Today, the GOP has begun its official campaign to unseat President Obama. The title of the campaign is brilliant: “Hope Isn’t Hiring” because it is both simple and true.
However, Republicans still haven’t quite figured out the whole social networking technology thing yet. This is in contrast to President Obama’s artful mastery of it in 2008 under the leadership of Chris Hughes of Facebook fame. For instance, when I tried to embed the GOP’s first anti-Obama commercial in this blog, I was blocked from doing so.
So, begrudgingly I have included the link here.
I also want to thank Moe at Whatever Works for alerting me to the fact that the political campaign commerical season has officially begun. At least the Democrats have allowed her to embed Obama’s commercial in her blog.
Edited to Add: GOP YouTube video. It turns out that one can embed the video if one removes the “s” from “https” in the YouTube address. Thanks, Maggie!
Reflections of a Rational Republican 
You are kidding! The GOP is actively PREVENTING wider distribution of their ad? Well, that does tell us quite a lot. This isn’t ’08 – things have changed but perhaps they havne’t noticed. Being so 20th century and all . . .
Nope. I am serious.
This is the one thing that has always frustrated me about the Republican Party. It is really tough to break into.
I tried desperately in 2008 to volunteer to help the Republican candidates craft a national security strategy, but no one took me up on the offer. Ridiculous. Of course, they invite me to all these $5,000-plate dinners (which I cannot afford).
However, I could easily have volunteered to do the same thing for Obama and it was a phone call away. The problem is that I did not think Obama had the experience necessary to be President, so I couldn’t do it.
Oh shoot – just wrote a long reply and lost it because I didn’t see the ‘fill in’ form above.
Anyway, the point I so elegantly made is that the GOP is sunk if they don;t find a way to attract a younger demographic. I look at groups like the YAF and a few others and see kids who aspire to be just like their elders.
Pretty soon, we’ll have a youth vote born after 9/11. And they’ll never have lived in a country that wasn’t at war (that’s what I’m betting).
THe GOP needs to listen to voices like yours – not just yet though, we Dems have a Prez to elect.
Pingback: And so it begins . . . | Whatever Works
“THe GOP needs to listen to voices like yours – not just yet though, we Dems have a Prez to elect.”
Thanks, Moe. Unfortunately, I think both sides are reverting back to the extreme wings of their Parties.
It’s our stupid primary system. Only the wings vote, so both sides must appeal to them to get thru the primary. Dont know the solution, but we really need to scrap it.
I embedded their youtube video just fine. It’s just a standard youtube Iframe. Need some help doin’ it? Works on Facebook too.
Thanks, Maggie.
I will try and give it another shot. 😉
Thanks, Maggie.
I took at the “s” from “https” and finally got it to work.
Hope isn’t hiring and maybe luck has run out.
“Hope Isn’t Hiring” – I agree, it’s brilliant. It also plays on the “Hope Isn’t a Strategy”, even though (I believe?) that came from the other side.
Amazing that the GOP blocked you in that way, Sean. I would think that a guy like you (vet, Harvard alum, big on green energy, etc.) would be a poster-boy for them.
Vern,
They didn’t block me, per se. They just never responded to my offers to help them on strategy. I’m sure they would have been happy to have me knock on people’s doors, but if you met me in person, you’d realize that I’m more inclinded to knock down doors. I like to argue too much. I am better at finding the right answer than persuading people I have the right answer. 😉
Vet? Harvard? Green? OMG, you’re a liberal!
Moe,
“Vet? Harvard? Green? OMG, you’re a liberal!”
OK, maybe Harvard and Green get someone there, but definitely not a vet…
The veteran population is disproportionately conservative…
😉
However, both my parents are teachers and I am Irish Catholic…so who knows what happened to me. 😉
Actually Sean, most of my liberal contemporaries are vets – Vietnam of course.
I do know that today’s military is overwhelmingly conservative, which I see as a problem. I never favored the end of the draft; an all volunteer army gets too inbred and I beleive in shared service anyway.
I think today’s Army recruiting practices are narrow and that’s not a good thing.
Moe,
“I do know that today’s military is overwhelmingly conservative, which I see as a problem. I never favored the end of the draft; an all volunteer army gets too inbred and I beleive in shared service anyway.”
