GOP ground zero is a good thing

Democrats on the far left love to demonize big business. They in fact legislatively undercut all businesses, and more acutely smaller businesses, with onerous requirements that have caused a lot of investment potential a lot of innovation opportunity to sit idle on the sidelines that could have had a positive impact on the country's economy. As Democrats have sewn this antagonistic view, so now have they reaped much of the consequence politically. The country however continues to feel the impacts of everything from Dodd Frank, to Obamacare, to loose monetary policy. It's crippling America at a faster rate than every before.

Meanwhile the Democrats claim to champion the underprivileged and laughably, the middle class. Minimum wage laws designed to keep people out of the lowest of the income brackets have been proven to drive unemployment. But beyond that, the psychological harm to business of these pro-people, anti-business measures are quite significant.

The message could not be clearer - the legislation Democrats have enacted has helped the poorest, marginally at best, and the wealthiest significantly. They are insulated from new competition by the sheer enormity of the administrative and taxation burden placed on smaller companies. Those companies cannot grow to competitive levels and right now they aren't even inclined to try. Therefore they are not adding more jobs, and importantly, they are not adding more middle class jobs.

The Democrats have been running a Zero-trickle-down legislative agenda, intentionally or not.

This is where the opportunity exists for the GOP from a messaging perspective. A positive message should show people that prosperity is not a zero-sum game. When the economy does well, everyone benefits. But a little more nuance than tha tis required. The message should say be something along the lines of "our policies are not designed to codify people, and make them think of the world as us and them, but rather to enable everyone the same opportunity to start their own journey to success."

Equality of opportunity extends from education right through to starting and growing your own business. A truly level playing field requires it. Republican policy should deliver it. It's not about creating jobs - it's about creating opportunities (of which jobs is a mere subset).

Every policy and piece of legislation should start from that basis. And every policy and piece of legislation must have crystal clarity on how it enables equality of opportunity at every stage of life. That is done not by layering more complexity upon existing complexity. Rather it is done by simplifying the rules. It is done by ensuring that rules do not discriminate against anyone or any business entity.

People can be made to see those truths if the messaging is clear. Investors certainly can be made to see them. That alone would spark a fire in the economy. Then ensuring that everyone has a shot at taking advantage of the prosperity to better their own lives becomes the main raison d'etre for government.

Conservatism, and selling it

There's a great post on why conservatism will win in the end, from Canadian Cincinnatus. In it, the writer clearly outlines the position that American Republicans seem to be hunting for in terms of their party's message.

Remember though, as Canadian Cincinnatus puts it, these are fundamental truths. My point is that finding the message is not the problem - communicating the message is the problem. It has to be clear, simple, relatable to people's core beliefs and it has to cut through the both the main stream media AND the barrage of daily information coming into people's lives, including things like advertising and television shows and music.

What points does Canadian Cincinnatus expound?

Free markets are better than central planning.
Monetarism is better than Keynesianism.
Saving is better than spending.
People shouldn’t be shielded from the bad consequences of their behaviour.
Work is good.
Democracy is better than authoritarianism.
A constitutional republic is better than a pure democracy.
A legal system should be based on the British common law tradition.
If you want peace you must prepare for war.
War is an unpleasant fact of life that cannot ever be completely done away with; it can only be forestalled by good statecraft backed up with military force.
Private charity works better than welfare.
Giving people money to do nothing rots their character.
A separation of church and state is better than an official religion.
Privately held faith is better than aggressive atheism because religion can have an important regulating effect on individual behaviour.
The traditional family unit is the fundamental building block of society.
Respectable children are most likely to be raised by both parents working together.
Sexual freedom has bad consequences.
Patriotism is an essential glue that holds a society together.
Self-sacrifice needs to be acknowledged, and where possible, rewarded.
Incremental change is generally better than revolution.
Big ideas, especially those freighted with heavy consequences (e.g. ending global warming) must be approached with scepticism and caution.
Mass migration profoundly disturbs the existing order.
Criminals must be punished.
Most social order is regulated by unwritten custom and tradition, not written rules.

And if we hold these truths to be self evident (assuming most conservatives would agree with the vast majority of these principles), then we need to make sure everyone has the information they need to possibly come to the same conclusion. That means that, as Marshall McLuhan said - the medium IS the message. You can't show people why these truths are truths if they aren't exposed to the ideas.

Bypassing the MSM

Conservatives aren't winning simply because we aren't effectively communicating our ideas and the reasons behind them. The recent video on how Obama won, is proof. The message isn't getting out. Liberal messages get out. They've got Saturday Night Live. They have Katie Couric. They have Oprah.

Where's our media? On the Internet and talk radio. These are excellent sources of news and opinion - for the converted that is. But if you get your news from the occasional tune-in to CNN or NBC Nightly News or worse - The Daily Show, there is no way you get any sort of counterpoint. Fox News, while fair and balanced, only wins the network ratings because it's the only MSM outlet conservatives can stomach. It may have a conservative bent but Hannity has Colmes while Olbermann has...sounding boards. I'm not denigrating Fox. Thank God for Fox! But I'm saying they are preaching to the choir and the choir, having no other church to sing in, is sort of a captive audience (sorry for the mixed metaphors).

We need to be flogging our message non-stop to break through the liberal clutter. We need more of our own outlets. Yes, alternatives like the Internet, but we also need to break through in an MSM way. There are ways to do this. Reagan did it.

And now there are more avenues open to us. This is about an air war, not boots on the ground outreach and fundraising (which we still need to do better).

Direct mail is one way. (Go to www.c-spanarchives.org, and search Richard Viguerie - America's Right Turn.) If this interview doesn't put you to sleep, then we are on the same page. For an abridge version, you can look here;

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/archives/viguerie_vid.html

But that doesn't do it alone. Think about all of these untapped communication opportunities;

• Text Messaging & MMS messages.
• Viral email campaigns.
• Web portals - own the search, like Google does.
• Talk radio - not AM, we own that. Are the FM lite talk opportunities?
• Yet another Fox type network. An MSM outlet built from the ground up with shows and news and that are from a conservative perspective. Conservative values product placement is an interesting idea.
• Another option is to do the MSM type network on the Internet. Become Internet television.
• Pod casting.
• Polling and data mining - not push polls, but doing statistical analysis to discover profiles or clusters that can be successfully communicated to with a message. Then find the right means to contact them.
• Social Networks - Creating new online networks or building applications for Facebook for example.
• Films - fund on-message movies and documentaries.
• Commercials
• Interactive Media - video games
• Leverage PACs for message spreading outside of the Beltway instead of inside it.
• RSS Feeds
• Create our own broad-interest magazines (like Women's, Men's, Vibe, Rolling Stone) with some messaging and articles with a conservative slant.
• Door to Door canvassing (more of a ground game approach but not a bad idea)
• Becoming truly interactive with a Web Ring of conservative ideas with an interactive feedback mechanism of some kind.