Greetings and a belated Happy New Year! It is 2006, a year for a national Libertarian convention with no presidential race to distract from the serious business of fixing the platform and the bylaws.
There is much good news. We have over 300 members. Our advertisements are being read, and we are getting much free publicity as well. The web site is filling up with many interesting essays and platform proposals. We have a new home page that is much more useful, credible in appearance, and search-engine friendly.
Now the scary news: We have much left to do before July and limited time to do it.
State convention season is about to begin! We need to have a presence at the major state conventions. We need to get members elected as delegates to the national convention.
Extremely important: The California Libertarian Party has its convention February 24-27! California gets the largest delegation of any affiliate, and since the convention is on the west coast this year, expect a full or nearly full slate from California. We need to recruit, mobilize, and get elected as delegates as many reformers from California as possible. This is a big challenge, as we only have 16 California Caucus members signed up as of January 31.
If you are interested in actively promoting the Caucus at this convention, please contact the webmaster, Carl Milsted, at manager(a)reformthelp.org, or call at 828-215-6816. It would be nice to have someone distribute fliers, or even work a table at this convention. We have PDFs of potential fliers at http://www.reformthelp.org/caucus/promote/table.php. PAC money is limited, but given the importance of this convention we may be able to help with table rental and printing.
Other state conventions are announced on the calendar page of LP News, and some of these will get added to the web site so members can discuss and coordinate strategy for having a presence at these conventions.
Advertising Campaign Begins
Thanks to our donors to date, our advertising campaign has begun. Google ad words have been purchased, and ads have run in the January LP News and the February Liberty. An ad is scheduled to appear in the April issue of Reason. In the table below you can see images of the Liberty ad and the Reason ad. The LP News ad was similar to the Liberty ad.
Liberty Ad
Reason Ad
We are still experimenting with which advertising strategies work for us and which don’t, and figuring out how to run the most effective ad campaign possible. For the LP News and Liberty ads we went with visibility and excitement as our approach. Results were a bit disappointing. At least, based on the marketing survey question, more people were being brought in by our much cheaper Google ads than our print ads.
Because of this, we are trying a different approach for the Reason ad. Instead of hype and loud type, we are using a dignified, objective approach in a format that looks more like content than advertisement. This is an approach which has worked very well for CATO over the years. Since the Caucus is all about having a credible platform and a credible plan for growing the party (vs. trying to grow the party via hype and spin away past failures) this new approach is more consistent with our aims.
The introductory page of the web site has been updated to reflect this more credibility-focused approach. Membership has picked up since the home page was updated, so there is reason to hope that the Reason ad will do well.
Of course, we cannot guarantee that this new approach will make a giant difference. Perhaps we need giant ads. Maybe we just need to buy half page or full page ads in LP News. Perhaps we need to place our ads on the cover of Liberty instead of running a single column ad back in the book review section. But this requires money, more money than we have raised to date. If you want to see us run the big ads, or simply run more of the smaller ads please go to http://www.reformthelp.org/home/donate/ print out the donation form and send the PAC a check.
And while we are on the subject of fundraising, should we publish an honor roll of donors or is it better to keep donors as anonymous as the law allows? Feedback on this question is welcome. (If we do publish an honor roll, we will first check with all donors to see if they want to be included.)
Free Publicity
The Caucus is getting quite a bit of free publicity these days. More and more blogs and other sites are linking to us. They are listed down the bottom of the left sidebar on the home page. Those listed with a bullet in front are using an image to link to us. If you have a site, or know of one that is not on this list, please contact the webmaster.
Further promotion has come from articles and blog entries mentioning the Caucus. Tim West gives us regular coverage on his www.libertyforsale.com blog. This site is well worth following for its regular coverage of what is going on in the party as well. Meanwhile, Kevin Rollins of www.freeliberal.com has given us free advertising.
Speaking of which, PAC Chair Carl Milsted has generated quite a bit of publicity with his January 23 essay, “The Need to be Anarchists” (found at www.freeliberal.com), generating debate on high traffic libertarian sites www.lewrockwell.com and www.strike-the-root.com. A subset of this argument is advanced in “Are we Anarchists?” which is scheduled to be in the February LP News.
Caucus members Tim West and Guy McClendon, who are also on the LP Platform Committee, have an essay scheduled for the February issue of LP News as well: “The U.S. Constitution vs. the LP Platform.” This essay proposes that we first work on limiting government to the bounds of the U.S. and respective state constitutions before advancing further cuts in government.
New on Our Site
As previously mentioned, we have a new home page. The old home page immediately redirected the user to /home/intro/index.php so that all pages were at the same directory depth. This made page maintenance easier for the webmaster. The problem with this arrangement is that it is not very search-engine friendly. Also, there are good reasons for having a different format for the home page than for the other pages.
The new home page is at the top level. Those of you who have web sites linking to the Caucus site, please update your links to simply http://www.ReformTheLP.org. The new home page is designed to be attractive to new members, be useful to existing members, and have plenty of information for search engines. On the right sidebar we have several sections introducing the Caucus to new visitors: “A Rational Plan for Restoring Liberty” (inspired by the ad for Reason), our Statement of Purpose, “Who We Are,” “Join Us,” and “What’s Old” (links to popular older essays). Down the center we have “What’s New,” “Recent Essays,” and “Recent Platform Proposals.” These sections provide current members a way to quickly see what has changed since their last visit.
Speaking of new essays and platform proposals, we plan to start including featured essays in the newsletter, and to publish the newsletter a bit more often now that convention season is coming up. But since this issue is already plenty long, this feature will have to wait until the next issue. For now, do note that there have been quite a few proposals and comments thereon concerning Immigration, the Membership Oath, and the Statement of Principles in the Platform area. The Caucus area has been cleaned up a bit, and we have our first essay regarding Caucus strategy prior to the convention.
You have received this email newsletter because you have signed up for membership
or subscribed at www.ReformTheLP.org using this email address. If you did not sign up,
then someone else must have used your email address!
If so, let us know (webmaster(a)reformthelp[dot]org)
and we will promptly remove you from this list. Also, if you wish to terminate your subscription/membership, write us at the same address.
