Eberle Uses Web to Spread GOP Story; Bobby Eberle and GOPUSA circulate the conservative message throughout cyberspace with a blend of news and commentary that explains important policy issues - Picture Profile
Insight on the News, March 1, 2004
new
Save a personal copy of this article and quickly find it again with Furl.net. Get started now. (It's free.)
Byline: Stephen Goode, INSIGHT
Bobby Eberle holds a doctorate in engineering and works for Lockheed Martin Corp. He's also the president and chief executive officer of GOPUSA, which he calls "a conservative news, information and design company dedicated to promoting conservative ideals."
He might be called a Republican activist. Eberle has served as president of the Houston Young Republicans, director of club development of the Texas Young Republican Federation and as a three-term state chairman of the Texas Young Republican Federation. He was a delegate to the 2000 Republican Convention in Philadelphia and was vice chairman at large of the Young Republican National Federation.
But Eberle has other commitments, too, and he speaks of them passionately. He is a Roman Catholic who insists genuine religious faith inevitably influences political opinions. And he is a man convinced of the importance of public service, working with Habitat for Humanity, for example, during the last decade.
Eberle played tennis during his younger years. Now he's devoted to golf. Understandably, he likes to point out that GOPUSA now gets about 30,000 page views every day. In 2000, when it started, it received about 3,000 views per month. GOPUSA is a 100 percent volunteer-run company, Eberle notes. "We have about 50 people involved nationwide with the day-to-day operations. We have folks in 40 of the 50 states who help update their state sections with news and commentary. Our e-mail magazine goes out on Mondays. And all that with no paid advertising," he concludes.
This magazine spoke with Eberle at the national Conservative Political Action Conference near the Pentagon at the Gateway Marriott in Crystal City, Va.
Insight: Engineers aren't usually thought of as being very politically active. They're often career-minded types for whom politics takes a definite second place, isn't that right?
Bobby Eberle: That's exactly right, and I was the same way. Through high school and college, I wasn't involved in politics at all, and even through graduate school. My idea of watching the news was getting to the sports pages.
But near the end of graduate school there were a couple of news stories that affected me differently. One of these was about two high-school girls, ages 14 and 16. I believe their names were Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena. In the summer of 1993 they were out walking one evening, stumbled upon a gang initiation, and never made it home. They were raped and murdered.
That tragedy hit me like a ton of bricks. I guess it was the first time I realized how terrible the world can be. My mind went back to the time when my father was still living, and how he helped in the community whenever he could. I decided I had to get involved with public service, helping out, volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. Then in the winter of 1994 I called the [Harris] County Republican Party, asked what I could do, and they said, "Come on down!" That was in 1994 and I've been involved ever since. I believe in personal responsibility rather than collectivism, so it never occurred to me to call the Democrats.
Q: What was your early experience in politics like?
A: In 1994 when I lived near Rice University there was an important congressional race. They didn't have a lot of volunteer help so the party said, "If you want to get involved that's a good place to start." So a friend of mine and I helped to run that campaign.
Being political novices, we were in for a shock, because 1994 was the year the GOP took back the House [of Representatives] after 40 years. It seemed like every Republican in the country was winning, but on that night we got only 24 percent of the vote and had our dreams of going to Washington shattered.
We knew nothing of the demographics of our district, so we did not know that it had been carefully designed by the state Legislature to ensure that only a Democrat could win there. Nonetheless, I was hooked.
Q: Getting involved in politics is one thing. Going so far as to start a Republican Website that's become an important source of news, information and commentary for conservatives is another. How did GOPUSA come about?
A: I was involved actively in Young Republicans with my good friend Bill Fairbrother, and as we were getting near the end of our involvement, we were talking one day and trying to decide what we would do next. Our two main areas of interest were politics and technology. Bill was a computer-science guy and I was an engineer. We began searching for a way to blend our skills to do something productive.
We started a Web-design company in 1999 for Republican candidates. We thought, "That's our perfect mix! We'll help get good candidates on the Web. And we'll use our design and technology skills to get out the conservative message!"
