Ralph Z. Hallow of
The Washington Times has some new (as far as I know) info about how Newt's campaign will be structured:
Mr. Gingrich has recruited some of his party’s most sought-after campaign strategists and advisers and will conduct a unique 50-state “10th Amendment campaign” that throws out the old model of regional political directors. The campaign will rely instead, he said, on leadership and direction in each state from people who live in the state and understand the nuances of local politics.
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The Gingrich national campaign will set up “a fairly large headquarters in Atlanta” and a “fairly small headquarters in Northern Virginia.”
Instead of the division of the country into geographic regions with regional political directors, the structure typically employed by presidential campaigns, the Gingrich organization will use what the candidate calls the “10th Amendment campaign.”
It’s a reference, he said, to the Constitution’s “federalist” amendment that reserves to the states and local governments all power not specifically granted to the federal government.
“Everything stays in the states, instead of someone from Washington telling the local people how to do the things that the local people know more about.
“We expect New Hampshirites to help carry New Hampshire, Iowans to do the same for Iowa, South Carolinians to do the job for their state, and so on,” Mr. Gingrich said.
Most of the following I have already wrote about, but it is worth mentioning again:
There has been a methodical buildup of the Gingrich operation over the past few months even as some political observers openly doubted he actually would take the presidential plunge.
Mr. Gingrich has recruited people considered to be at the top of the game in politics.
Linda Upmeyer, Iowa’s first female House majority leader, will be chairman of his organization in Iowa, which will be the first state to hold a presidential nomination caucus next year.
He has locked up the services of two other sought-after advisers to Texas Mr. Perry: Craig Schoenfeld, who ran George W. Bush’s fundraising organization in Iowa in 2004, and Dave Carney, the New Hampshire-based political consultant.
He also has recruited former Polk County, Iowa, co-chairman and experienced campaign operative Will Rogers.
Former South Carolina GOP Chairman Katon Dawson, considered one of the state’s most talented political operators, will run Mr. Gingrich’s operation there, he said.
The idea to avoid a top-down approach is exactly the right way to go. It is the idea behind the free-market: let a lot of different people try different approaches and then others can pick up on what works best. It is the same kind of campaign that Barack Obama ran. As well as, in many ways, the campaign that made Obama's possible: Howard Dean's in 2004. Both campaigns had competent leaders at the top, but they did not dictate to supporters how to go about advancing their candidate. (What is remarkable is that liberals can easily see the value of bottom-up approaches in campaigns, yet when it comes to economic matters, they are just interested in the top-down approach.
Newt calling it the 10th Amendment campaign is a great message due to the rising attention being paid to the last amendment of the Bill of Rights with the explosion of federal government reach into areas that had not before been under its' domain.
