Posted on 05/19/2008 1:02:16 PM PDT by calcowgirl
[ Ray Haynes is a Republican from California. He served in the
California Legislature from 1992-2006 as a Senator and Assemblyman. ]
Now that I am in the private sector, I have learned an important lesson. Last month, I was in Costa Rica on behalf of a company that I have been doing some work for. We found that one of our distributors had been taking our product and diluting it. It still worked, just not as well, and our customers were blaming us. To protect the brand, and the quality of our product, we got rid of the distributor. The company had spent a lot of time and money developing the brand, and had developed a market share based on that brand. This distributor was trying to take that brand, and sell an inferior product, trying to make a short term profit at the expense of long term confidence in the quality of the product. Our distributor still claims he was making the product better. We thought he was sacrificing quality. We just couldn't let that happen.
You don't need to rebrand a successful brand, but you do need to ensure the quality of that brand. The most successful brand of Republicanism in the last 50 years has been the Reagan, "conservative" brand of Republicanism. Even Schwarzenegger took advantage of that brand in 2003, running as a conservative in the recall, vowing to "sweep up" the Democrats in Sacramento. He then abandoned that brand, became a big spender, and still tried to sell himself as part of the Republican, claiming he just changed it to "make it better." People rightly blame Schwarzenegger for our current budget debacle, but the problem was created because Schwarzenegger abandoned the Republican brand, and then vilified those of us who were concerned about the quality of the product.
We had the same problem in Washington. We didn't lose control of Congress because we weren't spending enough money; we lost it because we spent too much. We watered down the brand that Reagan, Gingrich and countless others had developed over the years. Those who delivered the majority too us, our customers, got upset, and decided not to buy our product in 2006. Congressional Republicans diluted the quality of the product, hoping for a short term profit at the expense of long term confidence in the product. We lost market share, and for good reason. We didn't deliver on the promises we made.
There are two parts of politics. The first is convincing people that the agenda you advocate is the right agenda for people you are asking to vote for you. The second is, once you have convinced them to vote for you based on that agenda, you need to deliver on that agenda. People don't expect change over night, but they also do not expect you to renege on your commitment to quality. They will properly reject you if you break your word to them.
Those who advocate "rebranding" realize, quite correctly, that the Republican Party has a problem. People do not have confidence in us. The reason for that however is not because they think we are wrong. They just think we will do and say anything to get elected, and that once elected, we will act just like Democrats. History has shown that to be true.
We don't need to rebrand, we just need to ensure the quality of our brand. When we do that, we will start winning again.
Mine done exploded.
LOL!
This article states exactly what I believe about the state of the GOP, and that is why I will not participate in the further decline of the brand by enabling the more left-leaning republicans.
I think that was a main point of the article.
The popularity of Rush Limbaugh, Hannity, etc is contrasted to the unpopularity of the Republican Party. There is a reason for this disparity. It is what the article is all about.
There has always been a biased leftwing media establishment. When they were a lot more powerful than they are now, they smeared Ronald Reagan as wanting to throw your grandmother out of the nursing home and into the street. He won decisively anyway.
Blaming the mainstream media has gotten us nowhere. Building the alternative media has achieved a great deal. The mainstream media is less powerful now than in most of the last century. For example, there are no Walter Cronkites left. No William Randolph Hearsts. And America is far the better for their departure.
The key to "selling" conservative principles is to insure that America is the selling point. Ronald Reagan sold us on ourselves as a nation, and the conservative part just followed effortlessly. Give me a candidate who lifts up the America of We the People, the way RR did, and you'll see the dismal, crappy negativity of the Obama socialists dry up and blow away.
It'll take decades, if ever, to get me to shop there again.
How about Rembrandting instead?
While I agree that the media as a whole is not solely to blame, I do believe that a much larger percentage of our young people have been lost to the anti-American public school/university brainwashing effort in the 1990s and 2000s than when I went to school in the 60s and 70s.
I can specifically recall a good percent of my teachers, most of them men, who were very conservative types.. and were not afraid to express their opinions.
My high school algebra teacher and myself had long talks about the best shotguns, and about how to combat communism, etc.
My gym teacher was a US Marine Sgt. veteran.
I had many such teachers in public school. Can you imagine any such public school teacher today. My three kids went thru public school and told me countless horror stories of liberal brainwashing.
That and the fact that all media, MTV, VH1, BET, even the Cartoon Network are waaaaaaay left -- and push all their viewers in that direction.
When I was young, we had three networks, and a few UHF channels.
The networks did NOT push every perverse lifestyle onto the public, as ALL TV channels do today, including the great Fox Network.
If you want a real eye opener, check some public opinion polls from the 1960s, and surprisingly a majority of public opinion -- even youngsters -- were conservative and most even agreed with our efforts in Vietnam --
That is unthinkable today.
The GOP starts most every issue 25 points down, and its getting harder and harder to sway public opinion to the right.
Walter Cronkite was very anti-communist and actually a mainstream conservative Democrat type -
Yes, he came out against the Vietnam war in the late 60s, but asides from that, was not a big left pusher like many anchors of today like Katie Couric, Dan Rather, etc.
Cronkite has moved waaaay left in his old age, as do many Democrats who feel obligated to push their childhood party down our throats.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Sums it up well.
The key to "selling" conservative principles is to insure that America is the selling point. Ronald Reagan sold us on ourselves as a nation, and the conservative part just followed effortlessly.
Ding, ding, ding. Stop FR. - We have the FR Post of the Day.
I think Arnold is obligated to “rebrand” what’s left of the state party. Truth in advertising.
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