Cyrus Krohn Says Bye Bye To RNC

[Nonno (Premo)]

RNC-YA

"Washington, DC — Two years ago I left a prominent technology company in Silicon Valley to join the Republican National Committee as e-campaign director to elect the next Republican president. We lost, but there was more than a software glitch that contributed to our November 2008 defeat. Now that I’ve submitted my resignation, I have a few things to say and people to thank.

First, the perception that the GOP is woefully behind online and can’t catch-up is the blog-flogging of political simpletons.

It’s common knowledge now that Republicans held a technological edge until the Democrats improved what the GOP initiated years earlier. Former DNC Chairman Howard Dean confirmed this when he said (at the National Press Club on Nov. 5, 2008) that he modeled his party’s 2009 comeback by copying the RNC’s sophisticated database and online outreach efforts from the Web 1.0 world.

Change comes quickly online and the tide will turn again in favor of the GOP, once we hone our message and harness emerging technologies. To do that, we must match Democrats, programmer-for-programmer. Regrettably, we’re in terribly short supply of professionals focused solely on building platforms and applications. This is where we got dot bombed in 2006 and 2008. Maybe we should start providing computer science scholarships in exchange for a commitment to serve our party?

Yes, we have generational and geographical hurdles stunting our digital spurt. The former will be solved actuarially and the latter the Democrats will solve for us by upgrading the grid. Thanks for the help Sen. Mark Warner! Where the GOP can boast is that we have tweeters and bloggers in droves–although their impact remains unclear.