Many moons ago, I wrote an entry called The "Winning Team" Theory, in which I postulated that the GOP, at the peak of its prowess post-2004 election, was able to push the more radical ideas of some of its base, simply because the GOP was the "in crowd", and people will generally do whatever they can to be part of that crowd. Enacting absurd, last-minute Schiavo legislation? Go ahead! Continued pounding of the war drums? Sure! Invading the privacy of millions of Americans? Terrific! The GOP was able to get away with this precisely because they were the clique and everyone wanted to be one of the debutantes.
I never thought that the GOP was owned by the Christian right. Rather, I felt that they were using a plank of the Christian Right under which they could rally all the troops... and they were able to do so, not because everyone believed in the idea so much as they wanted to ride the braggadocio-laden coattails of the clique.
Following the 2006 election, I feel even more confident that this theory holds water -- and I've found some evidence in a very interesting place -- the Free Republic "freepathons". Read on...
Certainly I'm not the only one here at DKos who puts on the hip waders and takes a look at the FR hornets' nest in order to see what kind of tripe is being spouted. These days they don't anger me -- I find the whole thing very amusing... including their fundraisers, known as freepathons. I did wonder, however, how they would fare after the 2006 elections.
Well, they kicked off their first quarter fundraiser on January 1st, 2007, and as the days went on it seemed to me that things were a little slow, but I had only a general feeling of such, I didn't know a way to prove empirically that things were a bit slow. Then I saw a message on their site stating:
Free Republic is funded solely by reader donations. If you enjoy Free Republic and would like to help keep the lights on, please consider making your donation today.
Well, that certainly seemed new and somewhat desparate, but still no proof... and then, I found their freepathon "keyword".
Bingo. I feel the results are quite telling.
The following lines reference each quarterly fundraiser since Q4 2005, with the corresponding timeframe in which the fundraiser took place, from commencement to completion. In some cases, there is a specific article referencing completion; for others, there were none, so I dug into the comments to find an announcement. These are linked accordingly.
- Q405: 10/1 - 10/13 (~13 days)
- Q106: 1/1 - 1/12 (~12 days)
- Q206: 4/01 - 4/13 (~13 days)
- Q306: 7/01 - 7/14 (~14 days)
- Q406: 10/01 - 10/17 (~17 days)
Well, per the above numbers we see a little bit of drift, but those, by themselves, may not be enough to matter too much. However, in the light of the current stats, these numbers are a bit more interesting:
As of this writing, current freepathon, which began on January first, is well underway -- at least in terms of duration, not receipts. Fifteen days into the freepathon, they have reached a mere 42% of their goal. At this rate, it's possible that the current "campaign" might run well over a month!
Now, a few caveats.
- First, I don't have easy access to the financial goals of the aforementioned freepathons, so there's the possibility that the goal ($70,000) for Q1 07 was set a bit high. This said, I don't think it would've been lifted that much above previous goals. Maybe someone else could research this.
- Secondly, it is true that prior to this quarter, we already began to see a bit of a drift prior to the election, but while I have not tracked back far enough to have confidence in my number of datapoints, I don't imagine that drift could be projected out for a timeframe this large for the current quarter.
In the end, and getting back to my initial theory from 2005, I'd imagine that we're starting to see a "correction" in the GOP base numbers, much in part to the "Winning Team Theory". Having fallen out of favour, much of the so-called "base" of the GOP is dissolving. The GOP isn't the "in crowd" anymore, and like a disgraced cheerleader, it's finding that it has a lot of fairweather friends.
Perhaps some expected this, but I think the above metrics are an interesting indication as to just how far things have gone. Looks to me like a hangover has really hit the GOP. It will be interesting to see track these changes next quarter, using FR's financial campaigns as a gauge. While I've no doubt that the vociferous rancor over there -- Bush's "20%" -- will nonetheless continue, perhaps these numbers speak louder.
Update: Interestingly enough, it appears that they are suddenly a mere 20% from their goal, after "Rolling in the Monthlies", a reference to their monthly donators. I have never noticed this happen before - although I guess anything is possible.