Posted on 06/14/2013 7:04:29 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
This deserves wider attention, especially at a moment when the stupid, stupid Republican leadership has convinced itself that its real problem with the electorate is being insufficiently pro-amnesty.
“One after another, [business owners who were invited to speak] talked about the business they had built. But not a single—not a single —factory worker went out there,” Santorum told a few hundred conservative activists at an “after-hours session” of the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Washington. “Not a single janitor, waitress or person who worked in that company! We didn’t care about them. You know what? They built that company too! And we should have had them on that stage.”…
“When all you do is talk to people who are owners, talk to folks who are ‘Type As’ who want to succeed economically, we’re talking to a very small group of people,” he said. “No wonder they don’t think we care about them. No wonder they don’t think we understand them. Folks, if we’re going to win, you just need to think about who you talk to in your life.”…
“Our leaders don’t accurately reflect who we are,” he said. “They reflect the interest groups around here who are lobbying for an advantage. Everyone who is up here is wanting an edge for their company or their industry. We’ve got to get away from that.”
“This makes so much sense to me,” writes Mollie Hemingway, “that I am confused as to how the GOP and Romney messed it up so badly last year.” I think I can explain that. The reason it caught on with the GOP, at least in part, is because it caught on first with grassroots ideologues like me. I thought, and do think, that O’s “you didn’t build that” line was a window onto his essential statism, an unusually blunt expression of contempt for private initiative. It’s one thing to demand higher taxes for the rich, it’s another to deny entrepreneurs, even rhetorically, the credit they deserve for having taken great risk to build wealth-generating enterprises. If you’re a true-believing libertarian-leaning capitalist, it’s Obama at his sneering liberal worst. But here’s the thing, and it’s something I’m reminded of constantly: Most voters aren’t ideologues. One of the lessons of last year’s campaign was that 99 percent of the daily “gaffes” and kerfuffles that political media, left and right, regularly wets its pants over mean next to nothing to the average joe. If you’re going to devote an entire convention to the other guy’s allegedly damning gaffe, you’d best be sure that gaffe is really, really damning in the eyes of most voters. It is to an ideologue like me and to America’s proud entrepreneurs. What about the other 80 percent of the electorate?
Santorum’s making a point here that should be prosaic among prominent Republicans by now but which, apart from occasional gestures from Eric Cantor and speeches by Bobby Jindal, remains mostly overlooked: You need to win America’s wage-earners too. Gun rights are great and border security is excellent, but expecting the masses who are earning 15 bucks an hour to rally behind a message that Obama’s too hard on their bosses is expecting a lot. It’s hard for an ideologue like me who works in political media to keep his eye on that particular ball in the middle of a campaign, when he’s at virtual war with the ideologues on the other side every day. The question is, why was it hard for Team Romney? Mitt is many things but an ideologue isn’t one of them. His guys were paid, very handsomely, to come up with a message that would win, ideological or not. Romney’s whole selling point with conservatives, in fact, was his alleged electability; the party nominated him in the full expectation that he’d move to the center for the general election, so he had nothing to fear by ignoring one of their ideological hobbyhorses. And yet somehow he and his advisors decided that going all in against “you didn’t build that” at the convention was the way to go. Why? Romney’s core political identity was that he’d say anything to win. Why did he think that making a stink about that would help him do it?
One footnote to all this. As much as I hate what Rubio’s doing with the immigration reform, I’m paradoxically reassured by the fact that he seems to realize it won’t much hurt him in 2016. Ideologues like me will hold it against him, but if your goal is getting elected president, who cares what ideologues think? We couldn’t stop either Romney or John McCain(!) from being nominated in the last two cycles and we’ll be the first ones at the polls on election day 2016 to pull the lever for the nominee, even if it’s Marco “Legalization First” Rubio. He doesn’t need to impress us, he needs to impress the non-ideological middle class. How he plans to do that by effectively amnestizing a huge new labor supply is … unclear to me, but voters do seem to think that immigration reform is pretty nifty. If he figures out a way to talk to blue-collar voters, he’ll be very viable. Amnesty or no.
bump!
Shoulda made Detroit, DC, Baltimore, poster children for Dem policies and community organizin’. Shoulda featured a “Where was Barack?” chant (in re: Benghazi), a la that old Texas whore, Ann Richards, who chaired the 92 dimowit convention when she asked, over and over, “Where was George?”
