Campaign messaging is different today, and Robyn "Blumñata" Blumner of the St. Petersburg Times is here to explain it to us.
Will someone please wake me from this bad dream that is the coming election? No matter how kooky, mean or incoherent Republican candidates get, voters seem willing to support them. Maybe former witchcraft dabbler and perennial deadbeat Christine O'Donnell won't be taking a U.S. Senate seat in Delaware, but there are plenty of other congressional races from Florida to Colorado to Utah in which radical tea party-backed Republicans have a good (or certain) chance of victory. Extremism is the new Republican must-have accessory for fall, and it's working for them.Think about her thesis seriously for a moment.
Is it possible to forge a successful national political strategy based on an appeal to extremism?
Electoral politics is about forging coalitions. It cannot succeed at the national level through the appeal to any brand of extremism which a majority strongly opposes.
Blumner's sentiment reminds me of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink's impression that nearly half of all Floridians are extremists. Both ladies need to get out of the office more often.
Extremism with majority appeal is an oxymoron minus very special circumstances (a majority of extremists are extremists, for example).
Blumner's column brought us more of the usual silliness, including a bizarre claim involving Jack Kemp:
Where is the next Jack Kemp, a self-described "bleeding-heart conservative"? He's a Democrat. The Republicans no longer want him.The majority of conservatives are quite compassionate. Survey data confirm again and again that conservatives tend to give more generously to charity, for example. Conservatives just don't want the government in charge of charity. We see that as a poisonous arrangement.
I've been impressed with how the same liberals that tell us we must be tolerant of all religions by building a mosque at Ground Zero and stop foreclosing on people who failed to pay their mortgages so nonchalantly attack O'Donnell for being a "witchcraft dabbler and perennial deadbeat".
ReplyDeleteHypocrisy is a favorite sin for liberals and progressives to point to on the right. Liberals would probably vote for a liberal witch. But if Republicans won't vote for a witch then it's a great point of attack. And pay no attention to the hypocrisy of the attack.
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