Posted on 08/29/2010 9:24:21 PM PDT by Lorianne
You're not going to want to hear this.
Nonetheless, you have to.
If you want to win - indeed, if you want to make any sort of serious inroad into the American Political Process, you need to read this, you need to listen, and you need to adopt this path.
If you do not, you will be marginalized into irrelevance, no matter what else you do.
Here it is:
You must discard - intentionally - all "wedge issues" as points of debate, discussion, or campaigning. You know what these issues are - they fall broadly into the category of religion in one form or another.
These are issues such as abortion and gay rights (in all it's forms, including marriage debates), but is by no means limited to these two. In short, if there's a religious basis for your position, you must not campaign on it, and indeed you must pointedly refuse to discuss it.
The Tea Party began as a protest over bailouts and handouts - that is, theft and corruption within our markets, government and economy. This is a winning position with 90% of the American Body Politic.
Any candidate who runs on these issues - and these issues alone, promising to stop it and lock up the scammers - all of them - wins.
As soon as you bring the other issues that everyone wants to talk about into this, you will lose.
Here's why.
These are called "wedge issues" for a reason.
What you personally believe is irrelevant to the political process. These issues are used by the two main political parties to get the electorate to divide on a 50/50 basis - thus leaving them having to persuade exactly one person of their position on some other issue to win.
You cannot win such a contest. At best you can force one of the other parties - the one that most agrees with you - to lose. The reason is simple - you will split that half of the electorate, which means the other party - the one that disagrees with your position on those issues - wins the election.
Drill this into your head folks:
If you allow these issues to become part of your campaign, you will not only lose you will cause the party that most-agrees with you to lose.
I know this is going to be unpopular, but it needs to be said. I've seen this happening in some of the local Tea Party groups, and it saddens me. The local Niceville branch here featured people talking about "natural law" as an important qualifying factor for political candidacy, as just one of many examples. There were times I felt like I had walked into a Baptist sermon.
The Tea Party and other political expressions like it are, of course, free to run on whatever platform they'd like, and to back candidates based on whatever they'd like. But if you're going to do this, then you'd be wise to try to take over the Republican Party instead of being "independent" or any other sort of "outside" influence, because it is the only way you can win with this approach.
The Tea Party infiltrating The Republican establishment is a long shot. Witness John McCain, who made a campaign spectacle out of bailing out the banks. How's JD Hayworth doing in challenging him? He lost, right? How'd that happen? The same way it always happens: Hayworth let the campaign's terms include those wedge issues, and then got tattoed by the guy with the bigger warchest and the ability to threaten people politically.
You either change the terms of the debate and the issues upon which the election is decided or you lose.
It's that simple.
(excerpted)
That is EXACTLY what the American people want to hear!
This isn't a "wedge issue". It's a right and wrong issue. To quote Dr. Suess, "A person is a person, no matter how small". Abortion is murder, period. It's not a gray issue.
Gay Rights (in all it's forms, including marriage debates)
Again, gays have rights just like everyone does. However, they should not have extra rights, and they certainly have no standing in defining marriage because marriage is what it is. You can call black white and red blue, but it doesn't make it so.
These aren't wedge issues, they are issues about what is right and wrong and what is.....period.
Karl Denninger is looney tunes
Men listened to the words, and eventually men wrote down the words. Since that time, men have interpreted, edited, embellished and manipulated those words - for political power, for personal gain, for matters of convenience.
Speaking of deflections... Do you believe that to get freedom, you have to give it?
No one makes any single issue his only issue. Don’t forget that the thing that sets America apart from all other nations is the fact that we were founded on the principle that all men are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are the rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. If we give up the fight for any of our unalienable rights, America is no more. Our rights are granted by God, not government, and the purpose of the Tea party movement is to preserve, protect and defend these rights for ourselves and our posterity. And who are we defending them from? The government. And the sleazy politicians who would like us to not defend them so it would make it easier for them to get elected. No thanks. A man who cannot or will not defend our unalienable rights — ALL of them — does not deserve our support and should NOT be elected.