It didn't turn out quite that way, and in retrospect this was a good thing. We had come in at the tail end of the electoral cycle. In Texas, the primary is in March. We were looking toward March 2000, but we were just getting organized in December 1999. Most of the primary candidates either already had a Website or the idea was so new to them that they weren't convinced it could help. The result was that we didn't get a lot of activity, and during the spring when things were really slow we had a chance to re-evaluate. Was this the way we wanted GOPUSA to go?
What I really like to do is talk policy discuss the issues and try to help others understand them. And so, during the summer, we suffered a few growing pains with the company, completely restructured, and by September 2000 the GOPUSA that people know now as an Internet news/information/commentary company was born.
Q: You say you like to talk policy. What's big on your agenda right now?
A: Homeland security, defense and the economy. Those are going to be the big issues going into the election. It's going to be interesting as we get closer to November. If the economy continues the way it is going, then pretty much homeland security and foreign relations are going to be the main issues with the war in Iraq on everyone's mind.
I think the Democrats were counting on having the economy as an issue and may continue to try to make it one. But with the markets going up, employment and growth going up, all the indicators are pointing in the right direction, and it is going to be hard for the Democrats to point to authentic data and claim things are going in the wrong direction.
Q: You're comfortable with the tax cuts then?
A: Absolutely. The numbers speak for themselves. Without raising taxes or keeping them the same, but by actually lowering taxes, we're getting a complete turnaround in the economy from where we were in the fourth quarter of 2000 when the Clinton recession began.
And I think people embrace the Bush idea that if you don't make certain tax cuts permanent you're eventually going to have a tax increase, and if the eventual Democratic nominee goes into the debate and says, "Yes, that's what I'm for, tax increases, because I'm against making tax cuts permanent," then it's not going to fly with the American people.
Q: Is President George W. Bush doing a good job with homeland security?
A: Yes, I think they're doing a good job. The president was put in a very difficult situation on Sept. 11. On that day I was here in Washington and saw [American Airlines] Flight 77 fly right over my head and crash into the Pentagon. I saw it firsthand, so I am very sensitive on that issue. And I think that the way things have progressed, going after the Taliban, after al-Qaeda, going after Iraq, the president has shown the world that we're serious. Yes, we do need to have a foreign policy that is capable of engaging both American diplomacy and American military authority. I think Bush does just that.
The mass media have overlooked or ignored the years and years of negotiations in which the U.S. went along with the U.N. on Iraq, trying to get Saddam [Hussein] to back away from his outrages and cruelties. They have pretended not to see the many ways in which the Bush administration has been following a diplomatic course of action.
You can point to North Korea and see how we brought in other nations to help end a potential nuclear threat. We've had all the nations in the region talking with North Korea to try to convince Supreme Leader Kim [Jong Il] that the nuclear path on which he has embarked is a dangerous one. So deftly was this played that, in recent days, the North Koreans have said they will respond to U.S. recommendations concerning nuclear disarmament. We shall see.
In any case, also because of Bush policies engaging both diplomacy and military strength, we have Muammar Qaddafi of Libya saying, "Weapons of mass destruction [WMDs]? Come and get them! I don't want any of that!" This is a direct result of Bush policy, showing how military action can pay off on the diplomatic side. The president deftly has opened up yet another terrorist country to inspection for WMDs and should get credit for doing so.
Q: What's your reaction to the Bush immigration proposal? Does it offer a viable program for deserving aliens to work their way into citizenship, or is it just another get-out-of-jail-free card?
A: I get feedback all the time now about the stories we run on our Website, whether they be news or commentary. As we grow, the feedback just gets bigger, and never have I received the amount that I received on the immigration issue. Nor has it ever been so one-sided. Our audience is completely opposed to this proposal, mostly on grounds that it amounts to an amnesty rewarding illegal behavior.
Q: Is this strong Republican reaction against the president's immigration proposal something the Bush re-election campaign should be worrying about?
A: It may become a problem when trying to get conservatives out to vote. They are not going to abandon the party by voting for a Democrat or a third-party candidate, but in their frustration they might stay home, something which would not be good.
