Todays observation : A suggestion as to where to go next

[spectrumc01]

This is just a suggestion, but I think it will help us out alot. For conservatives when explaining your views try to avoid the "shock" moment, or at least try to lessen it. You appear to like scarring people, and in doing so your message isn't getting herd. I do understand that the media twists everything that the candidates say, so this is for the everyday conservative person, may I suggest...

First when talking to potential converts distance yourself from the radicals as far as you can, i.e. FOX. Their talking points are designed to rally the base and extremeists on the hard left. Start off appealing to the comonalities between the both of you, build a comraderee, sense of family for example, keep the issues local. There are alot more things you have in common at the local level than you do at the national level. I believe that people are local conservatives and national liberals who vote their intrests first.

Second, when starting a conversation with, "we need to end social security" you have now picked a fight and no one will listen. This is the "Shock" phrase that the talking heads like to use because it's good tv. If you start with "If we tweeked social security a little like this...and changed it a little at a time to match the current times" people would at least listen before going on the defensive. The hard part is getting the leaders of your party to do this as the majority of their money comes from the people who own FOX and others like them.

Lastly this is for the Liberals, we need the conservatives, and all of their ideas aren't bad ones. We need to shut up and listen some times and admit we aren't always right, no one is.

Are leaders are obviously not going to work together so it is up to us to make them obsolete, by working together locally and at the state level. Quit giving them money, starve them out, only vote for local candidates in local elections. Explain to your local leaders that association with either party is unacceptable and for them to spread the word that only those "not" belonging to a party will be elected. As for the media, they can't be helped. Recognize them for what they are, a for profit entertainment business, and that goes for all of them. I believe we will have to save ourselves, if we wait for them to do it we are all doomed. The rules may have gotten harder, but they are not impossible. It's like going to the next level in a video game, it's not meant to get easier. I'm willing to give the business community one last shot to lead and lead righteously. One more scandal and your done and deserve all the penalties that you get. Police yourselves well. Alot of ideas should be odopted to see if they work, like the assault weapons ban. It was on an experation time table, if we liked it we kept it if we didn't we didn't renew.
Just my opinion.

 

[oldfart]

I wish you well in your campaign. Obviously you are correct that the purpose of rhetoric is usually persuasion, and that people who ignore that are likely to be ignored themselves. Regardless of viewpoint, I appreciate posts that show a command of logic, facts, and argumentation. Research skills go a long way in an era when much of the media intentionally distorts facts.

That said, I have an observation. In my younger days most of the bats**T crazy ideas were on the left and the right was the voice of reason. The Republican party had at least five main components (Old Conservatives like Taft, New Conservatives like William Buckley, Southern blacks, Liberal Republicans like Rockefeller, and pragmatists like Eisenhower). Democrats were even less cohesive, ranging from socialists on one side to segregationists on the other. Practically every element we see today except for evangelicals was present then. Today the Republican Party has moved so far to the right that most of the elements of the Party present in the Fifties and Sixties would identify as republicans. Most self-identified "moderates", or "pragmatists", or "independents" would have been republicans fifty years ago. But none of these designations is a political party and thus they lack structure. You have to have structure to win elections.

I think that political parties realign all the time; in the next few years that process may go very quickly. Maybe the Republican Party will re-invent itself, or maybe it will go the way of its predecessor the Whig Party and a new party will emerge to replace it. Maybe we will even junk the two-party "winner-take-all" system and find a way to introduce more diversity and choice in the political process. No matter what develops, it will be led by people who can persuade rather than attack. So everybody practice those skills now.