If you read just one article on what the Republican Party should do now…
…let it be this one.
And let’s get Republican leaders (whoever they may be) to read it.
Maybe I should start a new blog category, “election 2016.”
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
Let’s lighten up a bit and have a bit of fun. Here are some suggestions on how to suppress the women’s vote which leans towards Democrats:
“Ways we can decrease our losses with female voters:
– Place voting machines on the top shelf in the kitchen.
– Place the voting machine on the inside of a tightly sealed mason jar.
– Voting machines should roughly have the complexity of a home theater remote. (Andy)
– Enforced parallel parking at the polling place. (Damned Dirty Rino)” Hat Tip: Ace
Just kidding, ladies. 🙂
Have any of your own?
Here’s one against the so called stronger gender:
Don’t let men who wanna drag race their Prius’s vote.
This is an excellent story (and more important now that the ANC in South Africa is reverting to it’s Marxist ways).
We need to endlessly repeat the little lessons required to gain converts. I have several new college grads we’ve hired in our small firm. They are engineers with no natural bias towards the left but supported Obama just because. However, when they get their first paychecks the world changed. It is really astounding how much young singles without mortgages or property taxes get hit by income taxes.
A simple lesson by poster, video or talk along with showing how little major medical costs for young, healthy singles would be a huge helpm
Good points, all.
another way is to recognize Joel Pollack a a young leader.
He is a very smart young man, the one who even Allen Dershowitz (sp?) backed. Dershowitz said that Joel was the smartest student he’d had at all his years at Harvard Law. Joel lost two years ago to Jan Stuchowski in IL.
Good article. I don’t think outreach to blacks would have helped this year, but it is certainly worth working on now. If you can get local politicians raising issues of concern to local blacks (eg, schools), it will be easier than trying to win them with ideological arguments.
Another point: We need to be a bit more sophisticated WRT Asians. I am not sure that Koreans feel all that connected to Indians. Once again, use local issues they connect with.
I just read this link on Kennedy and Andropov via a comment by Walt to Roger Simon’s latest PJM piece on Oliver Stone:
http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/ted-kennedy-soviet-union-ronald-reagan-opinions-columnists-peter-robinson.html
I also read the review of Anne Applebaum’s Iron Curtain at the WSJ.
It woud be great if we could get some young people to read these kinds of works so they could question the “wisdom” they have been receiving since they started school.
Are we talking south africa the way it actually is, or the myth of south africa that hides what goes on there just as sure as they hide what goes on here in the US along similar lines?
and the article is a big joke of meaningless bs
“Use coalition politics to cobble together a winning team.”
right… now since the left has blacks attacking white males whose taxes fund things (and are not allowed to participate in programs), and Spanish are attacking white males whose taxes fund things (and are not allowed to participate in programs), and Caucasian women are attacking white males whose taxes fund things and all designate the same scapegoat…
may i ask where will you cobble this team together from? Aliens from Mars?
ie. its EVERYONE in our society against one single group… so the only way to get a coalition for republicans is to out attack the scapegoats… ie. come to our side we will take more… and each one will try to top the other as to what they will do to the scapegoats, till they are, as detailed in oppressor oppressed dialectics, and social justice, gone… removed… extinct, etc.
guys… the game is over…
white guys are the new Coptic as in Egypt…
the whole article is a joke other than it illustrates that everyone is going to run to the left so they are not the last capitalist standing, or the last white guy, standing when the race to the left is over now.
its OVER… the republic is OVER…
what part of that dont you guys get?
1. Do not compromise basic principles; instead, show how they are relevant to all.
despite you dont get any air time, and people spew hatred at you, and have no play with the media…
2. Take the fight to the opposition’s turf.
same problem as above, and if you think they were dirty, wait till the opposition fights and see how dirty they get… but do you really think Romney would have been listened to in a basement community center in Harlem?
3. Highlight candidates from minority groups
who will be seen as cutouts put there to pretend to ligitimize things. Note that you can read the counter arguments developed over 30 years ago, that pretty much adress all this. from the idea that they will try to ingratiate themselves with the people they were trying to enslave (according to the left). and will say anything… or do anything.
4. Don’t forget core white voters.
all hated white males, and if you don’t eject them, your still the party of the slavers of the world, and the race haters and all that… so the republican party can survive, it just has to dump white men… then it can compete for the women… who are the majority deciding group
6. Develop clear policy alternatives.
ie. lie like the left does? because any policy alternative is going to have to be limited by merit and all that… while the other side can lie to the outcome… so clear, cloudy, etc… dont matter does it?
7. Pursue incremental changes, not sweeping ones
that will work… the other side is putting about 70 new rules (the laws that are not legal) per week… while the right causes them to incrementally step back…
8. Create flagships of policy success
you mean the things that they have revisioned from history, through a media you have no control of influence (that would rather go bankrupt than give news), and so on
9. Organize by drilling activists in the basics.
activists? all they do is sit around and bs about what they think should happen if they were policy makers. they NEVER ASK what can be done, and strategize. everyone is a captain, and now there is no ship of state
10. Prepare for the politics of the long haul.
yeah… trotsky did that, mercator fixed the problem… but with that extreme aside.. the above is basically saying, your screwed wait till the next generation this one is has to die out before you get a chance… ultimately though, no chance since the up and coming are part of a newer school system and we are now outside the rule of law and LEX REX
OT but interesting…
There’s a way to petition the White House for things. Here’s one that was started 11/9/12:
“Peacefully grant the State of Texas to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government.
The US continues to suffer economic difficulties stemming from the federal government’s neglect to reform domestic and foreign spending. The citizens of the US suffer from blatant abuses of their rights such as the NDAA, the TSA, etc. Given that the state of Texas maintains a balanced budget and is the 15th largest economy in the world, it is practically feasible for Texas to withdraw from the union, and to do so would protect it’s citizens’ standard of living and re-secure their rights and liberties in accordance with the original ideas and beliefs of our founding fathers which are no longer being reflected by the federal government.”
To get an official response to a petition, it has to get 25,000 signatures in a month. This one has gone viral…it has 30,780 signatures in three days. And it’s climbing fast even though it’s a fair amount of trouble to sign on and vote.
Won’t happen, of course, but shows that there’s strong sentiment in Texas that we want OUT.
There are similar petitions for other states.
Artfldgr: I think it’s really rather simple.
You are either correct or incorrect. If you are correct that all is lost, it really doesn’t matter if we follow Pollak’s suggestions or don’t, because you offer no solution either, and no way to reverse things. If you did, I missed it, because I haven’t read every word you’ve written. Other than your earlier advice to people to “write a book”—which certainly wouldn’t reverse the things you describe, and as I and others already said. many many books of that sort have already been written—I just haven’t seen what you’re suggesting other than adjustment and efforts at self-protection.
But there’s the other possibility: perhaps you are incorrect. I know you very much don’t think so, but let’s just say it’s possible. If you are incorrect, you will have discouraged people from doing things that might have helped the situation while there was still time.
I would understand your being discouraging about a certain course of action that you think futile if in fact you were offering a different one inclined to be more successful. But if not, I’m really not sure what you’re driving at.
Is it just to warn people not to bother? Not to expose themselves to later being labeled as having been unruly and defiant and not good comrades? As you well know, if it comes to that, it’s hard to protect yourself no matter what you do.
I’ve always thought that the problem with the Republican Party is lack of imagination. If it were up to me, I’d start a “Business Bootcamp” in the inner cities, operated from storefronts with a giant picture of Lincoln in the window. It would be run by Republican businessmen and free to all that have an interest. The sales pitch would be “Do you want $20K in welfare or do you want to be rich enough to pay $20K in taxes?”. Then teach the students how to start and run a business and help them get started. It would be important to take all comers and not require any credentials.
It would also be important to make it clear there is no quid pro quo even though this was an initiative of the Republican Party. Once a few of the graduates started making money, they’d get the message and switch along with their employees.
The entrepenurial spirit is there, witness all the drug dealers or the girl from ACORN who knew the tax law inside out. Herman Cain would be the perfect leader for a program like this.
I love Pollack’s battle tested concepts. Pollack’s first:
Restated: do not compromise principles in order to promote policies which you hope will attract “moderate” or “undecided” voters. “You do not gain trust from voters by becoming a ‘me, too’ version of the majority party.”
This is why GWB’s economic policies only caused the cause of small government to lose ground more slowly: GWB was a ‘me, too’ big spender; a ‘me, too’ version of the Democratic Party. This is why Repub Congressmen and Senators are only causing the cause of small government to lose more slowly: they are ‘me, too’ big spenders; they are a ‘me, too’ version of the big government Democratic Party. And McCain and Romney fall into this category, also. All: GWB, Repub Congress and Senate, and McCain and Romney, are philosophically incompetent re small government principles … or, at minimum, are not philosophically competent enough to meet the challenges which are presented to them in D.C.
Which leads us into a related category: Republicans who do not know how to market small government to American citizens. GWB, McCain, and Romney all fell into this category, as well as most current U.S. Senators. This is a category of Repubs who do not understand conservatism to a level of expertise which allows the Repubs to deconstruct the false premises which are contained inside media questions. Therefore, this category of Repubs simply accepts false premises, then scoots around falsely premised media questions as best they can (which, usually, is not very well).