I agree with your sentiment. While ending the draft has resulted in a more effective military, I believe it has also been a contributor to a more divided citizenry.
Without forcing folks of different beliefs and backgrounds serving together toward a common goal, they rarely have an opportunity to interact and discuss their views. The result is that people tend to congregate around like-minded people and are never exposed to those who do not share their beliefs. Hence increasing polarization.
Before she met me, my future wife was very liberal. Then she spent five years with me on a military outpost in the Mojave desert and is now more conservative than I am.
I’m pretty sure her parents blame me, but I am convinced it was driven by her seeing another side of America that she was never exposed to in liberal Massachusetts. And trust me, the two worlds could not have been more different (in both good and bad ways).
I am not suggesting that she finally “saw the light.” I am merely suggesting that experiences with other views can change people. I would say that Harvard and Stanford did not fundamentally alter my political views, but taught me how to be more thoughtful about them.
I learned very early that if one cannot reason one’s way through a policy, it is likely a bad policy.
Well said. I agree entirely. I always thought that part of our success after WWII was due to the shared nature of the whole experience – both at war and at home. The troops particularly got to know and respect people they’d never have even known otherwise.
Like your wife, I entered an entirely different world when I moved from CT to FL. It changed me for sure. But I’m still a pinko commie fascist liberal. Oh, probably a faggot too! (Can women be faggots?)
“Like your wife, I entered an entirely different world when I moved from CT to FL. It changed me for sure. But I’m still a pinko commie fascist liberal.”
I’m still confused about fascists. Are they right extremists or left extremists? Who knows?
“Oh, probably a faggot too! (Can women be faggots?)”
Nope. Not unless they have superior fashion sense. 😉
[Nope. Not unless they have superior fashion sense. ]
Shoot . . . I kinda like the sound of that word – goes well with pinko commie . . .
I always understood the meaning of fascism to be the joining of the state and the corporation. Nazis were sorta liberals, which of course turns everything upside down. I mean, they were fascists in the classic sense, but also beleived in liberal social policies – except for that killing everybody part.
“I always understood the meaning of fascism to be the joining of the state and the corporation. Nazis were sorta liberals, which of course turns everything upside down. I mean, they were fascists in the classic sense, but also beleived in liberal social policies – except for that killing everybody part.”
Yeah, I see left and right wing bloggers calling each other Nazis all the time, which is an absurd way to make an argument. I try to avoid calling anyone on the right or left a Nazi, because as you say, the Nazis had weird elements of both socialism and corporatism.
Forgive me some speculation.
One reason that I have heard cited as a source of rising inequality is that there is more concentration of earning power in household with two working professionals. In other words inequality has increased as household breakdown in those with two working high income professionals and single parent homes or others who earn less.
It seems to me there’s more stratification now in many ways like this. As the professional class has grown I think it has become more insular. Professional marry other professionals and rarely associate with bluecollar people. Perhaps it accounts for the greater polarization on political and cultural value as well.
I have nothing like hard data to support this. Mostly I just have a sense of professionals as somewhat insular, and their large number today makes this more possible than when maybe you were the only lawyer in a small town as opposed to one of many in a large urban area.
Bruce,
I actually think you are on to something here. I also think the increase in knowledge work has also sped up this inequality and helped it persist into new generations. Here is my theory (I haven’t done any research, however, to find the hard data to back it up). Top universities serve as a funnel for many of the brightest students in the country (let’s be honest, top flight universities are a bit more meritocratic than they were in the 1960s and a lot of them were not co-ed back then). These students no longer returned to their home towns, but went where the work was (or future educational opportunities if they plan to attend grad school). Of course, most of this knowledge work is in Silicon Valley, New York, Boston, and Washington, D.C., among other major metro areas. These people meet and marry other bright people in their social circles and pass their genes on to their children.
As a result, this stratification persists from generation to generation. Chances are, the next generation in these clusters is smarter than the prior generation and because of an increased household income they have more opportunities to seek enrichment, which enhances the stratification process.
I didn’t finish my thought. Widespread military service was a factor breakdown the insularity that I think exists.