From a Constitution Party email blast:
Some members contact me and complain that the American voters are not waking up in time. I understand their frustration. News headlines remind me each day how far this nation has strayed from its moorings — the U.S. Constitution. However, we are on the winning side in politics. Consider:
Recently, Christianity Today reported, “In the past three years, states passed 205 restrictions on abortion — more than what passed in the entire previous decade.”
Our platform reads: “We affirm the God-given legal personhood of all human beings from fertilization to natural death, without exception.”
The government says that over 1.7 million students are homeschooled. Since 1999, the number of children who are being homeschooled has increased by 75%.
Our platform reads: “We support the unimpeded right of parents to provide for the education of their children in the manner they deem best, including home, private or religious.”
Support for gun rights is higher than it’s been in decades, according to the latest data from the Pew Research Center. Pew data reveals that 52 percent of Americans say Second Amendment rights are more important than gun control.
Our Platform reads: “The Constitution Party upholds the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms. We oppose attempts to prohibit ownership of guns by law-abiding citizens, and stand against all laws which would require the registration of guns or ammunition.”
Some say if these constituencies are on our side, where’s the road to victory? It starts at the grass roots. We are successfully, and logically, building the party from the ground up. You’ll read about our upcoming National Committee meeting in the enclosed newsletter — the focus will be on practical steps necessary to win, reaching out to those constituencies noted above.
I urge you to attend the Constitution Party meeting, in Pittsburgh, on April 24-25. Listening to the how of politics, networking with fellow activists, and seeing old friends will educate and motivate each participant.
If you cannot attend, may I suggest you invest in our ongoing work? Right now is the beginning of the 2016 election. That’s right, the Constitution Party must fight, state by state, to get our candidates on the ballot. We need your help. A gift of $20 or $200 will go a long way … donate $10 or $1000 … every dollar counts right now.
I hope to see you in Pittsburgh or on the path of success your Constitution Party must follow.
Sincerely,
Frank Fluckiger
National Chairman
Andy,
Have you studied any of the authors or works Chip Barron alludes to in that comment?
Chip Barron
March 28, 2015 at 9:47 pm “Poorly performing coaches and managers do get rehired (maybe different people, but always same results) where the culture of the organization is dysfunctional.
The LP has, as John Kotter puts it, a culture of complacency, where poor performance is accepted and even revered and celebrated after it leaves office! Of course this just continues the problem.”
BINGO!
Thank you for adding new material to the discussion. I’ll start by finding some reviews and summaries. You are quite correct that the LP is not so unique in its organizational challenges, and many LNC members do recognize that, although they still do a poor job of getting on the same page and getting cohesive results. Last term we did pass several specific ideas of the then chair, but they never came together. He told me he would need another term to finish getting them off the ground. I think this term has been relatively better.
Of course it’s pointless to change for change’s sake, or to continue this discussion if there’s nothing new, or no hope.
Here’s what I think is new to the discussion: An LP (LNC or State EC’s) is a team of people like any other (please save your “herding cats” bs. EVERY other party and volunteer group uses that same exact line about organizing their members and if you’ve never heard another group use it I have to question your level of experience in organizing).
The good news, the new news is that if we recognize that the LP is a team, an organization like any other, and we are humble enough to recognize we’re not the smartest people on every topic, we can avail ourselves of the growing lexicon of scientific and professional study of “organizational development” and “organizational change”!
Poorly performing coaches and managers do get rehired (maybe different people, but always same results) where the culture of the organization is dysfunctional.
The LP has, as John Kotter puts it, a culture of complacency, where poor performance is accepted and even revered and celebrated after it leaves office! Of course this just continues the problem.
More good news: John Kotter and his research and consulting teams have studied how to fix it. They’ve even broken it down into 8 distinct steps!
I see a glimmer of hope in Arvin Vohra, though I’m not familiar enough with the rest of the LNC to determine if any substantive change in culture is even possible.
To anyone truly interested in changing the culture (and thereby the results) of LP, and I mean willing to put in some time and work not just talking/writing/bitching about it, I suggest you read and study these books and concepts:
“Good to Great” by Jim Collins
“Leading Change” and other work (especially the 8 steps of change) by John P. Kotter
“Scaling Up Excellence” by Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao
“DFA Grassroots Campaign Training Manual” (I have it and will send anyone a copy) or other real, pro-level organizing training like NOI, OFA, Wellstone Action, etc.
