A conversation I had with myself on Twitter this morning.
Just because I could.
(added) Be sure to read Anne’s study on how embarrassed Republicans were of the Republican Brand long before the current “shutdown,” New study sheds light on why Republicans won’t call themselves Republican.
Also available on Storify.
Interesting to watch geniuses who brought us Presidents McCain and Romney calling others crazy and gloating
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 11, 2013
Losing gently is such a way of life for so many in Republican Party, keep following their advice
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 11, 2013
Pure genius: Obamacare is disaster, so just play along and don't do anything to fight its implementation
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 11, 2013
OMG, we've damaged the Republican "Brand" that brought us Obama, Maj Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi #goodolddays
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 11, 2013
Hey remember when Dems controlled House and filibuster proof in Senate — now that was a Republican Brand to believe in
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 11, 2013
Just think if we had protected the Republican "Brand" in 2010 — now that would have been real success
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 11, 2013
"Walk quietly into the sunset" — new slogan for the winning Republican Brand ad campaign
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 11, 2013
I'm gonna get me some of that Republican Brand they're all talking about, where can I find it?
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 11, 2013
Maybe if I embrace the Republican Brand I'll get a job at WaPo or Daily Beast — puhlese, puhlese let me be part of the club
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 11, 2013
That Republican Brand was so great they lined up to get it (while talking on their Obamaphones).
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 11, 2013
Keepers of the Republican Brand a/k/a the Potemkin Villagers
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 11, 2013
Better that 10 Democrats go free, than that we execute an innocent Republican Brand
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 11, 2013
Obama to Republican Brand: Drop Dead // Republican Brand to Obama: Yessir
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 11, 2013
Republican Brand, coming to a dollar store near you
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 11, 2013
I beg your pardon, I never promised you a Republican Brand http://t.co/7e9JDMwU83
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 11, 2013
Republican Brand: Worthy of your consideration because we're not really terrorists, really, we're not
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 11, 2013
Republican Brand: No matter how many times you call me a terrorist and suicide bomber, I'll still shake your hand and look you in the eye
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 11, 2013
Republican Brand strategy: Lose every election, make it up on volume
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 11, 2013
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 11, 2013
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Comments
“Make it up on volume” – priceless!
A very one-sided debate! Where’s the retorts to all of this, eh?
Oh, forgot, retorts would be rude!
Sorry!
Excellent! Because the Republican Brand Establishment has been so successful!
I love it. Thanks, Bill, you cheered me up this morning. I get tired of these Professional GOP brand types who read a poll that reflects a few morning MSM headlines – and go into panic mode. “We must surrender; our poll numbers dropped.” If they’d agree on one talking point line to say that trashes the Dem’s when they get on TV, and recite it faithfully, maybe they’d make a more constructive input to our Tea Party struggle to hold back the Leviathan of Big Government. No, they can’t do that. They have to pull out the white flag of surrender from their back pocket ASAP and wave it.
Ted Cruz’s 21-hour Senate speech had hours of ObamaCare troubles described in it. Those Professional GOP brand’ers could have recited some line from Cruz’s speech when they get on TV. Then tell the audience, “Go to CSPAN and watch Ted explain the problems that you’re reading about a little bit in the MSM.”
Democrats demand payment to their (commie) brand for anything good for America.
Republican Brand brags even as they pay the ransom, always growing government, apologetically
winningbuying token and temporary victories.These messages brought to you by “The Republican Brand” (trademark) a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of “The Democratic Brand”, all rights reserved.
– K street, Washington D.C, USA
Great!!
I keep pointing this out…
most of us are making a mistake if we identify as Republicans.
We SOMETIMES…MAY…share common cause, and we sort of have to default to that party if we run for office.
But most of us are something else. And we can’t get all excited if they (Republicans) act like what THEY are…which is NOT necessarily conservative at all.
Remember, Tricky Dick Nixon was a Progressive. He was no conservative.
What not to love, huh?
Republican Brand-ing Iron
Good give & take in that convo.
Thanks for the video clip – that brings a smile of the past.
Why, Professor! How Un-RepublicanBrand Of You!
I Freekin’ Love It!
I have generally voted Republican because I want to reduce the size and scope of government. For the last 12 years or so they have utterly failed to do so generally acting as me-too liberals, and as such I am voting Republican less and less.
My last vote for a liberal Republican was McCain and I will not vote for another nominal “lesser of two evils”.
If the Republican establishment pushes another John McRomney on us I will not vote for him.
I try to hold back on Repub-bashing, I don’t need to be on the same patch of ground as the NYT and WaPo.
That said, it’s been about a decade since I walked precincts or donated money. I don’t know what planet these guys live on, but it isn’t mine.
