs. As I used to hear during my high school football days: A quitter never wins and a winner never quits. Tom Davis, are you listening? I want to hear some serious scraping sounds, and I want them heading in my direction.