Sarah Palin and Mark Warner and A NEW NATIONAL HOLIDAY

NATIONAL MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS DAY?


Many years ago, Tom Hritz wrote a sometimes acerbic and often humorous column for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Mr. Hritz and his (equally acerbic) wife loved to smoke cigarettes.

One year, a colleague at the P-G asked Tom if he was going to participate in The Great American Smokeout.

Hritz harumphed and said, "I'm going to spend the day lobbying for a new holiday called "National Mind Your Own Business Day."

Shortly before Tom made that comment, I discovered the value of minding my own business -- especially when it came to issues like gay marriage. What consenting do is their own business. And they have a right, as Senator McCain reminded us recently, to be free from discrimination. If gay and lesbian couple want to engage in civil unions or marriages, I invite them to "be my guest." Actually, it's none of my business. However, making sure that people get equal treatment under the law is very much my business -- and yours.


This week I'm doing one of my "business book summaries" for an Illinois-based company that I've worked for on-and-off (mostly on) since 1991. The book is David Meerman Scott's The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing & Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly. The book is outstanding, and it should be of value to anyone interested in selling anything from ideas and political causes to products and services. Over the next seven days or so, I mention points that Scott makes about creating grass-roots marketing.

I'll be combining information from the books and my own experience to talk about political coalition-building. Prior to Adam Brickley's Draft Sarah Palin effort -- one that shows signs of being fabulously successful -- the most important online "draft" effort was one focusing on former Virginia Govenor Mark Warner, who apparently is going to run for John Warner's (no relationship) Senate seat and is currently a heavy favorite to win.

The individual who ran the Warner effort was someone you've never heard of: Eddie Ratliff. In several years of blogging and building support for Warner, Ratliff met the Governor only briefly on a few occasions. As is true with the Palin effort, the Governor had no direct influence on the blog effort to get him drafted as the Democratic nominee for President. (Late in 2006, Warner announced he would not be running for President -- an announcement he never would never have had to make if it hadn't been for the efforts of Eddie Ratliff and a few friends)

The Draft Warner movement came to an end on October 12, 2006, and the main web site has been silent since then. However, anyone who wants to learn about how to leverage his or her political clout should go to that blog. If you look to the left on the site, you'll notice the various elements of the campaign as it unfolded, including the use of Yahoo! groups and Meetups. The link is at: http://draftmarkwarner.com/

Fom 2004 until 2006, as Ratliff conducted his effort, mentions of Warner occurred in 10,000 blogs. As has happened with Sarah Palin, support for Warner emerged in several nationally prominent media outlets.

Adam Brickley, the founder of the Draft Palin effort, is an extremely savvy Internet coalition-builder. Through his effort -- and the efforts of many people reading this post -- Gov. Palin has become a figure with a committed national following. Significant bloggers who support her come from AK, CA, CO, DE, FL, HI, PA, , MI, MN, MA, NM, HI, WA, TX, NY, WI, and many other states. The backers include liberals (and at least one Democrat), moderates, and conservatives.

Significant pro-Palin pieces have appeared in The Weekly Standard (Fred Barnes), Townhall (Patrick Ruffini), WorldNetDaily (Pulitzer Prize nominee Les Kinsolving), The Columbian (Tom Koenigger), Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Dimitri Vassilaros), Blog Critics (S. J. Reidhead of The Pink Flamingo), as well as several other places. The number of Google mentions of Sarah Palin and higher offices (V-P and President) now exceeds 100,000.

There is a chance Sarah Palin will get the V-P nod in 2008. There's a very good chance she will be a viable candidate for the presidency in either 2012 or 2016. These scenarios would not exist without the initial effort of Adam Brickley, whose blog is accessible at: http://palinforvp.blogspot.com/


Is Mike Huckabee Really a Christian? One Wonders

Here's what Mike recently said in reaction to a (false) report that he believed in letting states set their own standards for what constitutes marriage: September 27, 2007 Little Rock, AR -- Former AR Governor and Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee today issued the following statement in response to a news story stating that he is "open to state-sponsored civil unions that would bestow the legal rights of marriage on gay and lesbian couples": "He said, This report is simply inaccurate. I do not support legal recognition of alternative unions. I strongly, firmly and unequivocally believe that the traditional definition of marriage is for 'one man, one woman, for life.' That is why I worked hard in Arkansas to enact legislation at the state level to protect traditional marriage, and why I have vowed to work hard for federal language as President. "While I believe that people have a right to decide how they live their personal lives, they have to respect not changing the definition of marriage."

This is little more than Mike pandering to his evangelical base -- and perhaps to homophobes like Dr. Laurence White, Rev. James Dobson and other know-nothings. Why on earth would any sane person become agitated by the thoughts of gays and lesbians marry? How on earth would that diminish anyone's marriage? The Mike Huckabees of a generation ago used to condemn gays for practicing fornication because they could not get married. Now, the argument seems to have gone in reverse. (More tomorrow)

I'll also be talking about Ciel and Han. They're a lesbian couple living in Austin, not all that far from Homophobe Central in Houston (where Laurence White and Larry Perrault reside with their dog-eared copies of the Book of Leviticus, the Mosaic Law that St. Paul said in Galatians is null and void for Christians.) Oh, I forgot to mention: Ciel and Han also are evangelical Christians -- much better ones than the two guys in Houston.

Ciel and Han have a web site you can link to at: http://fearoftheabomination.blogspot.com/ Here's what the heading on their blog says about the documentary they created. A provocative, independent documentary film created in Austin, TX about the experiences of a lesbian couple who went undercover as a heterosexual couple inside an Evangelical Organization. The film is currently in post production.