While I agree with the authors premise I think that it is secondary to a more basic point - no party - not the Constitution party, the Libertarian party, or (especially) the Republican party - can compete with the Free Shyt party.
The Free Shyt party spends every day of every year actively working their game, preparing for the next contest and the next controversy - all on the taxpayer dime. Who can compete with that?
The Free Shyt party appeals to people’s baser emotions while those other parties attempt to reach out to folks based on reasoning and common sense. Who can compete with that?
The Free Shyt party hands out freebies, trinkets, and entitlements right out in the open and without fear of remonstration. And all they ask is a little piece of your soul. After all, most Amerikans don’t even believe they have one anymore. I ask you - who can compete with that?!
then redefine free stuff.
make it toxic.
But the free shyt party is also allied with the Hollywood/Academic/Media image manipulation machine.
It's a tough enough sell to overcome free shyte, but add the image manipulation machine, those conservatives who buy in to the image, plus a bit of cowardice and you have:
A rout.
While I agree with Dunn that conservatives have to do a better job of publicizing conservatism, I fear what you said has more and more bearing on the elections. Sure, Romney and and other Pubbies could have had a more conservative message and the conservative establishment could have done a better job defending conservative candidates. But what if in 2016 we run a conservative candidate (here's where I disagree with Dunn...Romney almost ran away from conservtism), and we get beat again? After another disastrous four years from Obama? What then? It might be time for a split.
Good points. But free shyt plays into image. We need to translate the dems into a drunken uncle that promises to give everyone other people’ money once they hit the track.
Another point is we have to work on things we CAN control. We can’t compete on free shyt other than to educate the masses. We can however compete in that our growth policies will provide them a greater liklihood of having a job. So we are in effect offering them tangible material benefits.
Ronald Reagan created a stereotype of the "welfare queen".
In this age of mass media and digital manipulation, is it so difficult to do this once again?
Bush I put Willie Horton out there. Is it so difficult to do this once again?
The Free Shyt Party can be demonized and beclowned. What is so wrong with a website that says, "Get your free stuff here! Tell us, what do you want us to take from your neighbors and give to you? Its Santa Claus Season!" Use images of kindly men in black suits with Ray-Bans holding clipboards and carrying guns. Get a couple of people supplicating themselves in front of the suited men.
Do a video of some nice middle-class Asian guy going off to his engineering job and being mugged by the "Free Shyt Party" and carjacked. Yes, its an extreme image, but imagine the impact of having folks in vests with "IRS" on it in big yellow letters would have. Then have the "IRS" people giving this guy's stuff to someone else and telling him to get his arse back to work so they can take more stuff away from him.
Get that meme out there and hammer it daily and watch what happens.