Unshackle amd unbridal Sarah and send her on the road all over this country where she can be herself and take the fight to the dems.
Posted on 10/03/2008 8:24:16 PM PDT by markomalley
First, knock it off with the "corporations are evil" bit. Stop it. Just stop it. That stuff is for Progressives and Populists like Bill O'Reilly. I don't know if you really believe it, or if you think it plays up to the middle, but it's not helping the situation. Wall Street could not - would not - have done what it did if Congress had not first pursued bad policies and ideas that made the problem possible, then made it promising. Knock it off with the bipartisan foolishness. Congress is the prime mover here. It created this mess. The Media has been lying to you all these years. They don't care about you, and they only care about bipartisanship when it gives Progressives cover for stupid policies. Nobody cares. You care, maybe. But absolutely nobody else. Moreover, your base - which you desperately need - is not amenable to hearing you trash Capitalism. Not at all. If I wanted to hear a bunch of Mini-Me Communists rant about the evils of corporations, I'd go back to being a Progressive and I'd sign up for one of Bill Ayer's classes. Too many of us left that swamp too long ago for us to want to wade through an acre of the decaying filth of discredited ideas to come vote for you on the other side. So quit it. ++ Now, I just read this article from U.S. News. If this is the case, and you're doing it because it's what your strategy team advises, keep them on board, hire new people and listen to the new ones. Because your old ones are wrong. If this is your idea and it's why James Pethokoukis says it is, get a coach to fix it. Because you are going to lose. The article states that Every single one of these ideas is a mistake, and wrong to boot. Let's start from the top. The people will be informed one way or the other. They can be lied to - which is the intention of your opponent and his Mainstream Media arm - or they can be told the truth. But you're going to have to do it. The truth does not win out unless you make it win out. So, here it is; internalize it: THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM IN 5 EASY STEPS That's it. That's the whole story in a nutshell. I wrote that in 3 minutes off the top of my head. You can memorize it in 15. It's the structural framework of everything. Everything else is just a detail. Try it. Find a detail and you can almost always find a place in that structure to hang it on. And you can tell the American public to go online and look it up for themselves. They don't know. They don't even know to look because the Media is concealing it as best it can, and your opponent is flat-out, bald-faced lying about it. And I don't use the word "lie" lightly. Lesson: the problem wasn't deregulation, it was the wrong kind of regulation. The Democrats in their role of Philosopher Kings - built this golem. They nurtured it and coddled it and now that it's gone loose all over the countryside, they want to blame it on the rest of us. No. Do not let them do this or you will lose. And you will deserve to lose.
You want a military analogy? Here: Island-hop. Don't fight battles you can't win. Go right around them and starve them for resources. The simple fact: this is not about race, it's about fooling the poor into over-extending themselves, then taking pay-offs in Congress in political support and actual currency to keep the whole putrid affair running. Congress let them down, and it doesn't help anyone to pretend otherwise. If Obama wants to call this a race issue, call him on making it one - loudly and clearly, so that everyone else can hear it - and get back to the fact that it hurts poor people of every stripe: Caucasians, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Women... Everyone. YOU THINK IT'S MORE IMPORTANT TO TALK ABOUT TAXES, ENERGY AND HEALTHCARE No. It's not. Because if the economy goes south, the rest of this doesn't matter. If we let a Democrat control the White House and the Democrats control Congress, America will be on a spending Bacchanalia the likes of which it has never seen. The institutional problems at the heart of our economic unrest will not be fixed and this will happen again, likely as not when the bill for Social Security comes due, another foolish Progressive pyramid scheme nobody has the guts to face.
Now, if you think the economic crisis is hard to explain, then you haven't looked at the tax code lately. Moreover, if Obama and you go back and forth on his, nobody will know the difference. Nobody knows all the differences. Taxing, tariffs and the economic effects of bad legislation are such byzantine issues you cannot inform anyone of anything. They think the only taxes are income and corporate taxes. They don't realize that shifting interest rates and costs from one group of people to another or increasing inflation are also taxes. And you aren't going to educate them. Here are your talking points on taxes. "As a rule, the Republican party has always been for reduced taxes and reduced spending. We lost our way under Bush. But the thing to remember is that this is the Democrat's way. They love to take money out of people's purses and spend it. It's what they do. Traditionally, they were tax-and-spend. Even if you can believe that net balance of all taxes under Obama will fall - not just income taxes as he is trying to lead you to believe, but the net balance of all your taxes - Democrats will only have changed to less-tax-and-more-spend. Their complaints about Bush are that we are in a deficit. They have no complaints about the taxing or spending other than that we're not doing enough of it. That's not the Change America has been Hoping for or needs." That's it. That's all you need to say about taxes. If you want to provide details, send them to the website or give up a detail. Stick to the narrative and move on to more important problems. ++ Here are your talking points on energy. "Let's face it. Like all Progressives, Barack Obama has an ideological dislike for the Petroleum Industry. (Did you get that? Petroleum Industry. NOT oil.) He even said once that he has no problem with the kind of high gas prices that disproportionately hurt the poor and working Americans. He'd rather have China, Russia and other less-than-ideal partners supply us with oil than have America produce more. And that's dangerous. I, John McCain, am all for alternative energies, and my plan supports them. All of them. Oil, gas, coal, hydroelectric, solar, wind, tide, nuclear. But unlike my opponent, I want to make sure that we don't crowd out new technologies. Government isn't as smart as my opponent thinks he and it is. So we want to make sure that innovations we haven't thought about have room to grow." Learn it. ++ On healthcare. The simple fact is that you cannot out socialize Barack Obama. He's to the left of Congress' only Socialist. So if they zig, you're going to need to zag. You need to differentiate in the public's mind, and counter with a proposition that sells to both their worries and their values. Here are your talking points on healthcare. "The biggest cause of the economic meltdown wasn't the market. It was the government. Now they want to take control of your health. The free market brought us tens of thousands of new drugs that save lives. It brought us the MRI. It brought so many innovations that the rest of the world - including Europe and Canada relies on us to do most of it's R + D. Right now people from Canada and Europe flock to America for treatments. Socializing healthcare - which is what the Democrats and Mr. Obama want - will ensure that the system stagnates. Again, the problems we have aren't from deregulation. They're from bad regulation. You all know that government rarely solves one problem without creating at least one new one. Our problems are mostly financial. Our solutions should deal with finding smart market solutions to rising costs for Americans today, while keeping innovation alive in America so that our children don't just have healthcare, they have better healthcare than we could have imagined at lower cost. That's what America does. And that's why the world depends on us to make healthcare and healthcare innovations available to it." Attack. Attack, attack, attack. But do us all a favor. Point the gun at them, not us. We're tired of friendly fire, Mr. McCain. We're sick of having our own party shoot us in the foot.
