Republicans Go To Obama School -- At Harvard, GOP staffers sit at Axelrod's feet
Last edited Sun Dec 2, 2012, 02:35 PM - Edit history (1)
from Buzzfeed: http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/republicans-go-to-obama-school
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Demoralized Republicans arrived in Boston Wednesday night for a rare moment in American politics: They came to learn from Democrats.
Barack Obama's campaign schooled Mitt Romney’s in November, something of which the Republicans who gathered at the quadrennial, off-the-record Harvard Institute of Politics Campaign Managers Conference were intensely aware. And while the proceedings of the event are under embargo until the institute releases audio transcripts of the proceedings, some participants shared their reactions.
“We got our butts kicked, so I’m going to school,” said the manager of one 2012 Republican presidential campaign on his way into the sessions on Thursday morning, held in a cozy university conference space . . .
The evening-and-a-day conference is the tenth in a 40-year tradition of analyzing winning and losing campaigns. It is, the Institute says, convened “in an effort to allow future candidates, managers, journalists and scholars to better understand the nature of modern presidential campaigns. This year, the line between students and teachers is clear. The Obama team spent much of the morning at the Charles Hotel, and skipped the session at which Romney aides and their Republican primary opponents discussed the bitter nominating process, trading strategies and regrets.
When it was the Obama team’s turn to discuss their strategy, the room was packed with Republicans.
read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/republicans-go-to-obama-school
Twitter foes bury hatchet http://pics.lockerz.com/s/265159637
= new reply since forum marked as read
their loss. They just need to try harder next time! 
their anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-gay message alienates more voters than it wins. Romney was wooden, fake, had a gift for opening his mouth and jamming his foot in it all the way to the ankle ("Corporations are people, my friend. I'll bet you $10,000!"
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On the actual business of campaigning, the big difference? The Democratic Party (which is to say, Axelrod et al) ran a modern campaign that leveraged the strengths of social networking, email, Twitter, Facebook (see also Obama's "Ask me anything" appearance on Reddit, etc), smartphone apps, SMS, and so on; the GOP's use of the internet and new media as tools for outreach and fundraising were patchy, under-focused, and showed no real understanding of the medium.
