Posted on 02/11/2013 6:11:23 AM PST by C. Edmund Wright
Blistering new book coming out about Rove and the establishment - been in teh works since day after election. Some pull quotes about Rove, Romney, the establishment, how liberals are undermining entrepreneures on purpose, etc.
The image of a typical OWS encampment allows us a peak at the future, which is a powerful object lesson by itself. The fear of even having this discussion with the voters is why we are not happy with the establishment. They would rather change the subject to something trite like “jobs and Ohio” without realizing that a communist movement central to the Democrat universe is about “jobs and Ohio.”
One thing the GOP must do is clean house of all the little naive “Daddy got me a job” consultants, and hire some folks who have actually been in the real world for a while.
Apparently in the mind of Democrat consultants, women should vote the concerns between their legs over the concerns between their ears.
Newt and his official staff, including the consultants inside WOF, were so obsessed with Mitt’s campaign that they forgot about Obama, whoever the hell he is, and refused to acknowledge that Santorum even existed. Those were two awful mistakes.
Pundits may drone on about moderates and independents and low information voters, but nothing turns moderates, independents and low information voters into higher information voters like a campaign that draws sharp and clear distinctions, and one that generates enthusiasm
The subject of Obama’s awfulness was not what the establishment wanted because Mitt’s not very good at that subject. And besides, soccer moms won’t like it either, or so we’re told. The arrogant and controlling establishment was telling us to shut up, sit down, and listen to our bettors – and everything would work out just fine. In this way, the GOP establishment is similar to very thing we fight against in the Federal government, the arrogant controlling assumption that the elites know what we really need. This problem is inherently limiting when your message is ostensibly about decentralizing control, and why Mitt’s message was inherently limited.
Perhaps Newt would have swung and missed, but Mitt was out on called strikes.
Compared to Axelrod’s escapades, the mind numbing use of focus groups and phony polls by James Carville and George Stephanopoulos during the Clinton years is child’s play. Axelrod does not merely use deception. He IS deception.
Obama thought the first thing to do to turn our economy around would be to help trial lawyers destroy present day companies for decisions made many years ago. Do they teach that at Harvard Law, or Harvard Business?
Instead of focusing on this in 2012, the GOPe had all kinds of tortured internal debates about Romney’s tax returns instead. To the establishment, having incompetent felons running government is just not a problem, yet having a rich and generous nominee with competent accountants apparently is.
The man from Texas is indeed profoundly hated by the left. But that is not the point. The man from Texas is not hated alone. The left has projected their hatred of him onto us. His refusal to fight back was not the individual "falling on the sword" he thought it was. When he refused to fight, he let us all down.
McCain was almost irrelevant, which is hysterical considering he has spent every waking moment for forty years desperate to remain relevant
McCain stumbled into the Palin pick out of misconception as he fancied Palin as a young McCain, and not a young Reagan.
The technical term for the extension of a campaign like Huckabee’s is also known as the “Fox News Channel audition period.”
If you really want to get sick, do some research on how the brunt of the crisis might have been avoided simply by suspending the “mark to market” regulation imbedded in the Sarbanes-Oxley bill. This law, a bureaucratic accounting illusion to begin with, turned a future balance sheet challenge for some banks into an immediate cash crisis for the entire world.
It’s the perfect crime and the grandest of all larcenies. America is being stolen in broad daylight.
According to Rove’s professed “acute Understanding,” if a voter thinks Bush is to blame for the economy, we must AGREE with him. If the voter thinks Obama personally took out bin Laden, AGREE with her. If the voter thinks Republicans want to stop all sexual activities, RUN AWAY from the issue. If the voter thinks Palin is a dolt, REINFORCE that idea. Mr. “Acute Understanding” thinks we can actually win this way. Who is the dolt again?
In other words, they should look at a focus group as a starting point the for voter education, instead of an end point of candidate capitulation.
Liberals in power have simply made borrowing too easy and drilling too hard.
As long as we run low information campaigns, we will suffer at the hands of low information voter.
A campaign will never succeed if it’s built on the premise that offending soccer moms in southern Ohio is a fate worse than losing the entire American experiment. Such campaigns are inspired by focus groups, and isolated from reality.
Conservatism takes longer than the confines of a single focus group to understand, and yet, Rove insists that he can gain “an acute understanding” on the basis of focus group data. That’s nutty.
This mindset is foreign to the entrepreneur’s very fiber. This kind of thing is what keeps the movers and shakers from moving and shaking. This is what motivates Atlas to shrug. This is what liberal elites know. This is what they want.
And to folks who believe “you didn’t build that,” this is music to their ears. They either believe it in ignorance or cheer it with their resentment. Or both. And it’s not just Dodd Frank. This is what will make everything about Obama Care like pulling teeth, including pulling teeth. This is the EPA and the INS and the IRS and the TSA and all the other alphabet agencies becoming the focus of our lives.
