♥-ing Huckabee, Now More Than Ever

Way back in August 2007, I wrote about a blog called Mike Huckabee President 2008. As one might expect, the purpose of this particular was to support Huckabee’s presidential campaign. Nothing too spectacular about that, except that Mike Huckabee President 2008, launched February 15, 2005, was almost certainly the first unofficial blog supporting any 2008 candidate. In fact, it predated the official launch of Huckabee’s campaign by nearly two years.

We are now even earlier in the present presidential election cycle than we were then, yet we can already note the existence of Mike Huckabee President 2012 (to which, you may have already noticed, the old site redirects).

Bullhorns Are Overrated

They cost too much and they don't work very well.

Most people ignore them, they don't last very long and they're undependable.

Anil Dash has discovered that having ten times as many Twitter followers generates approximately zero times as much value.

The goal shouldn't be to have a lot of people to yell at, the goal probably should be to have a lot of people who choose to listen. Don't need a bullhorn for that.

Chicago Pizza Guy Creates Social Media 'Domino' Effect

When it comes to social media, it takes a lot to impress Amy Korin.

Her resume includes digital strategy for global companies like Procter & Gamble, General Motors, Sun Microsystems and Zappos.

But her local Domino’s Pizza joint left her “completely shocked.”

Ron Paul supporters just created Paulville, an online community that takes online-to-offline activism to the extreme.

According to the website, Paulville.org's mission is to:

"Establish gated communities containing 100% Ron Paul supporters and or people that live by the ideals of freedom and liberty..."

Both Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee and his F3Coalition, now have a large base of online grassroots support to tap into; however, it's clear that there still exists a lack of control from the top, especially for Ron Paul supporters.

I'm sure Ron Paul's organization can think of better things for its supporters to do other than set up cult-like communities in rural America.

What's next?

As Wired's Sarah Lai Stirland reports, Huckabee's secret weapons are "Alex and Brett Harris, a pair of homeschooled evangelical twin teen prodigies in a suburb south of Portland, Oregon."

The twins, along with Bill Goins, co-founded HucksArmy, perhaps the most modern volunteer operation in politics today.

Excerpt from Stirland's piece (emphasis mine):

Hucksarmy.com uses Meetup to organize group meetings, but that's where the resemblance to 2004's coffee-and-croissants netroots ends. The Harris brothers and their campaign managers are building a national team with specific responsibilities. For example, there's a point person for almost all 50 states, and special "liaisons" on each of the popular social-networking sites. The twins and their 28-year-old volunteer campaign manager, Jimmy Morris, who lives in the small town of Joplin, Missouri, meet nightly via conference call to strategize and to share ideas that have bubbled up through regional Meetup groups during the day.

The site is also a nerve center through which resources and ideas can flow almost instantaneously. A last-minute Monday rally for Mike Huckabee in Warren, Michigan, for example, was scheduled on Sunday night. Jeffrey Quesnelle, who heads the Michigan battalion of Hucks Army, sent an e-mail out to 200 members, and some 500 people showed up to meet the candidate, he says.

I'm quoted at the close of the story noting that social conservatives are, and always have been, an extremely well-networked group (something that TechRepublican contributor Ethan Demme and I have discussed on quite a few occassions - especially with regard to home-schoolers):

The Harris twins' project is an online manifestation of what historically has been a very tight-knit community of social conservatives, who traditionally kept a low, but powerful, profile in national politics, says David All, a political technology and communications consultant and founder of the online Republican PAC Slatecard.

"They've been social networking without the proper tools for years," All says. "And now they're using some of that well-organized online elbow grease to help forward their cause."

Hucks Army isn't just a rabid torrent of energy.

It's a well-organized machine with the focus and leadership needed to accomplish tasks and retain some sort of message control. These individuals are the Generals of that volunteer army and they know what the heck they are doing. Their army listens to them.

I've been on a number of Special Election 72-Hour Task Forces and served as a Marshall for Bush-Cheney '04 helping coordinate the ground game for Franklin County, Ohio -- these guys are doing that same thing on the modern campaign trail.

Beyond the Republican Primary, I hope to a be a part of a similar volunteer operation, focused like a laser on defeating Hillary. I am hopeful that these guys will get behind whomever our nominee is to head up that effort. We need them beyond this battle to win the war.

It's not often that we get a chance to work in Chuck Norris jokes in this space. But I will because I can:

The Sherman tank was originaly called the Norris tank until Chuck Norris decided it wasn't tough enough to be associated with him. The Army, for fear of Chuck Norris, renamed the tank and promised to develop a weapon more fitting of his name. To date, no weapon created has been badass enough to be named after Chuck Norris.

So couple Chuck Norris with Hucks Army and you get a serious one-two punch.

UPDATED Jan. 16, 5 PM EST: TechRepublican's Joe Mansour was quoted in yesterday's Washington Times on Chuck Norris.

UPDATED Jan. 21, 10 AM EST: Ethan Demme weighs in.

My friend Joe Carter, who had taken a leave of absence from his day job at the Family Research Council to work on the Huckabee campaign, has returned to the FRC and has posted his thoughts from the campaign trail on his blog, Evangelical Outpost.