A lot of people thinking your way gave us Obama 2nd term (and maybe the first, too). When your only two choices are “not good enough” and “atrocious,” sitting out the election or voting minor party and thus letting “atrocious” win and take a wrecking ball to our republic — so you’ll make your point or teach someone a lesson, you imagine — is not a principled stand. It’s suicidal, but it hurts other people too.
What’s the lesson that’s absorbed when you let “atrocious” win because you didn’t like “not good enough”? It’s that The People prefer “atrocious,” of course! When a hard-left Democrat defeats so-called moderate Republicans, the Republican establishment (not unreasonably) concludes that the public has moved leftward and will keep electing Democrats if Republicans scare them with right-wingery.
If you want the country to stop sliding or plummeting leftward, the FIRST necessity is to stop Democrats from getting power! Somehow, leftists understand that principle as applied to stopping Republicans.
If you don’t like the Republican candidates on the general ballot, work harder to put one you prefer up there. Punishing the rest of us with your purism is not admirable.
Even considering the question of ideology on a tactical scale, when the public sees elections as conservatives vs liberals, the Republican wins – see 2004, 1980-1988. When the public sees little difference in ideology – 1992, 1996, 2008, 2012 the Democrat wins.
One other interesting point to consider – in both parties the left most element of that party generally controls it.
If you ask your average Democrat voter where they stand on the issues, they will fall to the right of Obama, Pelosi, or Reid.
If you ask your average Republican voter where they stand on the issues, they will also fall to the right of Romney, Boehner, or McConnell.
This is certainly odd, isn’t it?
And it’s the inverse of media-speak, in which “moderate” Republicans lean left while the others are all extremists or hard-right, whereas all Democrats are implicitly moderate unless they’re (ugh) “conservative.”
I am not voting for Chris Christie or Jeb Bush.
I vote Tea Party/Libertarian.
The elephant is old, tired, too Rove-ish and too cumbersome to drag along.
The Tea Party is light on its feet and terrifies the progressives.
The Tea Party has been told by our supreme POTUS that our small group of Tea Party people is holding the entire U.S. hostage (in other words we are acting as a restraining force against gov’t’s overreach, overspending and invasive oversight.) We are guilty of restraint.
Dana Loesch calls herself a “conservatarian.” I think I shall adopt that description, too!
The Dem-left will be thrilled to hear that.
The far left didn’t attain power by running in an openly socialist party; they did it by taking over the Democrat party. (Obama first ran in the “New Party” but the Dems gave him a much bigger opportunity.) Conservatives started to regain influence by working within the Republican party (Gingrich revolution; 2010 election).
If everyone identifying with the Tea Party had voted “Tea Party” or libertarian in 2010, Nancy Pelosi would probably still be wielding the Speaker’s gavel. If they vote that way in 2014, they’ll give it back to her or another Dem-leftist.
The practical answer to some disappointments and betrayals since 2013 is NOT to hand power back to the Dems by casting votes for parties that poll in the single digits. It’s to keep getting better candidates into the ranks of elected Republicans and keep pressuring them to act like conservatives.
In high school I was a peace, love and rock & roll liberal. Then I got a job and saw what the government was taking from my pay check and decided I was really a republican. Now I refuse to call myself a Republican any longer, I would categorize myself and a hardcore libertarian!
Don’t Tread on Me!
The Zeitgeist is in flux, that’s for sure. 🙂
I know some people who had the same shock and it appeared they might go the same route, but the indoctrination has been too deep and unruffled by much contact with different ways of thinking.
I’m a social and fiscal conservative, a SoFisCon if you will, and I have always been registered I as I refuse to play party identity politics. I vote for who I feel is the best person according to my criteria and never cared about anyones brand.
Republican™
Clearly sir, you are a racist. Go pay Al Sharpton some money to redeem your brand.
I think the TEA Parties should take aim at BOTH national parties, depending on whichever is strongest in a given state. The Democratic Party has been trying like hell to marginalize the TEA Parties as if they were the extreme right wing of the Republican party when in fact the TEA Party platform is confined to fiscal responsibility, and other values that are shared across the American political spectrum.
The Democratic Party at the national level recognizes that the TEA Party platform has huge appeal for Democratic voters. They are running scared, hence the vituperation.
Drudge’s headline is SURRENDER under the picture of two dickless GOP “leaders”: Boehner and Cantor. Despicable. They let themselves be rolled by a Democrat poll of Democrats, top heavy with government workers. Vote for the GOP again? Never. I’ll vote for a party that will stand and fight for its principles and that won’t cave at the continuation of bad press.
Your tweets are spot on. I have been getting a barrage of emails from various Republicans asking for money to fight Obamacare. I have responded to everyone with the message: “You don’t need money to fight Obamacare – you need balls”.
Awesome. Contact a bumper sticker vendor now.