Here’s a great place to start and a bit from that page:
“The 8-Step Process for Leading Change
Nearly 40 years of research by leadership and change guru Dr. John Kotter have shown that more than 70% of all major transformation efforts fail. Why? Because organizations do not take a consistent, holistic approach to changing themselves, nor do they engage their workforces effectively.”
http://www.kotterinternational.com/the-8-step-process-for-leading-change/
Do you want to write something for publication here with the details of that?
We obviously remain divided and conquered. We (Alternative Parties/Activists) have become expert at the circular firing squad. While I sometimes enjoy the banter, I much prefer the “Boots On The Ground” which we are actively engaged in here. In Alaska we are making a difference and a change. I would hope that others would truly investigate what is happening here, and emulate the successes. I am not referring only to the ACP, but to our broader coalition, which includes the ALP, AIP, AKRA, AVP and many others.
It all depends on what tradition you mean…
Interesting that “Traditional Marriage” was not mentioned in this release. Perhaps even the Constitution Party have realized they’ve lost that particular fight.
No, I did not say change is always bad. Read what I wrote.
Going by the mentality you are espousing, the LP of PA should have kept Tom Stevens as Chair, because maybe the next Chair would have been worse.
Not to say that all other threads should be closed for comment while we are having the LNC meeting, but when all you are doing is repeating yourself over and over it is really annoying.
Quickest way for me to cover the LNC meeting is from dashboard where the comments are not separated by thread.
lso, you are distracting me from providing LNC meeting coverage with these pointless repetitive comments.
Especially since this thread is not even about the LP at all.
Addressed above. Failing compared to what? In 2000 and 2002 I thought changing the LNC and staff would make things better. Instead it made things worse. It was a big mistake actually. And one we still haven’t recovered from. Hence “tailspin.” There’s a learning curve, and constantly resetting it doesn’t mean we could do better. It is if anything more likely that we will do worse and worse. How many more times do you want to repeat the same thing? Your point has been made, and made, and made again. If you are not adding anything new please move on.
If the party is failing for multiple years, you don’t stick with the same coaches/managers who are responsible for the years of failure.
See above about tailspin. Changing again and again does not solve that.
This is why you can change party officers again if things are not working out.
I am sick and tired of seeing the LP reward failure and stifle innovation.
Not all change is good.
Fear of change is the same mentality that keeps Democrats and Republicans in office over and over again, regardless of their results.
It may or may not be depending on a lot of factors.
It is better than rewarding the losing coaches/managers by bringing them back over and over again.
That’s easy enough to say, but you are assuming a certain baseline and/or growth rate, and that’s far from a safe assumption.
It’s very easy to get into a tailspin, too.
I’m better at the larger scale stuff. I’m too nomadic to be very effective locally although I do try to help out with that when and where I can.
Who doesn’t?
You are an amazingly effective activist.
Just because you aren’t perfect doesn’t mean you are not very good.
Exactly!
Marc, actually, that’s my point exactly. But that’s what happens when you irrationally assume that different will be better. It may be, or it may be worse.
Paulie I understand what you;’re saying.
From my perspective, I am certainly not the most effective activist in the world. I procrastinate, I drop the ball on things, and so on.
However, in my experience it is the dilettantes who breeze into town, decide they know exactly what’s wrong with the LP, they make harebrained changes in platforms, procedures, or bylaws, and then they leave without actually doing a goddamn thing.
As an example…
A few years back, a FraudTax advocate rolled into town in Virginia, decided the definition of membership in the Virginia LP was the reason we weren’t successful, and over my objections the convention passed his “reform”. Afterwards I asked him to help implement his idea by being responsible for membership benefits and keeping track of our members under his definition.
He refused to help.
Not only did he refuse to help, he left the LP the following year.
Fortunately the mess he left behind was fixed at the following convention, but this was a perfect example of someone unqualified being in a leadership position.
I’m getting old, and have too little time left to suffer arrogant incompetence. I’ve lost all patience with people who can’t be bothered to organize their own fucking county or even precinct, but who nevertheless think they know what the party needs at the national or state level.