THERE IS A RACIAL COMPONENT TO THIS ISSUE
Who cares? There's a racial component to this entire election. And you are not going to fix it, change it or alter it. It's there and you can do nothing about it. Nothing. You lost that hill the moment the Democrats went from Hillary to Hopey-Changiness. Go right around it. Americans are already being called racists for not supporting a man who chose race for himself, so there is no tangible evidence you will lose anything by telling the truth. The people who were already preferring race over substance and the facts already cast their vote months ago. You are not ever going to get them back. Ever.
++
He nailed it.
I’d just like to hear him blast the government because it created this mess even more so than Wallstreet. Wallstreet is a popular target. I’m still waiting for accountability from Congress and John McCain if he taps into that. Sarah Palin did and people liked it. Luntz’s group when off the charts when she was talking personal responsibility and blasting the government as well as Wallstreet.
It is also Wallstreet’s fault. They do not deserve a pass. Short selling and playing the market like a game of craps certainly didn’t help. They learned to play the system.
WOW, Mark this is great advice for McCain....very well constructed and simple talking points for both McCain and Palin who also has a definite streak of Populist thinking!
Unshackle amd unbridal Sarah and send her on the road all over this country where she can be herself and take the fight to the dems.
Right on target. Beautiful. Clear. Simple. Devastating.
This hits all the nails squarely on their heads.
Simple, easy to understand and McCain could do it so easily and still not be as vicious as they have been to him if being respectful is so important. Respect America. Tell the truth.
But it has one problem.
McCain does not sit up all night reading FR. You can bet on it.
He has people skimming this stuff to give him a synopsis.
He will never ever see this because his handlers have a better idea and they control what the skimmers give him.
Instead of this story, he will get something like: 50% of the blogs think he should be more forceful. 30% think he should be less forceful and 20% are undecided.
It is so sad that when these guys get so far up the ladder, they become insulated from public contact, other than a few cheers and handshakes as they walk from the limo to the hotel.
Not bad. I could only wish this guy were a campaign advisor for Mr. McCain.
Three problems: First - how do you get it to him? Is Cindy reachable or can somebody get it to Sarah to get it to him? Second - will he pay attention? As we saw from the illegal issue, he said “I hear you” but.. Third - does he really intend to take on his buddies or is it just campaign hype?
The McCain camp won’t listen. John McCain was a foot soldier in the Reagen Revolution. The reason he was a foot soldier is he never understood the battle well enough to be an officer.
He has no private sector experience. He does not understand how the business world works and doesn’t really care. He admits economics is his weak area, which is why the Dems are pressing it so hard. They know he won’t say things he doesn’t believe, and since he does not understand conservative economic policies he won’t espouse them.
He understands congress. He knows what he thinks are the problems in congress. He wants to be president so he can fix congress. Unfortunately, that is not the president’s job. He is to be the chief executive, something McCain is not qualified for.
Look at his positions on taxes. I haven’t heard one thing about simplifying the code. Instead he talks about adding more ‘tax credits’ and ‘tax incentives’. He plans to support the free market by adding more blocks to the 1040. It’s like being a conservative activist judge. It’s an oxymoron. He doesn’t understand that he is trying to use a socialist tool to achieve capitalist goals. It doesn’t work.
I’ll vote for him. I know enough about Obama to be very, very scared. But I think the only hope conservatism has in the near future is a strongly conservative House of Representatives. Today’s vote was not encouraging.
Excellent, plain speak dialog on the issues. Thanks for taking time to provide this information.
What I want to see when a conservative reaches across the aisle to a liberal democrat is a bloody fist coming back with maybe a piece of tooth embedded in a knucle.
“attack attack attack, them, not us!”
In language that McCain understands: Pretend Obama is Mitt Romney or John Cornyn and go from there.
Wow...excellent piece. Thanks for posting it.
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