In late March 1976, Ronald Reagan was out of money and had lost the first four contests in the Republican primary cycle (Iowa, New Hampshire, Illinois, Florida). There was talk in the campaign of him dropping out of the race.
Lyn Nofziger bought $90,000 worth of TV time on NBC. This covered most of the country.
About 9 p.m. on a Sunday night, Reagan went on TV and gave his stump speech for 25 minutes sitting on the edge of a desk. The last five minutes, he asked for money. In the next two days $1,600,000 came in and gave him enough money to stay in the race.
Reagan refused to accept the status quo and the predictions of defeat—even those coming from some of his closest friends and advisers.
Today, with less than 300 hours remaining in the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump is in much the same position as Reagan.
Even with the national news media, the Washington political establishment and the globalist business and cultural institutions aligned against him, a Trump victory is achievable, but by no means certain; only by changing the game can Donald Trump assure the defeat of Hillary Clinton.
As I survey the closing days of the 2016 campaign here are my thoughts:
- Trump should do basically the same thing Reagan did.
- He speaks to America next Sunday night at 9:00 p.m. for 30 minutes.
- For every dollar he spends, five to 10-plus times will come back within 40 hours. So, if he spent $10 million, $50-100 million should come back quickly.
- In addition, he could rerun the broadcast on cable for the final days of the election, send tens of millions of emails promoting the broadcast and asking for money, social media, radio, direct mail and so forth.
- In this way Trump could bypass the establishment media filter and focus on his strongest issues (jobs, the economy, border control, national security, Obamacare, the rigged system, etc.)
- Trump would thereby suck up all the media oxygen for the final days of the campaign. His issues—clear of the distractions and bias of the national media—would drive the political conversation for the rest of the campaign. He will look strong and in control. He’ll have bragging rights about raising a world record amount of money in 40 hours from hundreds of thousands of people.
- By doing the broadcast this Sunday night, Trump drives the agenda—puts most other issues on the sidelines.
- All surrogates and allies get on board with the same issues.
- Encourage supporters to host a TV watch party at their home for family, friends and neighbors.
- Edit the speech into 1-2-5 minute segments by issue that supporters can send to their friends via email, post on Facebook, YouTube and so on. This gives your grass-roots supporters a project where they can be a part of the campaign and feel connected.
- Trump can stress that it is time for the presidential campaign to pivot from personalities to the issues that Americans are concerned about—jobs, economy, national security, border control and Obamacare.
Can it be done? Most certainly. Reagan did it in 1976 with a much smaller team and none of the technology we have today.
A Trump victory is in sight, but not assured. Trump needs a bold, game changing closing strategy to take charge of the conversation, bypass the establishment media filter and close the deal with America’s longsuffering country class voters and Reagan’s 1976 strategy offers him a clear example of what to do and when to reject the status quo and fight to win. {eoa}
Richard Viguerie transformed American politics in the 1960s and ’70s by pioneering the use of direct mail fundraising in the political and ideological spheres. He used computerized direct mail fundraising to help build the conservative movement, which then elected Ronald Reagan as the first conservative president of the modern era. As the “Funding Father of the conservative movement,” Viguerie motivated millions of Americans to participate in politics for the first time, greatly expanding the base of active citizenship. He is our era’s equivalent of Tom Paine, using a direct mail letter rather than a pamphlet to deliver his call to arms.
This article was originally published at conservativehq.com. Used with permission.
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