[pp.int.general] Stances on different ideologies (was: Current state of Piratenpartei Deutschland in general)

[Kaj Sotala]

On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 8:55 PM, Christian Hufgard
<christian.hufgard at piratenpartei-hessen.de> wrote:
> We were asked, what we say to minimum wages, integration of foreigners,
> extension of the airports, nuclear power. What do you want to answer to
> people, asking you these questions? Vote us, we let others decide, what
> to do?

Our party gets asked these questions, too. We tell them that those
aren't on our core agenda, so we have no official stance on them.

Yes, we lose some voters that way. But we'd lose far more if we'd
start taking specific stances. Before Piraattipuolue, Finland had
Tietoyhteiskuntapuolue (Information Society Party) - they're still
linked at the PPI front page. They tried taking a stance on everything
imaginable - as a result, people weren't sure what exactly they stood
for, and they died.

In order to become credible, we need to obtain voters. First, we will
obtain voters from the ones who really care about Pirate issues - they
are our first and most important resource at this point. They are the
ones who care about our agenda so much that they will vote for us
regardless of the fact that we have no specific policies on outside
matters. We *must* gain as large a portion of their vote as possible,
because for the rest, the things we're speaking about simply aren't
important. They will see as just one more tiny party that will never
get representation and isn't worth thinking about.

At some point, we will have harvested the whole vote of our primary
voters. At that point, we need to expand out, introduce new policies
which address the non core-issues. However, this can *only* be done
when we have already established ourselves as a minor but regardless
real party, important enough that the traditional voters will bother
giving us a glance. Introducing non-core policies before that will
prevent us from ever reaching the point where those policies will do
us any good. We must start out by concentrating on those values, and
only those, that our target audience finds most valuable - only after
we've convinced them, can we start convincing the others.