I do not know very much about Texas Politics but I congratulate Perry for winning. There is a very important lesson to Republicans if they want to win in 2010 and 2012; the lesson is about a third of the way down the news story reported by Fox:
“The Perry campaign from the beginning took a big gamble and chose not to use yard signs, recorded phone canvassing, or direct mail, and instead concentrated on social networking on the Web, grassroots community organizing and, of course, TV.”
Parry won because he thought outside of the typical Republican box. I believe we lost on Measure 66 and 67 in Oregon because of old tired ineffective methods like phone banking. There are two principals I want Republicans to get a hold of, social networking that is getting the information to the people. The information must be ready accessible to the people and not just mostly likely voter or narrow interest groups. The second related to the first is grassroots community organizing. This is not getting the grassroots to pack the office to make annoying phone calls but to be in their neighborhoods, on the streets, in the offices, coffeehouses and more where the people are. It is very important the grassroots given freedom and latitude to whom they reach and not simply given a list of mostly voters filtered by a phone survey. The campaign must give the tools how to reach but leave it to the grassroots in determining whom to reach.
The Lesson of Perry is if we want to win, we must change the way we campaign