You are correct to a point. More goodies will buy votes. But, you have to give more attractive goodies than the opposition party AND you have to have at least as good a propaganda system. A chronic and fatal weakness of the GOP is the lack of a good propaganda system to compete with the NYT, HuffPo, LATimes, NBC, etc. Each one is small but collectively they spread a lot of propaganda and they send the kind of simple sound-bite sized messages that typical voters can grasp. Add to that the generation’s greatest propagandists such as M Moore plus the entertainment industry, then throw in mandatory tax on wages (union dues) paid into a propaganda organization (the union) and you can see that even freebies will not be enough to achieve political wins.
Without a propaganda system at least that good, you can give out lots of free goodies and have little effect—remember the Medicare prescription drug program? 1980’s amnesty? Tax rebates under Bush?
Just finished the book Breitbart published just before his death.
You are correct in what you say, but it’s even worse than that.
Breitbart pointed out very clearly that the true war is not a political battle. In the long run elections are not relevant.
The true war is cultural, always has been, always will be.
We have abandoned the culture-making organs of our society to the Left for over half a century, assuming that enough Americans would always see thru their propaganda to allow us to compete politically.
We were wrong. We have to compete culturally, and unfortunately I don’t think anybody but Breitbart had a clue how to go about it. The most depressing part is that shifting a culture is a decades-long process and we are presently WAY behind the curve and going backwards.
One of the old Greek philosphers said that he didn’t care who made the laws if he could write the songs. Look who’s been making the popular music for 50 years.