Marketing Won’t Hide GOP’s Lack of Ideas for Real Change
News travels fast in Washington, but understanding takes a lot longer. It isn’t news that Americans are unhappy with the way things are going.President Bush suffers record low approval. Eighty percent of the country thinks the economy is bad and getting worse. Most want to get out of the costly and endless mess in Iraq. Most are struggling with incomes that can’t keep up with soaring prices for gas, food, electricity, health care. One in nine homes is now under water, worth less than its mortgage.
Every politician has learned that people want “change.” But understanding what that means takes longer. Americans are looking at a country in serious trouble. We are looking for leaders — not politicians — who can bring us together to get things done. This isn’t rocket science, but it seems hard to absorb in Washington.
Consider Republicans in Congress. They lost big-time in 2006. Twenty-nine incumbents took a look at the polls and decided it was a good time to retire. They have suffered stunning defeats in special elections in former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert’s district in Illinois and, amazingly, in a Louisiana district previously won by Republicans with overwhelming majorities. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich warns that they are headed for a real disaster if they don’t change what they are doing.
Again, pretty obvious stuff. But Rep. John Boehner, the Republican minority leader, clearly doesn’t get it. He has put out a slide show reassuring his troops that they can do well this fall. Most of it is about partisan mechanics — raise money, contribute to the party, coordinate efforts, help one another out. But when it gets to talking about the country and what Americans want, it is clueless.
Boehner sees the election as a marketing challenge. “Our brand is under repair,” he says, “but we can bring it back.”
How will they do this?
Boehner figures Republicans can win this fall by becoming the party of “change.” In a memo sent to every member of the Republican caucus, he wrote, “To the American people, we say that Republicans will deliver the change you deserve.” He’s intent on rolling out a new agenda this week and next that will capture that mantle.
Huh? Republicans in Congress, backed by Bush’s veto threats, have obstructed virtually every reform since Democrats took control in 2007. They have filibustered against providing health care to children, against ending the war in Iraq, against ending subsidies to Big Oil and investing in renewable energy, against negotiating lower prices on prescription drugs
In recent weeks, Boehner has led his party in a policy of delay and distraction, forcing the House to vote repeatedly on motions to adjourn simply to delay votes. Republicans even switched votes on honoring mothers on Mother’s Day, simply to put sand in the gears.
Now after months and months of this, Boehner says a new agenda will “re-brand” Republicans as the party of change. Perhaps Americans are as dense as Boehner thinks. Perhaps just a little new paint, a bumper-sticker slogan, a show agenda and bitterly partisan attack politics can once more draw the lines and save Republican incumbents from defeat this fall.
But this year, Americans are tuned in. They know things aren’t working. They are looking for leaders, not used-platform salesmen. They know that special interests and partisan posturing have locked up Washington. And they just might not be ready to accept the party of obstruction’s election year conversion as the party of change.
–Jesse Jackson
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Dear Jesse,
Dear deluded Jesse - Dems have to grow up and realize they have to do the WORK of educating joe & josephine q. public about the hypocricy of Repubs. This means “going negative” in the sense of attacking them on their destructive policies & exposing their myths (smaller government? conservative ideals? macho men? bomb what country next?). Putting impeachment squarely on the table and doing it (don’t worry about the numbers; once a real investigation gets started those numbers will change). Dems have so much baggage! A refusal to do the things they were elected to do - they could start by ending the Iraqi occupation NOW, before the election!
Jesse - get a job.
Perhaps I’m missing something (maybe, as a Canadian, I’m not privy to the range of information many of you seem to have access to) but why all the opposition to anything Rev. Jackson every contributes to CD.
Is it just me, or do others realize that whenever he makes a contribution, there are inevitable posts such as “deluded Jesse” or “get a job”…and many others.
Please help to understand why this is.
Because his analysis is always so superficial and more oriented to horse race aspects rather than specifics of how we MOVE persuadable voters to a more progressive agenda. It’s all “pie in the sky” without acknowledgement that we have to change the system before we can get a progressive agenda going for us.
