Do the Republicans and Conservatives want to win elections? They certainly have not acted as if they did.
If Conservatives want to win elections, they need to take a page out of the Alinsky left: practicality. What does this mean? It means that you have to look at what motivates voters now, and what turns them off. Embrace what turns them on; eschew and put off indefinitely anything that turns them off.
The successful tactic of the left has thus been to appeal to any thought or emotions of the people as far as the people embrace that feeling. The people want clean air and water. So they champion clean air and water because it gives them a means to extend government control, which is what they really want. And at the same time paint the Conservatives as being against clean air and water. These tactics applied everywhere as we have seen have become nearly unbeatable.
The left thus enlists the aid of those who align with the next little increment of improvement to public welfare, which is actually the very opposite, but in disguise.
Take the minimum wage: the professed goal for minimum wage is “fairness” and “compassion for the poor”, when in fact, the result of minimum wage is to suppress the poor, keep them unemployed and dependent, and protect the trade unions from competition.
Everywhere you look across the spectrum of political issues, you see the same tactic brilliantly applied by the left. And the Conservatives just smile and hope that by having the truth on their side, they will prevail.
Totalitarians don’t give a fig for the truth, nor do they really have an ounce of compassion or social justice in their blood. They want power, pure and simple. And those ignorant “low-information” voters see the brightly lighted path and chose to become those “useful idiots” and throw their support to the would-be totalitarians.
Do you think that blacks, latinos, and other of Obama’s supporters really want socialism? The blacks and the poor are the ones hurt most by liberal policies. No, they are simply buying in to the rhetoric and fear mongering that Conservatives make so easy for the left to continually provide. Latinos generally hold quite conservative values and family values. Immigrants are typically highly motivated, entrepreneurial, and don’t want to see this country go down the same socialist path that led the country they fled into destruction and ruin.
What then is that negative message of Conservatives that has terrified Obama’s support groups, which otherwise share conservative values? What has driven them in fear into voting Democrat, while if they voted their values they would have voted Republican?
It is the fear-producing social message of the Right, on topics like the following: contraception, abortion, environment, gay marriage, gambling, alcohol, drugs, gay issues, and every state-imposed moral code. It is righteous to try to improve society. But these social issues give a mighty weapon to the left. And the left succeeds by continually terrifying its interest groups into mindless flight from their own interests. Thus members of these interest groups are more of the “useful idiots”, giving the totalitarians and easy ride to power.
As long as Tea Partiers and conservatives insist on the social issues, they are doomed to be marginalized by the propaganda machine of the left.
To me, big government means big economic control and small private control. But it also means big social control, and little private control. I am for small control, period.
You have to gain influence in the culture, in the schools, and in the media. And you are not going to gain influence in the culture, the schools, and the media until your message is non-threatening to any interest group. Even if you really want to trumpet your social message — don’t! It is not a winner right now. Let’s at least temporarily get over it.