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“There seems to be something wrong with our Republican brand today and it ain’t just Trump, or McConnell, or the quality of the candidates.”

The ideological positioning of the Democrat brand is clear. The votes of Democrat politicians are consistent, predictable, and in alignment with their world view. Democrats are passionately unified because they are aligned philosophically and fully committed to the ultimate goal of a big government, socialist state where elite experts rule the population.

There is no such ideological unity or commitment in the Republican brand. Without commitment to core principles, the brand has no integrity. Republicans claim to be the Conservative party but the definition of conservatism varies. What common values and principles do Donald Trump, Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, Dr. Oz, Liz Cheney, Lindsay Graham, Ron DeSantis, Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Thom Tillis, Kari Lake, Larry Hogan, Rand Paul and Brian Kemp share? Does the Republican brand mean the same thing to each of them? If not, it is a weak brand.

It can be argued there is no Republican brand. The commitment of the Republican leaders to individual liberty is lukewarm at best given support for Covid lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and complete silence regarding denial of due process rights to January 6 protestors. Certainly there is no demonstrated commitment to fiscal responsibility or shrinking big government.

The Republican party seems to be comprised of pragmatic political deal makers trying to win elected office by appealing to voters who have rejected Democrat socialism and big government authority. When elected they focus on short term issues, not long term goals. As deal makers, not ideologues, they can be completely flexible in compromising to secure the deals important to them. They can ignore issues of great ideological importance to their voters because their voters have no other option.

Strong brands offer consumers consistency and integrity with respect to the brand values. Democrats have a strong brand because the brand is aligned with their values and it consistently delivers. Democrat politicians never compromise core values. The Republican brand lacks shared values, absolute commitment to values, and consistency.

A political brand whose only consistent message is “They are bad and we aren’t them”, is not a brand. It is at best a default parking place for people seeking an alternative that doesn’t exist. In the United States there is no political party with an unqualified commitment to individual liberty and limited government.

Rather than focus solely on the inadequacies of the Republican brand, its vacuousness and therefore its fecklessness, perhaps we should examine the condition of the electorate as part of the reason the otherwise feckless Republicans are so ineffectual.

Let me hasten to add, I am not making an argument that we lost because the electorate is stupid, I leave that argument to the likes of Hillary Clinton. Rather, I submit that the electorate is not stupid but exquisitely conditioned so that the enticements of the Republican Party do not ordinarily impress.

That is to say, the Democrats of Pennsylvania will elect a Marxist who was barely able to speak in favor of a highly articulate and accomplished surgeon not because Fetterman offered better policies and not because Oz offered inferior policies. It is that Democrat voters in Pennsylvania acted as a herd, dutifully voting for the Democrat when other considerations that might motivate rational voters were simply disregarded.

How did this come about? My answer is that the institutions of America have had years to condition the electorate and have succeeded in creating a zombie electorate. Those institutions include our education establishment from pre-k through postgraduate school. They include legacy media that shapes and edits the newst. They Include social media, epecially those platforms of communication with women and young women.

The Democrat party, and the media, combined with other institutions to convert voting individuals into voting blocks. We in our hubris thought that this election would Mark the time when Americans and especially Hispanics would begin to vote as individuals, evidently we were wrong. The conditioning process held.

BF Skinner would be pleased.

As the Democrat party divides the country into segments, class, race, religion, gender, gender preference, sexual preference etc., those who accept that they are part of one of those classes begin to think and act not as individuals but as members of the class. The conditioning process works.

If you ask me, how do you explain the success of Governor DeSantis in Florida? I confess, I do not know. Yes he has a sterling record but the Democrats' records in every state and nationally are abysmal, yet they prevailed in the face of reason often with inferior candidates who spouted Marxist crap.

Digital mining perhaps plays another role, especially when combined with media and other institutions, that should be explored. The power of Google is in breathtaking but its full implications are not fully understood.

So, on one side we have a fractured and therefore fractious Republican Party taking scattershots at a case hardened Democrat party impervious to Republican entreaties.

Just my two cents.