Lest we forget our purpose:
Damn the RINOs, full steam ahead!!
Rebellion is brewing!!
‘Focus on fiscal issues doesn’t mean you don’t have those other values. It’s not either/or.’
That nay be your position, but the author disagrees: ‘You must discard - intentionally - all “wedge issues” as points of debate, discussion, or campaigning. You know what these issues are - they fall broadly into the category of religion in one form or another.’
Amen, lj.
It is the things we held in common that founded this great country and as well the things we have in common that premise the Tea Party.
IF those who have no moral spine wish to remain spineless -so be it. Do not expect others with moral conviction that share a common principle to throw all other principles they hold true in the trash --they who stand on nothing moral wish us to wave the white flag that they wrap their "fiscal conservatism" in --forget it!!!
Here is the problem with that way of thinking, everything can fall into that category.
Why do you believe the welfare state is wrong? Because it discourages personally charity? Then you can't talk about ending welfare.
Why do you believe in personal liberty? Because God made men to be free? Then you can't talk about that, it is religious.
Why do you support following the Constitution? Because you think it is a contract with the people and contracts should be honored? I am sorry that is also a religious belief.
Like it or not the very concepts of right and wrong are religious based items. You can not talk about just and unjust law and why just laws should be supported and unjust ones opposed with out starting from the foundation of what some religion said.
Your concept is ill thought out and unworkable.
And ironically it is also unjust. You wish the support of "religious types" in what you think is important but you not only do not offer to reciprocate but you base your acceptance of their support on their abandonment of what they consider vital.
Why does this stream only go one way?
There have been at least 5 or 6 articles (or more) in the last couple of days saying that the GOP is stuffed with homosexuals, will start to push “gay” marriage, etc.
Why is this? Where is this message coming from?
It’s coming from Democrats, who want to demoralize and discourage conseratives from voting for Republicans and get them (US) to stay home. This message is trying to instill defeatism and hopelessness.
They know that the Republican base IS conservative on moral and social issues and does NOT want “gay” marriage or any other part of leftist socially liberal issues!
Believers understand that the original writers were fully inspired. If you don’t understand that...
The only source of freedom is Jesus Christ.
The signatories to the Declaration of Independence understood that fact fully.
Your slogan is meaningless at best, and likely deceptive in most usage. To get free one needs Christ; there is no other way.
.
If social conservatism was good enough for the founders (the original tea party) its good enough for the 2010 tea party... just sayin’...
What is a 'second tier issue' to God?
Translation...
If you do not kowtow to the liberals and worship at the alter of abortion and sodomy we libertarians will join ranks with liberals and vote for the democrats to defeat you because those issues are more important to us than fiscal conservatism...
Denninger is afraid -very afraid!
It is all about God -those who deny Him are scurrying like roaches...
My computer is being bad so I don’t have my quote files handy, but the founders and great thinkers who inspired them all agreed that morality which is founded on religion is the very bedrock of human civilization, and a government such as ours will fall apart into choas without such morality as common ground.
This is known to leftists, and that is why part of the communist goals is to destroy the natural family and morality, to create chaos, so they can more easily take over.
It’s simple, it’s true, and so far it has worked pretty well.
But conservatives are now getting some fighting spirit!
Read my tagline!
So-called “wedge issues” are a wedge between leftists and conservatives. They are NOT a wedge among Republicans. If all the Republicans who are for “gay” marriage and abortion voted Dem, and the Repub candidates were conservative, guess what!
Republicans would win hands down.
Plus, the moral absolutes inculcated in Judeo-Christian tradition and scripture are universal and agreed upon by all religions.
They’re univesral moral absolutes and the very foundation of human civilization.
Focusing solely on fiscal issues means caring only about money. Then they toss in “freedom” but that word means nothing without the context of morality. Otherwise it’s mere libertinism.
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