There is nothing in this great game that will ultimately defeat the entrepreneur. It is simple human nature. There is, however, one way to defeat the entrepreneur and thereby ruin an entrepreneurial economy. Change the very nature of the game. Yes, rig the game so that honesty and hard work and innovation are merely coins of a foolish realm. Rig the game so that the little microbial rules become more important than the game itself - thereby elevating the little human microbes who sit in government cubicles 40 hours a week with no risk above the dreamers who work 100 hour weeks and who are willing to risk everything.
But the ominous impact is that below the surface, this dynamic depresses and numbs the human spirit of the would-be self-starting entrepreneur. And do not think for a minute that this is by accident.
Mistakes like this one are fear based and symptomatic of the Republican consultant, who lives in a vacuum of venial and un-related single issues, and assumes voters live there too. The idea of melding a socially conservative principal with libertarian disdain of unlimited government power is just a bridge too far for the Lilliputian consultant mind, especially one frozen by the irrational fear of being called homophobic.
you too will love this book.....as every thing you say is laid out over 20 years with history, irony, humor and a touch of peppery anger and indignation. Oh yes, and ridicule.
Looks good, but I tend to agree with SatinDoll. In my mind the GOP is little better than the Rats and by design, not incompetence.
It continues today. Over the past four years, the GOP’s sat silently as conservatives have been attacked.
Just off the top of my head.....
They’ve given credence to the left’s meme that right-wing political rhetoric was somehow to blame for Giffords’ shooting by joining in on the bi-partisan seating at the SOTU addresses.
During one round of debt ceiling debates, conservatives were routinely called jihadists and terrorists and there wasn’t a peep out of the GOP over that.
Nobody in the establishment challenged the lies that tea partiers spat on or called black democrats the “n” word.
Nothing but silence over the left-wing violence and intimidation tactics used against conservative reporters, activists, business owners, etc.
It seems that the GOP is glad to let the democrats do their dirty work. Through its silence, the GOP endorses it, because they detest conservatives nearly as much as democrats do.
Here is an excerpt related to the “daddy got me a job” consultants:
In fairness, Mitt promised to repeal Obama Care on day one, but he never handled the philosophical disconnect between that promise and touting Romney Care during the primaries, and ignored it for the General Election. The issue was further complicated by the astonishingly tone deaf response to the abominable “cancer ad” from Romney mouthpiece Andrea Saul. With the Democrats pushing the dark fairy tale that Romney killed a woman who had never worked for him, Saul retaliated with the unforgivable response “if (they) had been in Massachusetts under Governor Romney’s health care plan, they would have had health care.”
Face palm!
This typical “ we can be good liberals too” response reinforced the unhelpful notion that Romney was the godfather of Obama Care. It was inexcusably vapid on Saul’s part and indefensible that Romney didn’t fire her immediately. What happened to Mr. Bain’s propensity to downsize? Saul was clearly over her head, so naturally she was Press Secretary for the Campaign.
The Saul example is note worthy because she has just the kind of resume the establishment likes. She has worked for John McCain (twice) Orrin Hatch, and Charlie Crist. Crist? Really? Well of course she has, bless her little establishment heart. I doubt she can explain today why conservatives don’t trust Crist, and probably thinks it’s a bad thing he is out of the party.
She pretty much went from liberal Vanderbilt straight into political communications, and on a routine basis proves she doesn’t understand a damned thing about the real world. This is preordained since she’s never been in it. But she’ll be employed in the next cycle, and will continue to make indefensible statements. She is another great example of how the consultant class fails each other up. One thing the GOP must do is clean house of all the little naive “Daddy got me a job” consultants, and hire some folks who have actually been in the real world for a while.
Here is an excerpt related to the “daddy got me a job” consultants:
In fairness, Mitt promised to repeal Obama Care on day one, but he never handled the philosophical disconnect between that promise and touting Romney Care during the primaries, and ignored it for the General Election. The issue was further complicated by the astonishingly tone deaf response to the abominable “cancer ad” from Romney mouthpiece Andrea Saul. With the Democrats pushing the dark fairy tale that Romney killed a woman who had never worked for him, Saul retaliated with the unforgivable response “if (they) had been in Massachusetts under Governor Romney’s health care plan, they would have had health care.”
Face palm!
This typical “ we can be good liberals too” response reinforced the unhelpful notion that Romney was the godfather of Obama Care. It was inexcusably vapid on Saul’s part and indefensible that Romney didn’t fire her immediately. What happened to Mr. Bain’s propensity to downsize? Saul was clearly over her head, so naturally she was Press Secretary for the Campaign.
The Saul example is note worthy because she has just the kind of resume the establishment likes. She has worked for John McCain (twice) Orrin Hatch, and Charlie Crist. Crist? Really? Well of course she has, bless her little establishment heart. I doubt she can explain today why conservatives don’t trust Crist, and probably thinks it’s a bad thing he is out of the party.
