Five ways GOP can use the Republican National Convention to excite voters

The images, themes, and sound bites generated at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., Aug. 27-30 will set the tone for the rest of the election season. Here are five suggestions the GOP can use at its convention to excite voters and chart a path to victory.

3. Reach out to independents

Polling suggests Romney can do well with independent voters. According to a recent CNN/ORC poll, both candidates have strong support from fellow partisans, but Romney has a slight edge with independents, who favor him over Mr. Obama by seven points.

Republicans have an opportunity to build that lead, especially with the 28 percent of independents who say they may change their mind. A majority of independents disapprove of Obama's job performance. Republicans need to convince them that Romney can chart a better path.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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