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)
What to speak of any Republican who is actually pro-abortion or pro-same sex marriage or other homsoexual agenda issues.
RINO-ism is a guaranteed election loser.
How do we ‘fix the moral character of this nation’ at the ballot box?
These are battles that need to be fought, but not all at once and not all on the same battlefield.
You want to sweep abortion and homo marriage under the rug. Sorry, I don't. These two issues are just as important as the reckless spending, the envirowacko laws, & Obamacare. In fact, abortion is directly related to the reckless spending because our tax dollars goes to pay for abortions under Obamacare. Also to Hillary's Global Women's fund or whatever it's called. More money for international abortions, er excuse me, "family planning."
Social issues SHOULD be included as part of the Tea Party movement. All of the Tea Party-backed Republicans are social conservatives, and all of the Tea Party folks in the movement are socially conservative as well. I don't care if I lose the votes of squishes or liberals who wouldn't vote for me anyway if I ignored or advocated in favor of abortion/homo marriage. I want my base to come out, that's far more important than winning brownie points from the elites.
Wrong. De-emphasizing social issues is giving up morality. If you don't stand for a strong moral fiber, then I can't trust you to cut taxes and secure the borders.
The reason I said it’s not eithet/or is that so many people took this post to mean they were being asked to relinquish their core values. No one is asking anyone to do that.
The issue is what to focus on, this doesn’t mean giving up any core values.
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.”
------------------------------------------------------------ My point is that if you don't win running on core issues, then how can you assert that being elected is a “win”?
Being elected on fiscal issues alone means nothing. Why? Because the actual fiscal ‘core issues’ haven't even been elucidate, much less campaigned upon. These issues would be the unconstitutional existences of the private central bank, called the Federal Reserve. The Congressional abrogation to “issue and regulate the value thereof”, the imposition of a head tax (known as income tax) upon wages (as opposed to profit and stock income), and etc ....
100% spot on
“Denninger supported Obama”
That’s all I need to know.
Any fool who supported Obama has no moral authority to complain about others trying to stop what Obama has wrought on us.
I didn’t read it as ‘ducking issues’. I read it more as refusing to be defined ONLY by those issues in lieu of fiscal issues.
Why the gratuitous sneers at Baptists and those who speak of natural law by Denninger then?
I don't think the guy has any idea of what he is talking about. He and his followers use natural law as a basis for going after the "banksters" all the time. They just don't use moral or theological terms (probably because they don't know any). Because they are ignorant, those who are versed in the moral basis for the rot we see are supposed to not used language which has been used politically since the founding?
Yep. Destruction of the family, especially in the black community. All brought to you by the Great Society and other billions spent on lib policies.
Fiscal conservatism and social conservatism go hand-in-hand. Social conservatism is the skeleton; fiscal conservatism is the muscle.
Those are pretty big issues, why do you say winning on them would mean nothing?
His belated mea culpa doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, either. I was there for the snide rants and was there when poor Karl just couldn’t figure out why Obama wasn’t better for the markets.
I guess I'm missing something. Most fiscal conservatives are also social conservatives. A few aren't, there are libertarians who are probably keen on fiscal issues and not on social issues.
Is there someone you have in mind who is a fiscal conservative who is in favor of gay marriage and abortion?
Now, to attract Dems, you have to promote fiscal issues, maybe (although you couldn't prove it by me, most Dems are Keynsians). You might convince some Dems on freedom issues, but most are big government folks, big labor, and the like.
You can attract some Dems on security issues, thats probably your best bet. Those were the old Reagan Democrats. A lot of them are already social conservatives, so that may not be the wedge you think it is.
I think there is little to be gained by hiding your beliefs. They can smell you out in an instant anyway, you're better off to go bold.
Hayworth was defeated, yes, but by Republicans. Which is a whole nother problem in Arizona, its a problem we have all over, where conservatives fail... among Repubs. Maybe its just personal, and people just like McCain (hard for me to understand that, but I'm not from Arizona)...
By talking about it? By making discussions about morality and right and wrong a part of the everyday political discourse?
What your want to do is exactly the opposite, let’s stop talking about it and just tell people to count their coppers. Well I have news for you, people who are only interested in counting coppers will run from you the moment the other side promises another spending bill that will put coppers into their wallet. Sure they might support some tax cuts, but they’ll never support for less spending, do you really think those who are willing to murder the next generation are going to have to much of a troubled conscience over stealing from them?
I didn’t hear the sneers you did.
I heard that those things should not be emphasized in a campaign over fiscal issues
On this, you and I agree. Not sure we agree in the application, but for certain on the principle.
Do you think Scott Brown handled the fact that he was pro-choice with the correct amount of emphasis?
The left would never let a conservative candidate keep it all about fiscal issues. They will somehow find away to get your other core conservative values in the spotlight. Then it just looks like you were hiding something and it becomes a trust issue on top of everything else.
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