Hugh Hewitt relates some highly instructive advice from an advertising friend concerning the Republicans' need not only to update their communications technology, but, even more importantly, to get creative in developing The Message.
Monday, December 8, 2008
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I was right to worry when Rove departed.
ReplyDeleteForget creativity, Republicans had no Message at all to be creative with. The party's ideas were an incoherent mush and, however packaged and delivered, they were still mush.
ReplyDeleteWhat made anyone think that it was possible to elect a candidate who had spent the last dozen years p!ss!ng off the core of his party?
Advertising gimmicks won't make up for a decade plus of yelling hearty "fvck you's" at those who would be your staunchest and hardest working supporters.
Frumson: I believe the larger point is that the candidate is a crucial part of the message, and in that sense, I agree with you: no amount of mere advertising was going to put McCain over the top. He did not, as you say, have a message to get creative with. In fact, the Republican Party didn't have a clear message, which permitted McCain to run simply as McCain (a "message" that obviously did not move a majority of voters).
ReplyDeleteWe need a Contract With America Czar.
ReplyDeleteYojimbo: Right again!
ReplyDeleteI dunno, Obama seems to have gotten the conservative message - with the very careful 'steady as she goes' appointments he's making. The contrast between what he said to get elected and what he is now doing is extraordinary.
ReplyDeleteMost people are conservative at heart, they just get hung up on particular 'axes to grind'. Problem is the psychos who are all 'axe'. Obama sure looked like one of those from his campaign (Ayers surely is one), but, to my great relief, all that seems to have just been rhetoric.
Meanwhile Mr McCain went to Pakistan and finds them sincere. Yeah right. If the US from Nixon to Clinton had not allowed itself to be snowed by Pakistan, they may not now be nuclear armed.
I dunno about those "very careful 'steady as she goes' appointments", Bruce. All is not sweetness and light on the good Ship Foggy Bottom.
ReplyDeleteAdd in his tendency to throw his supporters under the bus, and Obama remains the rhetorical suit of empty clothes that he was throughout the election.
As for McCain.......he had a message, but it wasn't what most of the swing voters wanted to hear. Unfortunately.
Add in the Republican Party's clear lack of direction (which I suspect Rove saw coming, couldn't head off, and bailed out early), and people either stayed home or voted blue.