How can you find fault with “You didn’t build that”? But not be able to call that policy and the person making it “socialist”? Leastwise Santorum did...
How can you hear lie after lie your opponent offers without challanging him and calling him a liar ? Leastwise Santorum did
How can you offer the average voter a vision ? Without citing the pocket book problems your opponent and his policies are creating ?...Leastwise Santorum did...
Would Santorum have won. One thing for sure the democratic convention and their decision to eliminate any reference to God would not have gone unnoticed. As it still has by the GOPES (gop elite snobs) and RINOS who are still running around with one finger in the air measuring the latest wind while one finger on their other hand is stuck ....still running the show called the Republican party
.
When you blow something so badly as your party did in 2012, then you would be better off looking at yourselves and what you did wrong, or you could just double down and cease to be a force in politics at all.
However, pointing out that the menial laborers have something to lose with higher and higher taxes and regulations is a way to get them to come out and vote for you.
Was Reagan being a dumb assclown populist when he declared a recession was when your neighbor lost their job, a depression when you lose yours and a recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his?
Romney didn’t message on that.
Anyone with more than half a brain in their head understood that “you didn’t build that” was a slur on anyone who had ever succeeded at anything on his/her own - from the athlete who had made the team to the guy who studied hard and got into college to the mom who had learned to paint pictures as a hobby to on and on........did people really have to be spoon fed by the Republicans to grasp the contempt in that statement.....
[[Santorum: It was dumb to make Obama’s “you didn’t build that” comment the theme for GOP convention]]
Et Tu santorum? Cripes- what the hell is goign on lately- Every day it seems another ‘republican’ is capitulating to hte left- Is there ANYONE on the right in washington or i nthe news- with a backbone these days
Sadly, you nailed it.
Exactly. If the business goes bust, it’s not the waitresses and the janitors who lose their life savings or their kids college fund when it happens. They’re not the ones who spend long hours for no pay ro just to build the business-if they work, they get a paycheck for every hour they worked. They can have a life and spend time with their families, because they’re on a schedule. The owner is on no schedule, he has to work whenever there’s an opportunity to bring in a new client, work with an advertiser, interview employees, and make schedules to make sure his employees all get a chance to have time off.
So what stake or risk does a waitress or janitor have in all that?
Sanctimonius Santorum. You ass.
Many people dream about building a business and they understand there are risks. Further, they understood socialist pablum from Barack Obama, Elizabeth Warren, et all.
And being the people who had a dream, who had a vision, who took the risks, who organized the right suppliers, The right people to become employees, who cashed in all their savings and even pit their home on the line and then build a succesful business, people admire that and many a yearn to one day get their idea or chief aim in life that will compell them to take a chance and improve their lot in life or pursue their dream.
No one says we don’t need employees. Of course we do. Who would do the work otherwise but we celebrate American ingenuity and self determination.
Why? We’re Freakin Americans, That’s why. America loves winners and will not tolerate losers.
We want to win because that’s what we do.
If you are having a change of heart then feel free to join the Democrats and be a loser who doesn’t promote self sufficiency but rather, promotes dependency.
You know, like “We are...our brothers keeper!”
Are we?
Strangely enough they outnumber the guy who created the jobs and they vote.
I guess it is easy enough to forget things like that when you are so busy being the only important person in the equation.
Who knew the voter would actually think we meant it, when we had no intention of doing either one of those things.
Poor George, he can’t hep it, he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.
Who's this "we", Bunky?
I didn't vote for Mittens, and I won't vote for Rubio, Jeb, or Pork Porkie.
I will vote for a conservative, period, end of discussion.
I like Rick but I disagree with at least this one comment.
Going after Obama for his “you didn’t build that” was great and it was right on the money.
There was a lot wrong with the Romney campaign that but that wasn’t it.
Santorium is a deliberate f’up and a liar to boot. A whore who can be bought for team purposes.
Santorum might have lost 48, but it would have been because the Republicans elites were doing their best to subvert him. Just a hint. He won in Iowa but Romney’s operative lied and the lie held enough long enough to keep his win out of the headlines. It was small enough that when it was found he had won that it gave him not help in New Hampshire. Even a second place there would have put him even with Romney and maybe kept guys like Newt and Cain out of the limelight. Santorum is not a very attractive guy, but one thing he learned in Iowa, and that is how to talk to real people. THAT is useful.
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