Blog Essay: Rand Paul & the role of technology in 2016

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Barring some celestial intervention, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul will be announcing his presidential bid tomorrow in Louisville. Given that, Politico's Darren Samuelsohn has an insightful article on how Paul will attempt to portray himself as "a digital-savvy conservative" (Samuelsohn, 2015) with his campaign launch. Excepting the article below:

The framework is already in place, according to his team. Different domains will funnel traffic to the same official campaign website...And Paul isn't just using social media like Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter to spread word about his political ambitions. He's also pushing out all-important links to his own website, where he can solicity donations, email address and other vital information that will lead to more asks for money, more invitations to attend rallies and more ways for people to engage with his xpected upstart presidential bid.

I found this article interesting not only as a political junkie but also as noting how the game has clearly changed when it comes to the role of technology in politics.

Everybody remembers how Barack Obama's presidential campaign in 2008 broke ground in terms of digital campaigning, with his 2012 reelection campaign surpassing that effort, but what people don't remember is how it was the losing campaign of Vermont governor Howard Dean that truly broke that ground, paving the way for Obama's rise after utilizing the internet to outraise his more well-known competitors (Kornacki, 2008) and briefly turned him into the Democratic front-runner. Many of the young folks involved in the Dean effort ultimately became key figures in the Obama 2012 effort (Friess, 2012), signifying the importance of such actions like fundraising solicitations via email or purchasing ads on Google.

Of course, we have already read much about the impact of the growth of digital campaigning and digital politics. For example, we read from Monica Ancu that in 2008 as all presidential candidates, as well as all political candidates, were utilizing social websites, "the taste for online social networks as political tools had grown significantly among U.S. voters" (Ancu, 2011).

Where this conversation shifts back to 2016, by way of Senator Paul, is that after the 2012 election in which Obama successfully dispatched Republican nominee Mitt Romney, there was a great deal of attention paid to, as noted by David Karpf, "the technology gap between the Republican and Democratic Presidential campaigns" (Karpf, 2013). He added further that there was a "surprise absence of conservative equivalents to progressive online successes...dating back through much of the past decade" (Karpf, 2013). Even folks on the right acknowledge this. John Hayward of the conservative news organization Breitbart, when discussing Paul's budding campaign and the Politico article on it, writes that "Romney's campaign always seemed to under-perform online, despite the candidate's reputation for technocratic savvy and managerial brilliance" (Hayward, 2015).

Hayward also adds that it is important that "every Republican candidate heading into the 2016 race understands that a bigger, smoother, more aggressive online presence," as well as noting that the expectations in this realm are especially high for Paul (Hayward, 2015). Samuelsohn reports that while Paul "tends to be one step ahead of his 2016 competitors" in this regard (Samuelsohn, 2015), he also says that Florida Senator Marco Rubio,, expected to get  thanks to frequent interaction with his Twitter supporters as well as his website looking to build outreach, "has the makings of a solid tech effort too" (Samuelsohn, 2015).

However, the effort of the first declared major candidate, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, on the digital side has been a little hit-or-miss thus far. Samuelsohn reports that folks on both sides think that Cruz could have done a better job had he not posted his declaratory tweet just after midnight on a Monday morning as well as linking to his YouTube page instead of a campaign website through his social media and email postings and sharings (Samuelsohn, 2015).

Sources
Ancu, M. (2011). Online Social Networks and Political Campaigns. In R. Mann & D. D. Perlmutter (Eds.), Political Communication: The Manship School Guide. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 205.

Friess, S. (2012, September 30). How Howard Dean's bid gave birth to Web campaigning - Steve Friess. Retrieved April 6, 2015, from http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81834.html

Hayward, J. (2015, April 6). The Dawn Of Rand Paul's High-Tech Presidential Campaign. Retrieved April 6, 2015, from http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/04/06/the-dawn-of-rand-pauls-high-tech-presidential-campaign/

Karpf, D. (2013). The Internet and American Political Campaigns. The Forum, 11(3), 419-420.

Kornacki, S. (2008, June 26). The Howard Dean Nominee. Retrieved April 6, 2015, from http://observer.com/2008/06/the-howard-dean-nominee/

Samuelsohn, D. (2015, April 6). Rand Paul's first tech test. Retrieved April 6, 2015, from http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/rand-pauls-first-tech-test-116679.html?hp=t3_r