BuzzFlash Reader Contribution

CONTRIBUTOR ARCHIVES  

The Tactics of Winning Politicians

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION

After reading the umpteenth article telling liberals they have to change in order to be successfully elected, I feel compelled to finally set the record straight! WE MUST CHANGE OUR CAMPAIGN STRATEGY WITHOUT CHANGING OUR VALUES.

George Bush won an election because he was marketed by a clever campaign chief, Karl Rove. This election was won by tactics that were and are clear to any untrained liberal eye outside the beltway and outside the overly analytical world of most northeast journalists.

THE NEW RULES FOR MARKETING MEDIOCRE CANDIDATES:

ATTACK! ATTACK! ATTACK! ROVE attacked truthfully (Kerry is liberal) and attacked deceptively (Kerry is the most liberal member of the senate.) If a candidate actually has a record of compromise, don’t let anyone know! Simply attack, attack, attack! Bob Smith, the former New Hampshire senator and fellow Vietnam veteran, is the most recent prominent Republican to pledge his support for John Kerry. In a letter to Kerry on Wednesday, Smith praised the Democrat as one “who crossed the aisle to forge a bipartisan coalition in the Senate to balance the federal budget.”

CREATE AN IMAGE of the candidate you want to sell. Show videos in churches and synagogues of the invented one. Flood TV and radio with patriotic ads that leave impressions but say nothing. Reinvent your candidate to conform to the image of goodness and purity. By the way, reborn Christians who hear the voice of God are apparently better than regular Christians. It must be this “morality” thing. Having sinned and repented makes a better candidate than one who has been “good” from the get-go. Liberals, from now on we must run candidates who have a disreputable past but have repented. (By the way, repenting right before the campaign is allowable.) Best not to mention the high achieving Kerry girls and Heinz boys compared to the giggling Bush girls. The Bush girls are best suited to red America’s version of what girl’s should aspire to be and who know their place.

DON’T MENTION YOUR RECORD. If you do, lie about it. No matter what the truth is, tell everybody that everything is just great! Above all, don’t be specific!

GENERALIZE YOUR AGENDA for the future. Reform the tax code; balance the debt; bring democracy to the world; eliminate poverty; promise global healthcare! Anything is possible so don’t let reasonableness get in the way. Once you get elected, it is okay to deliver less or nothing at all. If pressed, either ignore the question or lie about it. “I don’t have a litmus test.”

FIND THOSE LITTLE MEANNESSES IN PEOPLE AND EXPLOIT THEM: bigotry, duplicity, and hypocrisy. Homosexuals are sinful so deny them equal protection and privilege; demand abstinence -- one’s daughter can go to Aunt Marian’s for a few months, give the baby away and nobody will know; demand media purity -- ignore the fact that the good people of rural and suburban America do generate high divorce rates, alcoholism rates, and arrest rates. (For the purpose of campaigning, we want them to think we do believe they are as good as they think they are.)

DEMEAN AND DENIGRATE AMERICA’S SYMBOLS OF BRAVERY by insisting that your adversary’s medals and experience are meaningless. The sad fact here is that by denigrating your adversary’s medals, you implicitly denigrate all medals won by all soldiers. We must obey this rule if we want to win though it saddens me immensely to proffer the suggestion that courage in wartime has become an attackable commodity. Max Cleland, John McCain and now John Kerry were objects of such attacks. The attacks did work. Still, in all, perhaps this is one rule that the best of us on the liberal side might forgive and ignore.

MOCK, MOCK, MOCK AND CARICATURE what you can’t fell through honest debate. Use deceptive visuals and labels because Americans aren’t smart enough to understand complex thinking. Start a name-calling list and add “girlie boys” and “flip-flopper” to it immediately. Also add “bully” as it will certainly be useful in future campaigns. Your goal should be to add one mean name to that list daily. The name doesn’t have to be true, just effective. "But Mehlman also said another crucial strategy was the decision to try to tarnish Kerry with a series of attacks that began immediately after the Massachusetts senator effectively wrapped up the Democratic nomination in early March. "'Defining John Kerry was one of the most important things I think we did in the spring,' he said, with his own penchant for understatement." The Note, Nov. 19

SELL FEAR. The republican convention sold fear. The democratic convention tried to sell hope. Stay-at-home mothers voted for the candidate most likely to send their sons and daughters to war.

DEMAND YOUR SUPPORTERS SIGN PLEDGES before admitting them to rallies; then, put them on buses to work for the campaign. We don’t want any uncommitted citizens getting into the act. We need to start selling our side as an exclusive political club.

Oh, and by the way, if all else fails, MAKE SURE EVERY PRECINCT IS EQUIPPED WITH E-VOTING MACHINES THAT CAN BE HACKED AND ARE IN LIMITED SUPPLY to prevent people from voting. This will require extra effort towards electing liberal secretaries of state who can assure that conservative districts have fewer voting places and broken equipment.

Once back in power, we will celebrate by GERRYMANDERING ALL DISTRICTS INTO LIBERAL STRONGHOLDS. Then we will . . .

LET THE LIGHT SHINE BRIGHTLY ON OUR LIBERAL EMPIRE!

A BuzzFlash Reader

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION