Monthly Archives: June 2011

House Republicans Forcing Democrats to Use Republican Messaging

The Republicans’ well-known mechanized messaging discipline within their own party is one thing. But how about forcing the Democrats to follow the Republicans’ framing? That’s exactly what just happened in the GOP-run House of Representatives.

Republican Phrases Pop Up in GOP Presidential Debate


During last night’s Republican presidential primary debate in New Hampshire, the Republican messaging machine was clearly on display. Based on CNN’s debate transcript, here is a list of some of the most popular Republican words and phrases used during the debate, and a rough count of how many times each term was used by the candidates:

Karl Rove Wants to Send Republicans to Messaging “War College” on Medicare

In the wake of numerous polls showing that American voters hate the Republicans’ plan to kill Medicare as we know it and replace it with a private voucher system, Republicans are doing the only sensible thing. No, they’re not backing off their Medicare-killing policy contained in GOP Rep. Paul Ryan‘s budget plan, they’re trying to change their messaging about it.  In particular, Republican Party guru Karl Rove recently suggested that “Congressional Republicans—especially in the House—need a political war college that schools incumbents and challengers in the best way to explain, defend and attack on the issue of Medicare reform.”

You have to hand it to the Republicans — when they see their message failing, they often stick to their policy and simply make efforts to rewrite the message. Moreover, as Rove’s Wall Street Journal op-ed indicates, Republicans often treat political messaging as a “war”. It is, and at least the Republicans put up a fight rather than quickly caving.

Of course, there is a limit to the amount of lipstick that can be put on a pig, and it’s quite possible that no amount of ingenious messaging will save the Republicans from their highly unpopular Medicare-killing plan.  Nevertheless, the Republicans are going to try, and a messaging “war college” sounds like a good idea. Once again, Democrats can take some tactical political messaging lessons from the Republicans.

Anthony Weiner’s Messaging Fail


By now, most of us are  familiar with Anthony Weiner‘s personal behavioral lapses in his Twitter sex scandal. However, Weiner’s public messaging failures in this case were also epic. Weiner adopted a strange strategy of denying part of the story, i.e., that he had sent photos of his underwear-clad crotch to a woman via Twitter, but then saying that he could not state “with certitude” whether the picture in question was of him. This vague answer struck many reporters as suspicious, and they continued their media feeding frenzy that, within a few days, led to Weiner’s press conference where he did an about-face and admitted that the picture in question was of him, that he sent the photo, and that he had sent similar photos and/or had similar online exchanges with approximately six other women. Now Weiner’s political career hangs by a thread.

So what could, and should, Weiner have done differently, messaging-wise, once the initial stories about him were publicized?

It’s the Hypocrisy, Stupid


New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie‘s ill-fated ride to his son’s baseball game on a $2,500 per hour State Police helicopter, after saying that New Jersey can’t afford a commuter train tunnel and other important services, is the latest example of hypocrisy by politicians that hits voters like a stink bomb. Some previous examples of this kind of hypocrisy include: