At The Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin talks to Tim Miller and Joe Pounder of America Rising:
They plan on instigating nothing less than a revolution in the way the right does and uses oppo research. They are keen on connecting research to communication and every other aspect of campaigns. Pounder tells me, “It must be responsive to the news cycle and polling.” Miller jokes that “research has been people sitting in a dungeon or going through trash cans” and then funneling the information up to a press person to send out in a mass e-mail. Miller says, “Now you have to drive the news cycle.”
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The Democrats fostered what Miller and Pounder call a whole information “ecosystem” that includes American Bridge, left-wing blogs and a receptive mainstream media. They also have a culture of sharing information, best practices and data use among groups as diverse as the Human Rights Campaign and J Street. The right needs to arm itself with comparable tools.
American Rising has two parts: One is an limited liability company that Pounder will oversee and will supply clients (which could conceivably include everyone from the Republican National Committee to groups such as Club for Growth) with opposition material on Democrats. In trying to catch up with the left’s technology advantage, Pounder sees his operation as a “laboratory for technology” that includes people in fields outside of politics.
Miller will be running the other part, a PAC. He says, “We need an independent organization that can drive the toughest negative narrative against Democrats.” That means a Web site and outreach to news outlets of all types.
