Obama Aides Weigh Bid to Tie the G.O.P. to the Tea Party - NYTimes.com: "WASHINGTON — President Obama’s political advisers, looking for ways to help Democrats and alter the course of the midterm elections in the final weeks, are considering a range of ideas, including national advertisements, to cast the Republican Party as all but taken over by Tea Party extremists, people involved in the discussion said."
(c) 2010 F. Bruce Abel
Remember how -- still -- the name-calling of our side as "Liberal" was scrotum-withering? Well, let's do the same. Call the opponent a name: "Republican" and leave it at that.
After the Bush years and last two years in Congress, winning an election for any Democrat against the talk-show Republicans -- and all Republicans perforce, must bow to, the talk-show Republicans -- should be as easy as winning a Christian-Democrat -- National Socialist election just after the devastation of WWII.
On the podium (Driehaus, say, or Strickland, or Pillich, with a raised eyebrow and a touch of sarcasm):
"Hey," "This guy, my opponent, is a Republican."
"Case closed."
This was the approach of William F. Buckley Jr. Toward the end of his life he admitted that the key to his successful arguments was not the content he put out, but the one-phrase repost, the raised eyebrow. Let the voters imagine the horrors of the eight years leading up to 2008, when Obama was voted in. Treat the voters like adults. They have lived through those eight years. They know.
P.S. My daughter, upon reading this, points out that "they don't know." If that is true, turn to the Memory Hole argument. Or I have another analogy: the U.S. economy now has pneumonia because the Republicans had it standing coatless in the winter cold for eight years, and even longer in reality, due to intimidating the Clintons, and the Reagan years. Do we dare stand out in another winter coatless?
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