Q&A Friday #60: How Are Things Going With The Hunter Campaign?
Question: “How’s the job going for Hunter and is he planning to try to get more Media exposure soon? I hope he does well, because he’s my choice along with Tancredo.” — tazzmax
Answer: I’ve been doing work for the Hunter campaign through TCV Media, for about 2 1/2 weeks.
During that time, I have gotten some things done. We have a MySpace page now, I’ve set up some interviews, like this one with Redstate, although most of them haven’t occurred yet, and I’ve done some other behind the scenes things.
However, you’ve got to remember that the whole “Blog Guru” position is very new. In 2000, blogs were irrelevant to the nomination. In 2004, Howard Dean got a lot of attention, but most of the other candidates didn’t really take advantage of the blogs like they should. Now, we’re in 2008 and — let’s face it — the Republican Party in DC is making some strides, but they don’t have the comfort level or relationship with the blogosphere that the Democrats do.
So, I was starting from scratch in some ways even though the Hunter campaign had a very positive attitude towards the blogosphere. I had to explain what my stategery was, the why behind it, and how it could make a difference — but, that’s not all. From there it was, are you guys game to do this and this? You are, great, now whom do I need to talk to, to get this done and who has to sign on this, this, and this? Even then, a lot of the things I want to do require Duncan to be involved in some form or fashion and the scheduling is, as you’d imagine for a sitting Congressman who is running for President, unbelievable.
But, long story short, they seem to be amenable to most of the things I want to do and willing to work with me to make them happen. So, all in all, I feel pretty good about how things are going and at this point, it’s just a matter of executing the plans we have.
Although I can’t go too deeply into what I have on tap because philosophically and tactically it’s different from what the other contenders are doing in many ways (and I don’t want to give it away early), I can tell you that Duncan is inevitably going to climb through the ranks until he can fairly be said to be a top tier on the net — and that should happen before the summer.
In fact, you can already see the signs that Duncan’s on his way up if you know what to look for. For example, they just finished counting the results in the South Carolina straw poll and McCain had 164 votes, Giuliani had 162, and Duncan finished with 158.
….
The first primary is more than 10 months away. By the time it’s here, I expect Duncan to be right in the thick of it.
Update #1: There was some Ann Coulter video and related commentary in this post, but since she made a fool of herself at CPAC yesterday, it seemed appropriate to edit it out.