Thank you, Rich.
In a sense I agree with that analysis. I’ve noticed many of his contributions tend to be short (on detail and length), as if done by a procrastinating student 15 minutes before a deadline.
This is unfortunate. As someone who “walked with King” and endured through many battles during the civil rights era, Rev. Jackson could (should) help others to draw on his vast reserves of experience in social justice and civil rights to educate others.
I personally have great faith in the unlimited behavior modification potential of marketing. Those already fully conditioned by branding will continue to vote Republican, claiming that the catastrophes emanating from the Bush administration and the gridlock in Washington are the fault of Democrats. No amount of example or proof will undo successful brand conditioning. If that were the case, capitalism itself would already be dead.
Poor , poor American people, so easily deluded by marketing! Spare me. The American people don’t want change, they want money. That is the change they are talking about. If they wanted change they would go for Nader, Gravel, Paul, Kucinich or McKinney. Get real, these people didn’t manage 1%! The people want toughness, lower taxes, world domination, religion, patriotism, militarism, no demands on them, and MONEY. And, they don’t want to think, it interferes with digestion. The people want to be able to get fat without limit. Got it?
Societies and organizations exist, but individuals exist only conditionally. Nobody speaks Hittite because they have determined that to be the language most expressive of their ideals – individuals exist within the context of a society and incorporate its subtexts into their own experience of consciousness. If others want world domination, etc., then so do they. If others want good manners, modesty, etc., then so do they. The rise of manic cruelty in our society cannot hope to be eradicated while there is a conditioning industry for hire, telling the public to do unto others as much and as quickly as possible first before others do unto them.
Jackson is probably right about Boehner’s cover story on “branding” and it is no accident that Boehner discusses his almost infinite real problems in meaningless marketing language. Class Act is right to note that large numbers of voters are completely refractory to actual thought and completely susceptible to marketing ploys, especially I would add, the kind of smarmy, yet threatening infantilizing that is the Repub’s specialty.
The campaign, however, is going to be a one-two or maybe a one-two-three punch. Yes, there will be happy talk about “change” from “re-branded” Repubs, but there will also be a timed, orchestrated and utterly vicious campaign about Obama/Rezko/Hussein/cocaine use/lazy, effeminate black man/daughter raper/Willie Horton/draft dodger/son of a welfare mother who was a self-hating white who miscegenated with a black man! The Rezko thing, now being warmed up in the right wing blogosphere will be pitched right after the Dem convention. The MSM will ignore the fact that it has been meticulously packaged and rolled out by the Repubs and concentrate instead on flogging Rezko, his picture, Obama’s property and the rest day and night.
Pravda and Izvestia were never anywhere near this good at the game. With the judiciary, Congress and the White House in the hands of authoritarians and their spineless enablers, with the MSM in the corporate pocket and with the electorate more or less believing spin about “electability” and other spin factory delusions, there is only one hope and it ain’t much - that just enough people will remain awake and engaged just long enough to prevent the coming crash into economic chaos, fascist politics and environmental disaster. John Boehner is an errand boy. His career consists of walking envelopes of corporate cash across the House floor and placing them in the pockets of his cohorts - more errand boys. He is totally unapologetic about this. The fact that we have allowed shameless, shallow little men like Boehner so much influence on our lives is a very sad and ugly statement on what we have become. Jesse Jackson probably honors Boehner too much by taking seriously what he says. But he’s not alone. Apparently, millions of voters think there really is something real about this ghastly circus freak show.
Any self-respecting society would throw a slathering, self-promoting jackal like Boehner in prison. People can get used to almost anything I guess.
“To the American people, we say that Republicans will deliver the change you deserve.”
Yes - they’ll place a flower on our grave after they bury us in debt and destruction.
Oh…..thank you, kind sir!
CLASS ACT: Classy, right on rebuttal to Lizard!
There’s little doubt the Democratic party is in collusion with the Republicans. How else could a political party so full of villany, greed, and nonsence, survive, and even prevail?