I am old enough to remember when politicians were well spoken... because they were properly educated. You might not agree with what they said, but they were erudite.Texas Congressional Representative then:
Texas Congressional Representative now:
Posted on 10/07/2013 10:09:38 AM PDT by jazusamo
If the continued existence of mathematics depended on the ability of the Republicans to defend the proposition that two plus two equals four, that would probably mean the end of mathematics and of all the things that require mathematics.
Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, epitomized what has been wrong with the Republicans for decades when he emerged from a White House meeting last Wednesday, went over to the assembled microphones, briefly expressed his disgust with the Democrats' intransigence and walked on away.
We are in the midst of a national crisis, immediately affecting millions of Americans and potentially affecting the kind of country this will become if ObamaCare goes into effect — and yet, with multiple television network cameras focused on Speaker Boehner as he emerged from the White House, he couldn't be bothered to prepare a statement that would help clarify a confused situation, full of fallacies and lies.
Boehner was not unique in having a blind spot when it comes to recognizing the importance of articulation and the need to put some serious time and effort into presenting your case in a way that people outside the Beltway would understand. On the contrary, he has been all too typical of Republican leaders in recent decades.
When the government was shut down during the Clinton administration, Republican leaders who went on television to tell their side of the story talked about "OMB numbers" versus "CBO numbers" — as if most people beyond the Beltway knew what these abbreviations meant or why the statistics in question were relevant to the shutdown. Why talk to them in Beltway-speak?
When Speaker Boehner today goes around talking about the "CR," that is just more of the same thinking — or lack of thinking. Policy wonks inside the Beltway know...
(Excerpt) Read more at creators.com ...
PeterPrinciple: “lib message: Free stuff until we run out.”
Strike that last part. Lib message: “Free stuff!”
I am old enough to remember when politicians were well spoken... because they were properly educated. You might not agree with what they said, but they were erudite.Texas Congressional Representative then:
Texas Congressional Representative now:
We need more Ted Cruzes and Mike Lees
Good job, I’ll bet even they can understand that.
I’d just like to see them hire someone who is competent and knows how sell their case. What I’d love to see is someone hired like Thomas Sowell. Someone who is intelligent and sounds intelligent and knows how to turn things around.
That’s the sad thing and the point of Mr. Sowell’s article. Senator Cruz is exceptional in that he can articulate conservative principles AND rip right through the left’s hogwash. He’s very much the exception.
I’m actually giving Speaker Boehner a lot of credit recently for standing firm, but he’s a terrible spokesman. Why does our side pick people like him to lead us? I question whether he even believes anything he says. He was supposed to be a small government conservative at one point. Now? Who knows. If he is, he can’t articulate it.
President Bush was another one. Agree or disagree with him, but he couldn’t put two words together without stumbling over them. I still blame him for the election of President Obama. The left ceaselessly attacked everything that Bush did, and his administration simply laid there prostrate and took it.
The left has to obfuscate and use emotional appeals. Conservative ideology, on the other hand, is based on simple truths. All we have to do is articulate them.
Nobody is proposing to pay off THE MORTGAGE. All that has to be covered if the monthly payments.
This miscomprehension of Gross debt versus ongoing payments is a purposeful deception. Don’t buy into it.
You can probably carry your mortgage but have no ability to pay it back in full on short notice.
The advantage should be on our side, because the truth is on our side. The left depends on emotional appeals and distortions.
Democrats, by contrast, are all talk. They could sell refrigerators to Eskimos before Republicans could sell them blankets.
Ain't that the truth!!!
Sorry, I misunderstood what you were proposing. I am quite clear on the difference between the cost of debt servicing and the debt itself. That’s also why the budget deficit is actually a more important concern than the gross debt. Shrinking the deficit to zero will eventually allow us to pay off the gross debt, the same way as ceasing to charge new items on a credit card will allow you to eventually pay off that credit card balance.
All that said, however, adding another new tax and giving the government more money to piss away is probably not such a good idea. If they would actually use it for debt service, that’s one thing. However, what’s the odds that they’ll just put the new revenue stream into the general treasury and then declare that we can now afford new or expanded entitlement programs since there’s more revenue coming in?
Democrats, by contrast, are all talk. They could sell refrigerators to Eskimos before Republicans could sell them blankets.
Ain't that the truth!!!
That is why I propose a dedicated tax. The only thing it could be spent on would be debt servicing, interest and/or principal. You must make it a federal criminal offense for anyone or any group to divert one penny!
Sowell is exactly right and he expresses the single most important reason Boehner and his ilk have to go. The dems continue to win the war of words and we have little chance as long as Boehner remains in power.
Because the media is blatantly biased, it is much more critical for Republican leaders to be effective and articulate speakers. They will get zero help from the media. Boehner has never gotten the job done in this respect and he never will. If he was a reasonably self aware person and actually cared about the principles he so weakly espouses, be would resign the speakership.
From my many years of observing the political scene and the amoral and criminally lazy media, here is my advice to the Republicans.
Adopt the tactics of the Great Communicator:
1. Make it brief.
2. Say it in the form of a funny story. In case you haven’t noticed, the media will always use a bite that is entertaining, in spite of their hatred of conservatives.
3. Have your friends repeat the message whenever they are in front of a microphone. Have them be brief too.
This so called “inability to articulate” is purposeful. Playing dumb as a post is a strategy as old as the hills and effective.
Falling for it is worse. These guys display tongues of silver when it’s about them or their own re-election.
The ones who can articulate it, and “get it” like Bachmann, for example, are marginalized and run off.
Some of it is no doubt. No denying that.
HOWEVER: - some of it is just reflective of how isolated and out of touch they are. These beltway Republicans - talking consultants and officials - really are as dumb as they seem sometimes.
Having knowledge of the “abbreviations”, Boehner’s conservative critics are likewise remiss in demanding the necessary layman’s speak — save the sagacious Mr Sowell of course.
Unlike the defamatory simpletons on the Left, Republicans tend to argue in a whirlpool of jargon.
Several decades ago, I had the pleasure of attending a fund raiser for a Republican running against my then representative David Bunion (Bonior). Gingrich was a guest speaker at the dinner and spoke without note cards, without Obama teleprompters and never an uh, or ah, or um.........
He's a terrific public speaker.......
I agree, he knows the Constitution and he communicates with skill.
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