Types of Activists

Being active in this campaign, and reading blogs, talking to people, and such, I have determined that there are three main types of activists. Note, of course, that an activist is someone who is involved at some level in a campaign — just liking a candidate isn’t enough. I’m talking about people who are active in some real way.

I’m also not talking about levels of activity. I’m talking about personalities and methods.

I think that each campaign has some of each. To be sure, different campaigns attract one kind or the others more or less,  but I suspect that each shows up in each campaign.

The first kind are those which most of us want to be — the ones who are positive. They talk about the good things, the candidate’s plans, record, ideas, character, and such. Such a person might talk about negatives with another candidate from time to time — for the purpose of comparison and contrast, or to answer charges. These people, though, are not out to tear anyone else down. They reserve the explosive terms (forgive the lack of quotes, I’m using too many of them) for when they apply: bigot, racist, fascist, communist, Nazi, sexist, corrupt, crook, liar, crazy, idiot, anti-American, etc.. They also don’t need to make fun of other candidates’ names.

A group of these people, even if passionately debating different candidates, can all walk away as friends.

The second group is made up of people who have to tear down every other candidate. It might seem like a subtle difference between the first and second kind, because I do allow some room for talking about other candidates. In general, though, a person who spends more than a small amount of time talking trash about other candidates is in this second group.

As an example, there is a certain person who posts comments all over the place with vast numbers of links that s/he copies and pastes accusing every Republican candidate except his/her own of virtually every manner of evil. Instead of building up the impression of his/her guy, s/he just wants to tear down everyone else — sort of a “last man standing” kind of idea, I guess.

I would point you in the direction of one of his/her comments, but I don’t keep them around … my blog isn’t the place for spam from any candidates’ backers. (By the way, s/he is not a Ron Paul supporter …)

These types of activists are not particularly likely to win over converts, I think. In fact, typically, I would think that they turn people off to their own candidates, and galvanize the opinions of others. That is a normal reaction to being beat over the head and told that you’re just plain wrong, to bristle and lash back.

Sean Hannity’s “Stop Hillary Express” is a great example of this kind of thing. He spends much of his 15 hours per week just tearing at Hillary Clinton, which surely makes his show popular with a certain listening audience, but it gets to the point that to those who might be uncertain about her, he loses credibility and sounds like he’s just dumping on her.

Then there are the extremes. These are people who think that if you don’t support their candidate, then you must be evil. Any story that doesn’t mention their candidate is biased, and any negative comment is a smear — probably an orchestrated one.

All other candidates are crooks and liars, and any voter who isn’t on board is repugnant.

I found a great illustration of all three of these types over at the Ron Paul grassroots forum, right here.

In this thread, there are actually people discussing the merits of being rude. I found “Anti Federalist” to be particularly colorful in his choice of language (at the bottom of the first page … but I’ll warn you about profanity) as he illustrated the third type of activist.

Although my example comes from a Ron Paul forum, I think that every candidate with any real support has some of all three activists. Mark Klein might not have all three, but … well, … you know what I mean.

My point … I don’t think that anyone has been swayed over by a Type 2 or Type 3 activist. If you’re not, for example, a bigot, being told that the only reason you don’t support a candidate is because you don’t like (women, blacks, Mormons) isn’t going to win you over. You immediately know that the person is wrong.  Even if your support for a candidate erodes because of an attack, that won’t necessarily win you over to any other particular candidate.

We all need to strive for being the respectful, intelligent, decent people that we are and can be. I’m convinced that those are the kinds of people who win over voters. We have almost a year left of this campaign … I think that we’d all be better off if we made it a great year of discussing ideas, beliefs, philosophies, and plans. Let’s explore histories and the future.

But let’s not get hysterical, mean-spirited, or angry. After all, we’re only going to have one President when it’s all said and done. Many of us won’t be seeing our first choice elected. In my circle of real-life friends, there are supporters of Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, Fred Thompson, Duncan Hunter, Mitt Romney, and even Rudy Giuliani (I try not to talk about that much …). We aren’t all going to be happy with the GOP nominee.

I’d like to think that we can still be friends even after the election, though. It’s my hope that nothing in my blog makes that impossible, or even difficult.

I would hope that more people have the same kind of hopes.

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