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At The New York Sun, Newt Gingrich explains why a narrowly targeted election strategy simply won’t work. He writes:
As the 2024 elections near, I am deeply concerned about various Republican organizations talking about how they are cleverly going to target and focus on so-called key states — or key Senate and House seats. It’s not going to work.
I helped elect a massive Republican majority with candidate Ronald Reagan in 1980 — including unexpectedly gaining the first Republican Senate majority in 26 years. I also helped design and implement the 1994 Contract with America campaign, which won the first House Republican majority in 40 years.
Before all of that, I survived in Georgia when it was a deeply Democratic state. I have also watched many failed election strategies. In my experience, targeting is a road map to attrition. It minimizes potential victories in strong years — and ultimately leads to a minority.
Targeting may be smart tactically for an individual campaign, but it is strategically self-defeating at scale over time. Hyper focusing on tough races, slowly erodes support in so-called safe races. This is how Republicans have historically lost ground in places such as California and New York. The national party quit campaigning in those states. When you stop talking to people, people forget about you.
This is why we have not attracted Asian Americans as expected. On educational, economic, and cultural grounds, they are on paper much closer to Republicans than to the anti-merit, anti-achievement, woke left. But the vast majority of Asian Americans live in cities where the Democrats are dominant, and the Republicans are absent.
When you target, you signal to everyone who is not on your target list that their situation is hopeless. You discourage participation and risk-taking — and eliminate hope of victory.
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