With control of the Senate within grasp, several groups on the right are determined to use social media to compete with President Obama’s fine-tuned turnout operation.
In the final days before the midterm congressional election, conservative groups are trying to harness the motivational power of some of the movement’s brightest stars to push the Republican base to vote in higher numbers this year.
Two of the Tea Party’s biggest stars, Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, along with former Rep. Allen West, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Rep. Louie Gohmert and Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, a conservative activist who served as undersecretary of defense under President George W. Bush, have cut videos with personal messages urging voters to show up at the polls on Election Day.
“It’s critical not only to make commercials but to encourage everybody to get out and vote,” Gohmert, R-Texas, told the Washington Examiner. “All around the country, and in Texas particularly, there’s just a powerful move to get out more liberals than conservatives.”
“Conservatives have to get out and vote,” he added. “Too many of them have stayed home. It should have been clear to them that it would be dangerous for America if they stayed home. We’ve got to turn that around.”
In addition to traditional turnout efforts like direct mail, robocalls and knocking on doors in critical precincts, the groups are distributing get-out-the vote videos to their members and subscribers and are placing them on various social media platforms, such as YouTube and Facebook, to drive home the message.
“I kept hearing how the conservative/limited-government vote was depressed, so this idea to encourage the distribution of non-partisan, issue-based, get-out-the-vote videos from key leaders emerged,” said Richard Manning, vice president of communications for Americans for Limited Government, a self-described non-partisan advocacy group.
Manning, who is spearheading the effort, is working with Tea Party Patriots, a group with thousands of local chapters across the country, as well as For America, a conservative non-profit founded by Brent Bozell that has more than 6.7 million Facebook likes and 124,000 followers on Twitter.
Numbers USA, a non-partisan group aimed at reducing the number of immigrants coming to the United States, is also participating. Because the group works across party lines, it is only distributing videos that are non-partisan and not just aimed at conservative voters.
Cruz made his own video, cut from a speech he delivered earlier this year, and posted it on his Facebook page with the hashtag #MakeDCListen.
“Have you early voted? Now is the time to stand up, speak out, and show up to vote Harry Reid out! #MakeDCListen,” he wrote.
Most of the other videos are straightforward, shot in a relaxed home environment with the lawmaker or public figure speaking directly into the camera about the importance of voting Nov. 4.
The messages, however, are anything but casual. Cruz, Lee, West and others issue dire warnings about the threats of Ebola, terrorism, Obamacare, immigration, global unrest, abuse of executive power and a growing and unaccountable federal government.
In one video posted on YouTube, Lee tells viewers to “vote this year as if your life depends on it, because that just might prove to be the case.”
“We’re confronted with growing evidence that the world is a dangerous place,” he says. “We’re at risk from everything from Ebola to jihadists like the Islamic State, from insecure borders to Iranian nuclear weapons, from Russia’s increasing aggressiveness in Europe to China’s increasing aggressiveness in Asia.”
“President Obama has said while he is not on the ballot this year his policies are — every single one of them,” Lee continues. “If you want better policies with respect to these threats, you can do something about it – vote.”
In another, West tells viewers that if they want to “stem the lawlessness of the Obama administration,” it’s up to them to send the right men and women to Congress.
“This 2014 election cycle is one of the most critical,” West says. “If we want to make sure we protect our energy security, economic security and national security, now’s the time to make sure we get the right legislature up on Capitol Hill.”
Conservative groups aren’t the only ones using fear to motivate people to go to the polls.
On Friday, Obama emailed supporters asking them for last-minute donations for his own get-out-the-vote efforts.
“I don’t want to scare you,” he said. “But a lot of folks out there don’t know that there’s an election this year, let alone that Election Day is just 11 days from now,” Obama wrote.
“That means Democrats are facing some tough odds, and it’s up to you and me and some really good organizers to make sure Democrats turn out to vote,” he said. “But we’re running out of time to do that.”
Even though most Democratic senators up for re-election are running away from Obama, the president plans to spend the next two weeks hitting the campaign trail for several Democrats in close gubernatorial races and urging his base to turn out on Nov. 4.
