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.
Thanks! Look forward to getting it!
It is also true that Newt abandoned Obama as well at two different times, and both were disasters for Newt
But so far, Palin looks more like a McCain than a Reagan -- more like some "rogue" or "maverick" or "loose cannon" who doesn't get anywhere than like somebody who is actually changing things.
If she and McCain didn't get along, it may have been because they were more alike than different. In any case, so far she hasn't been as focused and as motivated to rise in politics and change the country as Reagan was.
I was merely commenting on something you wrote on this forum that I agree with and was conversationally expanding upon my agreement.
I thank you for the additional background info. It supports my observations, and my conclusions, unfortunately.
I regret if my comments were taken as hostile or argumentative in some way, as I have no such intent. Please forgive my trespasses.
Good luck with your book and with your writing! I hope your book does well and opens new doors for your work.
Abandoned Obama as an issue, or as a target — is the context I was speaking of.
With due respect, that is ridiculous. First of all, you bought into the Maverick bullsh-t, which was not that at all. Thus, you equated two things that are not at all the same. You either totally misunderstand McCain, or Palin, or both, because they are NOTHING alike at all. Zip zero nada.
I brought up the "rogue," "maverick," "loose cannon" thing as a way of understanding what you might have been getting at. McCain saw himself as a "maverick" who went his own way. Did you mean he saw Palin in that light as well?
Otherwise, what could you possibly have meant? That McCain saw her as a moderate? But he picked her because he thought she'd have appeal to conservatives. [At this point those are rhetorical questions. It doesn't really matter to me.]
It's pretty clear Palin hasn't behaved as Reagan behaved. You might want to see her as the next Reagan, and maybe [a big concession I'm making here] she might turn out to be like Reagan some day.
So far, she hasn't. She hasn't put her energies into a campaign and doesn't really want the presidency.
She may not share McCain's ideology, but her impact on the country hasn't been anything like Reagan's.
My contention is that McCain thought Palin was a moderate who liked to distance herself from other Republicans, just like McCain did. He thought her “rogue” attitude was the same as his “maverick” flapdoodle.
Now your Reagan comments are very strange. She clearly is philosophically very close to Reagan, and not very close to McCain, and that was my point. Your obsession with following in the same career path is not the point I was making at all. Besides, Reagan was still an actor when he was the age Palin is now. so that’s just a specious argument.
Okay, so you explain that now. I'm not sure McCain knew that Palin was a "rogue" when he picked her. He may just have been trying to balance the ticket with a conservative. I'm also not sure that all the "rogue" stuff is really going to be very effective in governing a country.
Your obsession with following in the same career path is not the point I was making at all. Besides, Reagan was still an actor when he was the age Palin is now. so that’s just a specious argument.
That "young Reagan" and "young McCain" stuff was your thing, not mine. I was using the terms you provided.
My point was that ideology isn't all that matters. Jack Kemp, Bob Dornan, Duncan Hunter, Steve Forbes, Alan Keyes, Herman Cain weren't the new Ronald Reagan.
They may have taken positions similar to his but they didn't have his political skills. Some of them didn't have the experience to be president.
I don't know if Palin has those skills, but from what I've seen she isn't interested in being President or in honing the skills she does have for a campaign any time soon.
Good for her. Politics isn't all there is to life.
I run out of patience when dealing with a certain literalist mindset that is not sure how to process “pull quotes” - and treat them as fully developed ideas. They are not, they are pull quotes, and their MAIN REASON to exist is to pique curiosity.
for the fully developed ideas: www.tokyorove.com
I agree.
The GOP has just about run out of playing room.
Either they let us back in. Or we go elsewhere, in numbers which will shock them.
Make up your mind GOP. Soon.
I am driving through the mountains of extreme north Georgia
in the fog texting on a droid which is another problem in and of itself .... will take you at your word and here by apologize to you for insulting you ..... my compliments for your efforts otherwise Thanks
no harm no foul - drive safe...
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