What conservatives DO EXCEL at dismantling false premises inside leftist questions?
First, several radio talkers, b/c they constantly practice the discipline: Limbaugh, Levin, Prager, Hewitt, Ingraham.
Second, some cable media, such as: Gingrich. He is the prime example. Santorum. Cain. Coulter, Palin, Fred Thompson (and Jeri), Malkin, Gutfeld, even Adam Corolla. Rudy Giuliani. Doesn’t hurt to have training in law and argument.
Third, some active national politicians: Rand Paul, Ted Cruz (a solid conservative who has been a national debate champion, a trial lawyer, and an Attorney General of the State of Texas), Rubio, Coburn, Inhofe, DeMint, and a number of congresspersons, led by Ryan, Cantor, Allen West, and others, and a large number of courageous and tough governors.
Fourth, a large number of internet writers and contributors, from Sowell through VDH through the Breitbart kids and the libertarian contrarians, and much, much more.
Therefore, precedent is established: small government principles can be effectively communicated and marketed to American citizens in bite sized, tasty, digestible bits. We do not have to be led by persons such as Bush, McCain, Romney, who are both philosophically incompetent + are incompetent at marketing small market principles to American citizens.
Now, look, all the stuff which has been spoken of on this blog during the last week: do it all. ATTACK MEDIA!!!! They are the enemy. Go after them: go after their personal histories! They are not dispassionate observers. Rather, they are combatants, and must have fire directed at them. Re all the modern statistical breakdowns of voters, i.e. marketing to get voters to your side, and separate marketing to get voters to go to the polls, and microtargeting via information assimilation and interpretation??? Do IT! DO IT!!!! Do all of it, and do it better than Dems!!!! And do all the rest of it (the moral stuff: I will not support immoral stuff). Present candidates of color to the American people! Do it! Is it unfair to candidates who lack skin pigment? I don’t care! We are playing to win. Rubio-Cruz, 2016! Cruz-Susannah Martinez, 2025! If it takes cool, slick, hip, persons of pigment to win, then win!!
And, if we cannot win in the short term (although, we CAN WIN in the short term, imo), then win in the medium term and in the long term.
Here is the thing: play to win. If we can’t win now, we play to win later. We can no longer afford to proffer candidates: GWB on economics, plus McCain and Romney, who only lose more slowly, and who do not push us at least some tiny distance in the correct direction of smaller government. Because that is what we are winning: small government and free markets.
There are people who are in these neo comment sections, and they are certainly wonderful and interesting and educated and fascinating people, and I would love to have dinner with any of them, yet, their fascinating messages boil down, in the end, to this: America is over. Small government cannot win. Give up the fight, and accept the inevitable. Their messages, in the end, boil down to this: do not play to win.
I reject that. This is my message: play to win. Play to win small government and free markets. Play to win now. But, whether we win or lose now, we are also playing to win in the intermediate term, and we are also playing to win in the long term. And we CANNOT win via compromising our most basic principles; CANNOT win via being apologetic for our most basic principles; cannot win via running from leftist media questions, as opposed to deconstructing the underlying bias in the premises, then pointing to that underlying bias immediately, in the interview, right to the face of the biased journalist who is clueless about seeing her own bias. We cannot win – not now or in future, if the national faces of our part are philosophically incompetent, and are incompetent at marketing small government ideas to the American people. We cannot win if we are apologetic about conservative principles. John McCain, I am lookin at you.
Play to win.
“If it were up to me, I’d start a “Business Bootcamp” in the inner cities, operated from storefronts with a giant picture of Lincoln in the window. It would be run by Republican businessmen and free to all that have an interest. The sales pitch would be “Do you want $20K in welfare or do you want to be rich enough to pay $20K in taxes?”. Then teach the students how to start and run a business and help them get started.”
This is a great idea!
The leadership of the left in this country is deeply racist – most of them see every issue through a lens tinted of racist thinking. For example, many of those claiming that people especially whites not voting for Obama were primarily failing to do so because of racism really believe it and really have trouble seeing other possible reasons.
So in their calculations of what is to come – the counting of those chickens before they hatch – they assume that all non whites will always vote with them because they see the world the same way.
I think this is mostly a center right country and over time many of those non whites will migrate away from the Democrats especially if they over reach – something very likely.
We’ve got a canary in California where they now control everything top to bottom. It’s likely that California will fail first and provide a very concrete example for all to see prior to 2016.