I think the president has made some effort to rally them. These, no doubt, are the same conservative voters who liked his comments in the State of the Union address about codifying marriage as between a man and a woman. And conservatives know President Bush has always been strongly against abortion. But the immigration proposal and deficit spending have deeply disappointed our conservative audience and caused a lot of frustration.
Q: So spending and the budget also are key issues if conservatives are to be kept in line behind the president's re-election?
A: The budget bothers Republican conservatives like me a lot. I'm always ready to write my column to support smaller government. A lot of us are Republicans because we think the federal government is too big. It just doesn't make sense to send so much money to Washington knowing all the time that most of it is going to be used to build up the bureaucracy at the level where problems are not going to be solved in the best way. That's why smaller government has become the core Republican issue, a hard-core belief. Something needs to be done about it.
What the White House says is, "The president has proposed modest increases in the budget." That may be true, and if so it's great, but if the Republicans in Congress are going to join the Democrats in running amok, then it is up to the president to use the veto. The buck stops on the president's desk. It's up to constituents to tell their representatives to cut the spending, but it takes presidential leadership to say, "This is not the budget I submitted. We've got to cut this and this out. We've got to go back to the drawing board. Or else."
And it's not enough to talk about limiting the increase of government to so and so percent. That way the government just continues to grow. Until you sit down and evaluate the worth of some of these programs and start cutting or eliminating some of them government is going to continue to grow.
Q: One of the problems Republicans seem to come up against repeatedly is that Democrats have the advantage when it comes to rhetoric. "Tax cuts for the rich!" they complain. Or "Republicans don't care about ordinary people." How can Republicans go on the offensive? How can they gain the rhetorical advantage?
A: It's harder to be a conservative because our philosophy is to decrease federal spending rather than to increase it. Therefore, every time we compromise with the left we're losing. If they want an 8 percent increase in something and we say, "Okay, but let's make it 4 percent," and then agree to 6, we're not decreasing the size of government but increasing it.
As far as getting our message out to the people, it's very tough. There is no Democrat who is not "for the children" or "for education," but if throwing money at these problems were likely to improve the situation it would have been improving right along. The thing is, Republicans are for those things too, but we have ideas about how to do so that stop short of building up ever greater bureaucracy. At the same time a certain compassion is essential. There always are people who are going to need help, so how do you best help those folks? You help them to become self-sufficient, perhaps through the private sector and faith-based work, rather than say "the government will help you." You don't throw them out to the wolves.
Q: Who are your political heroes?
A: I'm a big fan of Ronald Reagan and I'm a big fan of the current president. Reagan I like because he picked a few simple ideas and hammered them home without wavering. He came around just at the right time for America and helped put the country back on track feeling good about itself. Yes, this America of ours is a shining city on the hill.
As for George W. Bush, I first saw him in action in 1994 in Texas as governor. What I really like about him is that he stays on message and keeps coming. In his first campaign for governor he ran against Ann Richards. She mocked him from the get-go with nasty one-liners: He was "Shrub" not Bush, he was born with a silver foot in his mouth, and on and on. Bush never attacked. He had a positive vision, he talked only about the issues, and by the end of it Richards seemed in disarray.
It was a classic example of "positive campaigning pays off." Bush tried to do that same thing from the get-go when he came to Washington, but Congress is quite a different animal from the Texas Legislature. He did reach out to the Democrats, doing nothing differently than he did in Texas in that respect. But the Democrats weren't participating.
Q: What plans for the near future do you have for GOPUSA?
A: This obviously is a big political year and we hope to do a number of things. We're working on our own ad contests to counter what MoveOn.org is doing to bash Bush. To go along with our company's policy, we want to turn that around and be positive in approach, so this contest we're planning for the best pro-Bush ads likely will be geared to a pro-conservative, pro-Republican message. We can do that best. We're building up a panel of judges right now.
We also plan to be heavily involved in covering the campaign and the convention. We will have reporters there in New York to bring the convention news into focus with a grass-roots feel. After all, our core at GOPUSA is grass-roots conservatism.
We plan to have our second GOPUSA conference in September. We had our first in September 2003 and it was a success. It turned out to be very interactive and it was good to see people come away energized and informed.
Stephen Goode is a senior writer for Insight.
findarticles.com |