She pretty much went from liberal Vanderbilt straight into political communications, and on a routine basis proves she doesn’t understand a damned thing about the real world. This is preordained since she’s never been in it. But she’ll be employed in the next cycle, and will continue to make indefensible statements. She is another great example of how the consultant class fails each other up. One thing the GOP must do is clean house of all the little naive “Daddy got me a job” consultants, and hire some folks who have actually been in the real world for a while.
“I have no idea why you think I missed that point.”
Because you sure as Hell missed the fact that Newt Gringrich was the only candidate during the primary actually going after Obama.
You and I have talked about Newt before, and your loathing of the man is palpable.
Read your book? Sure. What is the title?
Oh, and I have a suggestion for you: if you haven’t already seen this documentary, I strongly suggest you do so - The Money Masters (narrated by Bill Still). It explains why neither political party can change our government’s debt problem until we institute Monetary Reform.
You know, it’s kidn of difficult to read 400 words and then know what is in, or not in, a 104,000 word book. In the context of where I was in the book and made that statement, Newt was the only one focusing on Obama. This was true of much, but not all, of the primary process. It is also true that Newt abandoned Obama as well at two different times, and both were disasters for Newt. It is all thoroughly covered in the book and validated by writings from that actual time frame.
No, it's not similar. Its the exact same thing. The GOPe is the problem.
You made a distinction without a difference. In context, that statement works.
NO better dust jacket endorsement of the book could be had ....
Doll is right you did gloss over Newt and did not support him and yes he did speak out against Obama and the media
Two actions you champion btw....and Newt did them best
In fact his attack on media catapulted him into a possibity
Nice rant anyhow
Rove....Bushies...Fox hierarchy and so on
The enemy in our GOP civil war....one we’ll lose without an emergent leader for conservatism
You make excellent points which I had not thought about to that level. I think you are correct.
We pretty much know that the GOP-e, the country club types, hate Conservatives and it has been just as you say. Here we have been pulling our hair out wondering why the GOP never spoke up and let the Left’s lies become hardened as truth.
I think you are on to something. Which is why I have said in previous posts that Conservatives may have to withhold our votes in 2014 and 2016, lose the battles, in order to win the war.
Ever wonder why the last few elections cycles saw a RINO at the top of the ticket and then a Conservative as the VP pick? I believe the GOP-e will not tolerate a Conservative at the top of the ticket, but is more than happy to molify us for votes and put a Conservative as the VP pick.
Looking back it’s hard not to see how the fix has been in all along.
Look at the history of “Moderate” top-of-ticket and Conservative for VP and you decide:
1) George Bush Sr. (Country Club) — Dan Quayle (Conservative from Indiana)
2) Bob Dole (GOP-e) — Jack Kemp (the darling of Conservatives at the time)
3) George W Bush (Largely unknown at the time) — Dick Cheney (Known Conservaitve)
4) McCain (RINO) — Sarah Palin (Conservative)
5) Romney (RINO record) — Paul Ryan (Conservative)
That represents two decades (1992 to 2012) of proof. How much more is needed to know that we have been played?
bfl
Two actions you champion btw....and Newt did them best
In fact his attack on media catapulted him into a possibity
Nice rant anyhow
WTF are you talking about? I was a Newt supporter, and this book very clearly points out what you are claiming I missed. And FTR, I think you totally missed Doll's point too. Reading. Comprehension. Matters.
From chapter one:
Ah yes, all of this after a primary season where the sorcerers in charge of the establishment messaging machine, including Mitt Romney’s campaign and his Super PACS, found it necessary to call the only candidate running hard against Obama the devil incarnate, but vital to insist that Obama himself is “a nice guy.”
Imagine.
Since Newt Gingrich is supposedly “the Gingrich who stole Christmas,” the GOP establishment felt safe, even justified, in savaging him. Since Obama is “still so personally popular, so likeable, such a great dad, the most amazing figure to visit our lowly planet, so elegant, so brilliant, so Ivy, so pragmatic, has a sharp pant crease” and so on, they ran a frightened campaign that stopped just short of endorsing him.
LOL. This thread provides only snippets of a 104,000 book and you know what is "glossed over"?!
For the record, CEW was a Newt supporter throughout the GOP primary and there are plenty of FReepers who can confirm this. In the book, he only comments upon some tactical missteps within the campaign, but he did support the man and the message during the campaign.
“word”
What's the big deal here? I don't understand why anyone would say these kind of falsehoods.
SOTC is right, I was big Newt supporter and the book includes columns of mine from Sept, Oct, Nov of 2011 confiming this. I also point out that there is a “good Newt” and a “bad Newt” and that is recurrent theme in the book as the “good Newt V Bad Newt” contrast is a microcosm of the conservative base V establishment tension. I also blister, and I mean BLISTER, the consultants for Newt who got him to abandon his anti Obama message. This section is funny, maddening, and poignant.
BTW, soon the url www.tokyorove.com will be the book’s website. I was VERY happy to obtain that url.
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