IMAO the article had some good points and some that have also been attempted unsuccessfully, in that much I agree with the artfull dodger. And from a practical standpoint, the thought crossed my mind the practical implementation of these things is much more difficult for mere mortals – many of us cannot convince family and friends of the merits of minimal government, much less blocks of voters who’ve been indoctrinated with generations of liberal “thinking”.
Gcotharn I’m with you. Play to win or don’t play all. My biggest criticism of Romney from the start was the ‘play it safe’, ‘play nice’, respectful disagreement approach. It’s naive to think in this day and age Americans respect a candidate who won’t fight back. Republicans can’t expect to win if the candidate is happy to walk away at the end of “a spirited respectful campaign”. Democrats have no problem bending the truth and lying about their opponents. When Republicans get questioned about their truthfulness, they spend a week defending it; the winning response should be 3 more accusations to keep the opponent protesting and fuming, not stop and wait to get pummeled.
Ive beaten this dead horse into the ground before- Its a nice sentiment to hold the lofty goal of staying above the fray, but our culture passed that point years ago. Americans need to be sledgehammered. Most don’t appreciate subtleties or eloquence or statesmanship. Our republican candidate was competing for attention with an increasingly crass pop culture and enormous distractions, while waxing philosophic about the grand old days when we pulled ourselves up by our boot straps – it falls on deaf ears of every color. Not that the principle needs to be abandoned, but the message needs to be packaged for the times. Its the right idea, but its badly communicated. Paul in Boston has a good point.
If you get punched, you come back with a club.
The commenters to this site are not the average American- I respect all the opinions and ideas here that agree with me… The only thing I would add is to drop the gloves. A campaign is a battle. It’s war. A struggle for the most powerful office in the world. If you believe your vision is right, you need to take the battle to your opponent with everything you have. You can’t get to that office being a wimp.
I refused to cast a vote for McCain because he refused to fight for me – everything was “respectful” and “a campaign he could be proud of” He never got the point that asking to be presidential was about fighting for us. I don’t give a rats ass how a candidate feels about himself the day after he wins dirty campaign. Candidates think this way, as I believe Mitt did, shouldn’t waste our time.
Honor is reserved for your friends, your enemies get none. The irony is we want our leaders to be decent men and women, but there’s a fine line between decent and hopelessly naive. To some extent, Mitt and Bob Dole had the same sense of misplaced decency, affording it to those who offered them none, and leaving the country to pay the price for their vanity.
“However, when they get their first paychecks the world changed.”
Obama has cleverly arranged it so most of the young won’t get paychecks for a long time.
“The leadership of the left in this country is deeply racist — most of them see every issue through a lens tinted of racist thinking.”
IMO, they are racists because they promote the idea that blacks can not achieve, can not better their lives through their own efforts, and thus must continually be wards of the state. How insulting!
I think this should be the one article.
Paul in Boston –
I second Parker’s enthusiasm. A fantastic idea, and one more thin to add to the “Big Money” operation.
One of the best ideas I’ve heard yet – practical, boots on the ground, realistic, and one that is built to snowball in success over time (i.e., it fits into a long game). If it fails, we lose nothing.
“thin” = “thing.”
I too like Paul’s Bootcamp idea. I wouldn’t try to go national with it though, at least not at first. Keep it within the community till participants see that it works and become real supporters. Otherwise, you could get the kind of organized resistance that charter schools get from the unions.
In my hometown, a black group (don’tknow anything abouttheir politics) has started a program for teaching manners to young girls. They show them how to prepare a dinner, set the table etc. It’s just a little program but it can b a stepping stone into a wider world for the participants.
My point is that we should keep our eyes open for any small local programs that build on local strengths. We have to crack through the closed minds of the ther side.
Glancing at my above cited group, of individuals who are skilled at deconstructing invalid premises which underlie questions from biased media, I notice a common factor: the individuals in this group have been heavily subjected to the Alinsky tactic: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.”
Two things:
1. Their targeting demonstrates that they are the skilled communicators whom the left fear. The skill, of deconstructing false premises which underlie biased questions, is lethal to the left. And the left, either consciously or unconsciously, understand the severity of the threat, and react with vicious personal attacks.
2. Most of the right – especially the part of the right which make their living in various media, are disgusting cowards who decline to defend compatriots who speak truth, and who are equally likely to join the attack on the truth seekers (as to defend the truth seekers), and who cower in a fetal position attempt at protecting their own careers and incomes (at the expense of truth; at the expense of truth seekers).
If you glance at the below list, you will see that the persons who are most skilled at deconstruction are very persons against whom the left has aimed their most intense vitriol. Not an accident. They are also the persons whom the cowards of the right have been most quick to run away from, and to even publicly condemn. This is why we are losing. The list: