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1/21/2013

It’s Not the Message, It’s Not the Messenger, It’s the Voter

Via-Front Page Magazine


By Bruce Thornton

Nearly 3 months after the presidential election the Republicans are still trying to fix what they think went wrong. A popular culprit is the Republicans’ alleged failure to communicate forcefully or persuasively a message that would move voters presumably receptive to conservative policies and principles. Just in the last week Jonah Goldberg, Daniel Henninger, Ari Fleischer, Ross Douthat, and Karl Rove have worked variations on this theme. Yet we should remember that any act of communication comprises not just a sender and a message, but also a receiver. We need to focus on the nature of America’s political “receivers,” the 65 million who voted for Obama in the November election, and the 93 million registered voters who didn’t vote. If those voters are not receptive to the Republican message, it doesn’t matter much how brilliant the messenger or the packaging of the message.

And that “message” has been out there for years now and constantly repeated. Only the stupid or willfully inattentive haven’t heard that we face a financial abyss waiting at the end of our entitlement road, that entitlements need to be reformed, that we have an exploding debt and deficit crisis, that a “tax the rich” policy only produces chump-change for solving that problem, that Obama’s economic policies have bloated the federal government at the expense of jobs and growth, and that Obama himself is the most left-wing, duplicitous, partisan, and incompetent president in modern history. And conservatives have identified repeatedly the bad ideology and flawed assumptions that have generated the policies that created those problems. The fact is, many voters know full well this dismal catalogue of failure, and they either don’t care, or they believe the fatuous rationalizations, lies, excuses, and economic magical thinking offered by the Democrats. How else explain Obama’s 55% approval rating in the latest Time/CNN poll? Either way, repeating once again the facts demonstrating that failure and the flawed ideology that has created it, or more effectively repackaging the facts and arguments and having it delivered by an oratorical genius, is not going to cut much ice.

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1 comment:

  1. The fact is, many voters know full well this dismal catalogue of failure, and they either don’t care, or they believe the fatuous rationalizations, lies, excuses, and economic magical thinking offered by the Democrats. How else explain Obama’s 55% approval rating in the latest Time/CNN poll?


    I will explain it quite clearly(yet wordy)

    Those non voting Conservatives/Republicans dont think the crop of Republicans will do anything close to what they say they will.
    This type of voter has a limited time to be politically informed. They witnessed Bush Jr and the last crop of Spendaholic Republicans under him,and think that was a waste of my last vote.
    Now they see a feckless Bonner and an outnumbered Tea Party in the House.Not to mention the Republican Senators that only show their Ummm ...... fortitudinal pair every leap year groundhog day!

    Why bother. When you put up a wishywashy candidate like Romney.
    Granted; to us well informed, he was a ray of sunshine compared to Obama.
    But to those struggling working class parents?
    Those that barely have time to turn on a tv or can afford internet? Romney was Liberal Bush on steroids!
    He had them in the first debate and then completely lost them after that.
    Just my redneck philosophy here.....
    You dont go fishing,get a bite,set the hook and refuse to reel it in with the expectation that the fish will land itself.

    Good God Man!
    When will these politicians learn to ignore the advisers at the proper moment?

    Just a Spathy rant for the day :O)

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