Weed the garden in your own back yard before presuming you should have any say in anything else.
Or you could get a vicious cycle of escalating failure, because by the time one incompetent person starts to get up to speed with learning on the job they get replaced by the next, and the money to even hire a replacement and support staff dwindles.
Punish failure and reward success.
You will end up finding better coaches/managers this way. It is called competition and innovation.
Keeping losing coaches/managers because you are afraid of change is a sure way for continued failure.
So you continuously get churn and people who don’t know what they are doing and trying to learn on the job.
Sure, new people could be worse, and if they are you get rid of them.
It depends on whether someone better was interested in the job, and if I could afford to hire them. Getting someone different doesn’t mean they will be better; they could easily be worse.
“Can we stop tolerating anyone whose highest qualification is a pulse being state or national leaders, much less delegates for God’s sake? That’s putting a real damper on “strategically competent”. Let’s all apply some social pressure, some persuasive, uncomfortable disdain for unqualified or negligent people in leadership roles. Can we?”
It would help if people who are elected to leadership roles in the party do not get re-elected, in some cases over and over again just based on name recognition or showing up at meetings, if they fail to grow the party or screw up in other ways.
If the Libertarian Party were a football team, would you maintain the same coach or coaches over and over again in spite of the fact that they continue to lose season after season?
If the Libertarian Party were a business, would you continue to hire the same managers over and over in spite of the fact that they mismanage the business to the point were it loses money and customers every year?
Tom,
No, I did not have any one particular person in mind. There’s a general phenomenon of severely disproportionate and off-putting nastiness among many LP activists. I catch myself being that way at times, although I am actively trying not to be. We just tend to be ornery people – both the individualistic ideology and the iconoclastic act of being involved with an alt party of any kind combine to select for the prickly types, and having us all bristle against each other tends to drive away anyone less inclined to abrasiveness, just because they don’t want to be around such an unpleasant gaggle of assholes and social misfits. And, yes, I deeply resemble all the negative characterizations in this comment, or at least have those natural tendencies, although I really am trying to keep them in check.
Paulie,
I’m sure you don’t have anyone PARTICULAR in mind there, right? 😉
I didn’t bring up “crossovers” at all, because while there’s a recent history of the phenomena I describe benefiting “crossovers,” they’re not the same issue per se.
Thanks Paulie! I almost quoted that in my own comment here but decided it might be a bit smug or something.
I’d love to discuss worth you or anyone! I’m thinkchip at gmail.
Marc: You know that if political amateurs left the LP there’d be almost no one left. Which wouldn’t be such a problem except in my experience those in leadership roles are often the least qualified.
I think that’s largely a problem of low standards and laziness, maybe too many too many in leadership with a fear of success as Nathaniel Branden warned of at the’79 convention (youtu.be/pZiE_jcShXg).
Can we stop tolerating anyone whose highest qualification is a pulse being state or national leaders, much less delegates for God’s sake? That’s putting a real damper on “strategically competent”. Let’s all apply some social pressure, some persuasive, uncomfortable disdain for unqualified or negligent people in leadership roles. Can we?
I’m going to try to work that comment (if I get an OK from Chip Barron) and the Morton Blackwell link above into a new IPR article – something about the necessity of being effective, not just being right on issue (and vice versa).
Related comment on another thread by Chip Barron:
A lot of that is true.
An additional factor is that the people who do sound a note of caution often go overboard in doing it and come off as nasty, perpetually negative contrarians for the sake of contrarianism to the average newbie (or even to longer term members that are trying to maintain a positive attitude, give crossovers a chance and hoping one or more crossover will take us to the next level one of these days, or at least play a role in taking us to the next level.
“Why do these people ignore it when others tell them that people like Barr and Root are opportunists?”
Because people are people, and most people — even in the LP — are predisposed to be followers, and followers tend to fall in behind the guy with the most pronounced swagger.
Because people are people, and most people — even in the LP — are predisposed to believe what they want to believe, and people who believe what they want to believe tend to believe the guy who tells them what they want to hear.