Follow the money. The establishment Republicans are being lobbied by the big financial backers that have global investments.
Every Republican should have Obama’s 2006 debt ceiling statement memorized and should repeat it anytime they are around a reporter, camera or microphone. Then say, “I agree with the President and his statement”, then shut up. At some time someone in the media will have to ask Obama what is different between his statement then and his position now.
How did they get elected to Congress if they can’t even manage to throw Obama’s words back in his face?
GOP:We are trying to be less mean-spirited!
But if we don’t look “diplomatic” we’ll never get invited to those great parties or Sunday talk shows where we’re made to look wishy washy
The Institutional Republicans are desperate to surrender before the country gets angry enough at Obama over the shutdown to insist that the Republicans actually stand up against him. That is their greatest immediate fear, that they will be forced by the TEA Party and the American people to become a REAL opposition party.
This weekend has some hard deadlines that make a quick surrender vital for the Institutionals, at any cost.
1) Saturday, I understand that Glenn Beck has organized a mass demonstration to retake and maintain America’s national monuments in DC. We can be pretty sure that Obama’s Brownshirts will do something provocative.
2) Sunday, Veterans will be coming to DC to liberate the WW-II and Vietnam Memorials and protect the Veterans who come to pay respects at both. Definitely, the Brownshirts will cross a bunch of lines there. And the Veterans may not be in a mood to take it. There may be a “Captain John Parker Moment”.
If either happens, it may become politically impossible for the Institutionals to surrender to Obama. So they need to do so before the American people get there. That way they can claim that the crisis is over and call for everybody to go home before they put pressure on the government.
The Republicans are Loyalist Tories; who hate the Patriots more than they fear the King’s Men.
And this is a skirmish in the Conservative War of Independence.
So, are you guys all leaving the GOP, or are you just whining like little girls who lost their dollies?
I’ve never been in the Republican Party. What’s your problem? View from the top of your tower obscured?
Left January 2, 2013 after decades. Encouraging others to leave. We need to form a SECOND party, because the Republicans are just the co-dependent b*****d stepchildren of the Democrats. If Conservatives don’t support Republicans, Democrats win and get what they want. If Conservatives do support Republicans, Republicans cave and the Democrats win and get what they want. And all through the process, the Republicans demonize Conservatives almost as much as the Democrats.
We have had far too many object lessons in this, at all political levels.
Subotai Bahadur
Posts like Estragon’s are a perfect example of the haughty elitism the GOP has turned into. These are the clowns who gave us President McCain and President Romney.
I’m not saying the GOP will go down if it doesn’t grow a pair and turn conservative. I am saying that has already happened and they do not recognize it despite a loooong string of political defeats and humiliations. The GOP’s one big moment was the 2010 midterms – courtesy of the conservative base and Tea Party.
It must be very late on a Friday on the East Coast because the GOP, according to Breitbart Big Government, http://tiny.cc/690s4w, has surrendered to el Jefe Obama the First! No doubt the surrender was unconditional and even their side arms had to turned in.
So, Professor, keep your campaign up and let’s everyone join in and drive it home that the GOP is not our friend but Sen. Lee and Sen. Cruz are, along with Rep. Gohmert and others like.
I’ve always been a civil libertarian and will be such till the day I die. My next vote for president will be for whosoever supports our Constitution and our form of a federal government.
Meanwhile, follow that old saying of practice, practice, practice because doing so improves our ability to continue and to exist as a free people. Our Bill of Rights stands for our continued freedoms and for our children’s right to a free country. If the socialists call that raising the “Black flag” that’s their mistake yet I would understand their twisted meaning as they should understand my plain meaning too.
My question is: Why are so few Democrat-leaning people embarrassed about the Democrat “brand”? Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barack Obama … THAT’s the face of your party? That’s the best you can do? Why are Dems not embarrassed about the “new tone” set by the Dems who not ago were hyperventilating over Sarah Palin’s crosshairs and the imaginary violence they were seeing in all those gray-haired people in frumpy clothing and funny hats?
Here are my answers:
1) Leftists have no shame. Whatever increases their power over the people is good.
2) Average people who don’t follow politics absorb the “Democrats good / Republicans bad” meme from the dominant media, entertainment industry, education establishment. They don’t know why they feel (not think) that way, but they hear it all the time so it must be true.
3) “Democrat” sounds nice and egalitarian; anybody who uses that label must be nice and democratic, right? But a “Republican” — how many people know what that even means? For many, the word itself seems to conjure up an image of plutocrats (sans the word, which they probably couldn’t define either). It’s just as deep as Obama’s sonorous baritone (when he’s not haranguing like a punk demagogue), but at least as consequential in swaying the ignorant.
The End? More, please.
When has paying the Danegeld ever worked for anyone but the Danes?
GOP = Gang Of P*ssies