Sowell always nails it. I really hate the GOP sometimes because to some extent it is the rich detatched idiots and their consultants that are screwing us in the grassroots. Id think they’d know something about marketing ideas but they don’t and that is the problem. Reagan and Newt Gingrich to a lesser degree understood how to sell ideas. People like Lee Atwater knew how to drive people into our camp and if they couldn’t drive them into our camp they alienated them from the other camp which is often just as important. Thankfully we have a few dozen Tea Party minded folks who are changing the game. Hopefully it will be soon enough.
No, they do know .... I think the real problem is, their actual motives they cannot talk about, and so they put up this other stuff instead, which if it is silly and fatuous, at least keeps the Main Street Republicans looking the wrong way.
They're doing something completely different from what you think they are, is my best answer.