And because people are people, and most people — even in the LP — tend to be overly trusting of claims made by people who are, or claim to be, members of the same group, and people with that tendency tend to believe claims like “Candidate X will get (or has already got) more attention for the LP than anyone else, EVAH.” Or, fewer of them (but Barr only pulled the nomination off by a few votes) “we’re going to raise $40 million and WIN THIS ELECTION.”
Some people — even in the LP — learn over time to lead instead of follow, to face reality instead of just believing whatever makes them feel good about themselves, and to check out claims instead of just accepting them at face value.
But some people — even in the LP — never learn those things. And since some fraction of those who do learn those things walk away from the LP in particular or politics in general from disgust, the ones who never learn those things tend to be a fairly large proportion of the remaining activist population.
Also, there’s also a fairly large component, at any LP national convention, of people who haven’t had TIME to learn those things yet. The LP is small enough that national convention delegate selection isn’t competitive in most states. The main qualifications are 1) you have a pulse, and 2) you’re willing to take the time and cover the expenses of going. Which means it’s not unusual for a party member to be a national convention delegate during the very first presidential cycle in which he or she is politically active. We can’t really expect someone like that to have developed callouses over those three vulnerabilities yet.
Just put a boot in their ass. Courtesy of the orange and black….
Holy crap. This is the best one-paragraph summary of what’s been going on with the LP for the past ten years that I’ve seen yet.
The individuals responsible for this… what? catharsis?? … really need to move on.
Fortunately, some were so embarrassed after the Barr implosion (as many predicted) that they did actually move on and left the LP. Some stuck around and WAR put the saddle on them and rode them hard and put them up wet — until he got bored (as many predicted) and rejoined the RP.
Why do these people ignore it when others tell them that people like Barr and Root are opportunists?
But more importantly for 2016, what can be done to get these amateur political dilettantes to finally just *leave*?
To the extent that their ideology is a potential problem for them, they are several orders of magnitude away from the size and strength where that would become a serious limiting factor.
I agree, Paulie and Cody.
I did read most of the Blackwell article, and I largely agree with what he’s saying. I mean, its basically fact. There’s not really anything to disagree with.
Paulie, I think the CP’s problem is BOTH organizational & ideological.
Too bad people like J.R. just can’t read that persistent handwriting on the wall.
This piece by Frank misses the obvious reality by more then a mile.
There are still way, way more people that agree with them than vote for them. As with any alt party, their main problems are organizational, not ideological; see Morton Blackwell’s article linked above.
The CP isn’t winning because time keeps rolling on. Every day, fewer and fewer people support drug prohibition, fewer people support draconian abortion bans, and on, and on. If they could go back in time a couple of hundred years, they may have a shot.
Thanks, Ingelbrecht Hakerflaaten – very good article.
The Constipation Party favors prohibition, except when it runs Chuck Baldwin in what Juan Williams called “the year of Ron Paul” (2008). The Libertarian Party favors ending prohibition, except when it runs Bob Barr in what Juan Williams called “the year of Ron Paul” (2008). The minor parties are thereby very useful to those who wish to maintain the status quo, by normally preventing their support, but using them as foils for “good” rather than “the lesser of multiple evils.” There’s not much good way to prevent this, other than by making a political party into a good option (both philosophically consistent and benevolent, AND strategically competent), which the true decision-makers of the Libertarian Party don’t want to do, and the Constitution Party CANNOT do, so long as its platform remains as it is. In fact, from what I’ve found, the Constitution Party runs individuals who don’t want liberty, mistaking the libertarians philosophical platform as “the reason they haven’t been embraced.” That’s far from true.
This popular essay may help. Disregard that the best-displayed HTML version is at “Red-State” just pay attention to the content, not the messenger.
http://www.redstate.com/diary/Morton_C_Blackwell/2010/10/01/the-real-nature-of-politics/
“D’Oh!” – Homer Simpson
“Look at all these things elected Republicans are doing that we agree with! Why are you voting for them instead of us?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laivfpJkdbc
A couple of other questions:
Why don’t they pay the petition circulators whom they stiffed in 2012 (in Vermont, New York, and Alabama)?
Why doesn’t Frank Fluckiger keep his word?
Scratch, scratch, scratch…what’s that sound from CQ? Oh, it’s just a tired old broken record…
Nice way to spin a damming reality.