BRANDING THE GOP

Buck at Bad Attitudes has posted a link to a video of an Eliot Spitzer speech. Here's how Buck describes it:

Spitzer starts speaking about one hour and fourty-five minutes into the program, so skip through the other speakers to get to see one of our next Presidents speaking to ordinary people.

..and remember Spitzer’s famous words said about the Republicans:

"No party has ever done so much for so few who need so little."

Sounds like a good anti-slogan for the Democrats to me.

(It reminds me of a phrase I coined a few months ago. Discussing a company that over the past 6-7 years has declined from being #1 in its industry to #4, I said, "Never have so many been paid so much to take a company down." Now everyone who talks about the company's prospects, at some point in the conversation, will say, "Never have so many...")

You know, in advertising we often use the technique of "showing the pain of a bad decision." Don't just list the benefits of Tylenol, remind consumers that they'll damage their stomachs if they take aspirin instead. Don't just say, "We're a really reputable roofer," tell consumers how many of them have been ripped off by fly-by-night contractors and how much money those people have lost, how their homes were ruined, etc. It's remarkably effective, and it's been a mainstay of Republican branding for years. It drove the Willie Horton ads of George H.W. Bush -- vote Dukakis and we'll have murderers getting off and raping and murdering their way across America!" It's driven all of Dubya's campaigning since 9/11 -- vote Democratic and you'll get terrorists blowing up every school, church and mall in the country. Vote Democratic and gays, atheists and abortionists will destroy our families and make us pledge allegiance to the ACLU.

Democratic consultants are constantly urging our politicos to "present a plan," but the fact is, in our current sound-byte environment, a comprehensive plan gets boiled down to a few short bullet points. We have to do it, but it's not going to get Dems elected to Congress and it won't get a Dem elected president in 2008. Instead, we need to be hard-hitting in our advertising -- if you vote for Rethugs, you'll get more of the same:

(1) gross incompetence -- an utter lack of ability to govern or administer ANYTHING;
(2) instead of a few wacko terrorists hating us and plotting against us, we now have half the world doing so;
(3) all war all the time -- i.e., more and more bodybags;
(4) an economy that only works for the rich -- e.g., declining real wages, jobs instability, skyrocketing costs of living (including healthcare), a shrinking middle class.

Speaking about the new AP-IPSOS poll, GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio said, "the good news is Democrats don’t have much of a plan. The bad news is they may not need one.”

Tags: Republican Party, GOP, Democratic election strategy