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)
Denninger is absolutely correct on this.
You don’t have to be without virtue or morality to follow this advice.
That’s a strawman argument. No one suggested giving up virtue or morality.
That’s because if all you care about is fiscal issues, your loyalty is really to money and not principles, and you can be easily bought off.
Whoever said Tea Party candidates were?
Again, name a Tea Party-backed Republican who is pro-abortion and/or pro-homo marriage.
This entire article is a total red herring, designed to create dissension in the Tea Party ranks. What the Hell does the author think Tea Party candidates are doing? They have been talking about fiscal issues. People like Governor Palin and Sharron Angle are God-fearing Christians, yet have rarely discussed their faith on the campaign trail.
Maybe you need to reverse your calc. If you want to attract Dems, you promote fiscal and security issues. But you can’t win without us, and we’re not voting for anyone who stutters on gay marriage or abortion.
Do your PR however you like, whatever you think will work. But don’t think you can win without us. And we’re getting really tired of people who say they’re with us, only to “reach across the aisle” once they get into office.
The fact that you consider these to be wedge issues, though, reflects what I was saying. The moral issues have to be engaged at a level deeper than politics. If you can’t find a majority of Americans who understand that marriage is sacred, and life is sacred, our problems go much deeper than balancing budgets.
Having thought about the proposition proposed here, I have to disagree with the conclusion.
Abortion Is Not a purely religious issue. If the Declaration Of Independence is to be taken seriously, then the human life within the womb of the mother has rights!
To assert otherwise is totally ludicrous. Those who say that human life starts only after birth are treacherous liars. IMHO
Human life begins at conception, any other position is logically corrupt, and the proponent of such a view is incapable of thinking with clarity.
The family is the core, elemental unit of society. An attack on traditional marriage, and the family is an attack upon society’s stability. Pure and simple.
Both of these issues are at the center at the of Communist vs Western Civilization debate. By Western Civilization I mean that civilization and political philosophies handed down from Greek, Roman, Christian and European societies.
Abortion and the re-definition of Traditional Marriage are direct attacks upon the meaning and validity of the Declaration Of Independence for the furtherance of establishing State Power that wants to control Human existence and purpose from birth to death.
These are not “Wedge Issues”, they go to the heart of State vs Citizen relationship, and what Our Freedom means!
How would focusing on fisal responsibility, no more bailouts, and adherence to the constitution “jettison the core of conservative voters”?
well said. One of the best people at this is talk radios Herman Cain. He is a social and fiscal conservative. His main talking point is economics, but he will never shy away from an opportunity to stand his ground on immigration, the 9/11 mosque, right to life, etc. Yet in doing so, I have never heard him do so in a way that alienates someone who disagrees.
While I agree these are core values, they are not winning issues. We must win.
I am not one who likes to be right, but lose. I don’t have to give up any core values in order to focus on winning issues.
Fiscal irresponsibility is not the cause of our problems, it is a symptom of the lack of moral character to resist the temptation for immediate gratification of the senses, which is also the real cause for the proliferation of abortion and other deviant sexual behaviors.
You fiscal conservatives are dreaming if you think we can solve the spending issue without fixing the moral character of this nation.
The Dems have been running on "we hate Bush" for so long they forgot that they really don't agree amongst themselves all that much.
Rahm went out and recruited a bunch of vaguely conservative sounding Dems, and the strategy got them elected. They were not forthright about who they were and look where they are now. It is possible that what they thought was a winning strategy to get a bunch of Dems elected may ultimately result in a long term shift away from the party.
All the "pro-life Dems" have been exposed as frauds, and the voters are angry because of it.
Be who you are, and say who you are.
That’s all we need - another outsider trying to tell us how to think! Go away Karl and Lorianne, we Tea Partyers are doing just fine, thank you!
JC
Oh, we plan to win in the long run. Note that Lincoln lost running for the U.S. Senate in 1858. And took less than 40% of the vote in 1860. But 39% was enough to win that year.
In 1776-1779, Washington had less than 40% on his side. Pick the right battles (which is what you are trying to say, I believe) and grow.
I'm pretty sure we end up with 6 solid Tea Senators in 2011. If we do the same in 2012 and 2014, that's 18. If we get a good candidate for President in 2012, we could get 2-5 on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Is it our time in history? Yes. Will this become clear? Yes. Will the State Rum Media viciously attack us? Absolutely.
If the goal of the tea party people is restoring a Constitutional smaller federal government, and they only focus on fiscal issues and enumerated powers it might be successful. Liberals love their own money, they do their best to keep it.
However it will be impossible to avoid wedge issues because there is money tied to them. They will have to deal with them.
There is no such thing as nice and neat politics, all compartmentalized and mutually exlusive to everyone’s idealistic enjoyment. Reality doesn’t happen that way.
What is going to happen is that alliances will form between tea party people and conservative democrats (for many dems, independents) and between republicans and various tea party people. More will be in common, in general, with tea party ideas and republican ideas.
You don’t jettison wedge issues though just because they’re difficult. If they are worth fighting for on principle and as part of a core philosophy (ie given everything else you believe it’s just common sense you’d be for or against a certain wedge issue) why run from it?
We are tired of people that try to please everyone. That is the thing we hate about Big Tent RINOs and false unity and the weird logic pretzels they wind up twisting themselves into. We love democrats trying to avoid questions and wriggle around because of this kind of stuff, we hate republicans who are like this and have no balls or guts to stand for something so they stay silent or worse.
It’s not either or. It’s focusing on fiscal issues.
Why are you making it us vs them internally? Most conservatives have the same beliefs on abortion, gay marriage, etc. and no one is suggesting they shouldn’t.
But the fiscal concerns of Americans hit everyone, and they are coming around to the conservative viewpoint on economic issues.
No one is suggesting anyone give up any principles.
Center right we are ... you are correct. So build on that and capture the mood turning our way on fiscal issues.
“You cannot effect any change on social issues if you don’t WIN.”
Fine, this is true.
But what also is true is if you purposely avoid social issues for fear of upsetting people, you are spineless and are purposely hiding what you believe from voters in order to get them to vote for you, and you will ultimately wind up disappointing a large bunch of people either way when you HAVE WON and HAVE TO MAKE REAL LIFE DECISIONS on the issues you had hoped to duck.
Ducking issues by just ignoring them because you’re afraid it will mess up your ‘unity’ - well, then there wasn’t much ‘unity’ there in the first place.
The Tea Party would be better off then if it just focused on one or two related issues as an advocacy group, like for people just focused on cutting all non-essential government spending and waste.
As has been pointed out to you already, that is precisely what high profile figure associated with the tea party have done, do notice that virtually all of the are pro-life, do not support gay marriage, do believe in the sanctity of human life ... Social conservatives. Denninger is the one promoting so-called “wedge issues” and you’re going right along with it.
Lose the social conservatives due to being lukewarm and lose, period. This is not a point of negotiation. If Denninger has seen the light (and I doubt that, having participated on his forum from 2007 - 2009, just lost interest due to the general leftist slant there), then he will recognize that fiscal conservative successs depends upon social conservative support.
It’s not either/or.
That's not what the article said. I quote, "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." (emphasis mine)
Sounds "either/or" to me. Fiscal issues are not values in the sense of what the term "value" means.
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