An excerpt to wet your whistle:

Before I announced that I was going to work for the Huckabee campaign, the news broke on NRO's The Corner. I suppose it's fitting then that my departure was also told first on an online media source. While I was planning to announce my leaving closer to the day of the caucus, Jonathan Martin from Politico beat me to it. There has been a lot of speculation about what it portends, but the actual details are rather banal.

At the end of November Family Research Council generously gave me a 30-day leave of absence so that I could go to work for Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign. I thought working on the campaign would be an invaluable experience so I jumped at the opportunity, knowing full well that it was only a temporary measure. At the time Governor Huckabee was still behind in both the Iowa and national polls. The question "What if he has a chance to win it all?" was something I figured I'd have to deal with when the time came.

Now the time has come for me to return to my job and my long-suffering wife. I am extremely grateful to FRC and to my family for their generosity and patience. I'm also thankful to the entire staff at the Huckabee campaign headquarters for allowing me to be a part of the team. Hopefully, after Governor Huckabee wins several primaries (and opens an office closer to the DC area) I'll be able to help him once again in an official capacity.

In the meantime, I'll share some of what I learned on the campaign trail. Although I can't share any secret inside-the-campaign information there are a few lessons I learned during my 30-day adventure. None are particularly profound and some are quite obvious. Much of it may even be particular to the fact that I worked with such a small team. Still, I thought it might be worthwhile to share some of them in order to confirm what you might already suspect about Presidential politics.

Joe's post is, at times, brutally honest, candid, and a must-read. Do so.

Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has a secret weapon -- a keyboard army plugging away on his behalf. Of note, Huckabee recognizes this talented pool of volunteers and is working with them to get his message out directly to the American people.

As reported yesterday by The Nation:

Mike Huckabee huddled with a smattering of conservative bloggers today, in a Des Moines hotel room packed with reporters and television cameras.

"The greatest secret weapon we have is over 700 dedicated bloggers to get our message out to people," said Huckabee, who credited conservative web activists -- the "RightRoots" -- for catapulting him past better funded establishment candidates. "We don't have the kind of money that other campaigns have," he explained, "a lot of the reason is because of the 700 bloggers out there pounding away on their keyboards and hitting the send button and making magic happen."

How far we've come. How far we will go before it's all over.

This is easily the best use of internet video and political endorsement by a candidate.

Ingredients:

1 part Chuck Norris

1 part Mike Huckabee

pinch of Chuck Norris Jokes

pinch of Chuck Norris Endorsements

shake well

Feeds thousands

Reccomended for the 18-30 age group online.

The key though is you need Chuck Norris I really don't see how this could have worked with Pat Robertson :-)

Whoever thought this up deserves a slap on the back and a large helping of porridge (that was for you David)

Comments?

Mike Huckabee has adopted Eventful to help determine the governor’s campaign stops.

In a recent press release, Chip Saltsman, Huckabee’s National Campaign Manager, stated:

We recently created a Mike Huckabee page on the eventful website. Our hope is that eventful will help us organize Governor Huckabee’s travel, give us insight into places the Governor should visit that we might not think of otherwise and help us gauge a level of support in various cities and towns around the country.

Huckabee's campaign has added a link to his Eventful page on mikehuckabee.com, blogged about Eventful twice, and added a handful of Demand stickers to their widgets page.

This is first time that any campaign, on the left or right, has added Demand stickers to their website as a major call to action for bloggers and supporters. We'll be watching to see if the tool proves useful to his campaign as it continues to gain momentum.

Ed. Note: Jed Sundwall tirelessly works for Eventful.com. So much so that we decided to offer him some space at our table.

As reported by Chris Cillizza:

Neil Newhouse, one of the most respected Republican pollsters in the business, suggested that Huckabee really think outside the box by appearing on "The Colbert Report" -- the wildly popular show on Comedy Central starring Stephen Colbert. It would expose Huckabee to an entirely new group of potential voters, drive media buzz and allow him to show off his sense of humor -- a trait that the New York Times's Adam Nagourney largely credited with Huckabee's straw poll success.

Looks like even a "respected" pollster is affirming something we've known along:

A few months ago, Congressman Kingston was the first Congressman interviewed for a new show on Comedy Central, The Colbert Report.

As Vice-Chairman of the House Republican Conference, Congressman Kingston understands the importance of using every communication tool available to send a Republican message, including uncharted waters like blogs and satirical comedy shows.

Tip of the spear, folks. I wonder what they'll be saying about modern media after 2008?

It's hard to make Mitt Romney look bad, but Mike Huckabee pulls it off. The topic is the forthcoming GOP YouTube debate, to which all the Republican candidates have now committed—another online grassroots victory!—except Romney.

The irony is inexplicable: of all the candidates, Republican and Democrat, Romney boasts the most number of videos in his YouTube account (284, as of Sunday night; Huckabee has 81).

Romney:

Huckabee:

Melissa Jenna was unsuccessful in trying to change Romney's mind (ironic, huh?). Perhaps Billiam the Snowman will sway him:

Cross-posted at No Straw Men.