Latest attack on Dr. Oz
In the 2012 presidential election, Republican nominee Willard Mitt Romney inadvertently and repeatedly identified himself as Mr. Elitist/Moneybags/1%, and his Democratic opponent, President Barack Obama, quickly took advantage of the theme. The Obama campaign thus followed our Messaging Maxim #4: Feed the Narrative. Indeed, Romney fed this narrative himself, for example, by talking about his dressage horse Rafalca, revealing that his family travels by car with their dog strapped to the roof, and his infamous “WaWa’s” moment, where, getting the name wrong, Romney claimed to buy “hoagies” at gas station convenience stores. Needless to say, President Obama defeated Romney in a landslide.
Now, 10 years later, TV personality Dr. Mehmet Oz is committing many of these same elitist reveals as the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania. Here is a handy chart showing how Dr. Oz is the new Mitt Romney:
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Leave a comment! Tags: 2012 election, 2022 midterm elections, Chuck Schumer, Democrats, Donald Trump, Dr. Oz, John Fetterman, Mitt Romney, Pennsylvania, President Barack Obama, Republicans, Twitter, U.S. Senate
Pope Francis t-shirt vendors
“The Catholic Church is now more progressive on both science and social issues than the GOP.” That’s the message coming from the humorous meme site lolworthy.com, accompanied by a photo of an astronaut on a spacewalk. Once again, the humorists have it right. The visit of Pope Francis to the United States is most noteworthy in the contrast between the Pope’s hopeful, humanistic message and the negative reaction from many in the Republican party.
Speaking before a joint session of Congress on Thursday, Pope Francis said some things that appeared to go against current Republican dogma:
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President George W. Bush’s “Brownie” moment, Sept. 2, 2005
The anniversaries of Hurricane Katrina (landfall in Louisiana August 29, 2005) and Hurricane (Superstorm) Sandy (landfall in New Jersey August 29, 2012) represent a perfect storm that continues to damage the Republican Party. Katrina showed President George W. Bush‘s detachment, and the criminally negligent incompetence behind his administration’s hands-off conservative Republican governing philosophy (“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”) Sandy is said to have helped President Barack Obama win and the Democrats do well in the 2012 elections, but that’s only true if one rejects the Republicans’ “government is bad” frame and accepts the Democrats’ “good government” philosophy. Apparently, many Americans have done just that.
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Leave a comment! Tags: 2012 election, Barack Obama, Bridgegate, Chris Christie, George W. Bush, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, Republican National Convention, Republicans, Ronald Reagan, Superstorm Sandy, Tropical Storm Isaac
Ted Cruz, clowniest passenger in the GOP Clown Car?
In the 2012 Presidential primaries, the Republican Clown Car had a crackup. The GOP candidates fell all over each other to kowtow to the narrow, extreme Republican primary base (comprised, for example, in Iowa, of 60 percent Evangelical Christians). Michele Bachmann said that the HPV vaccine causes “mental retardation,” and Herman Cain mocked the very idea of having foreign policy knowledge. Then came Willard Mitt Romney‘s disastrous “Etch-A-Sketch” moment, in which Romney’s Communications Director dumbly asserted that, after lurching to the right in the primaries, Romney could simply “hit a reset button” for the general election, “like an Etch-A-Sketch,” as if no one would hold Romney accountable for the positions he was taking and as if the giant Memory Machine known as the Internet didn’t exist. Romney’s Etch-A-Sketch moment perfectly summed up the Republican Party’s 2012 problem. Romney’s Republican rivals such as Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum pounced on the Etch-A-Sketch statement as proof that Romney could not be trusted by the GOPs conservative base. Romney ended up being trusted by no part of the electorate. Fast forward to the present day, and it appears that the GOP is poised to repeat these same mistakes of 2012.
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Leave a comment! Tags: 2012 election, 2016 election, Barack Obama, climate change, Etch-A-Sketch, gay marriage, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Republican Party, Rick Santorum, Ted Cruz, Texas
President George W. Bush announced his Medicare Part D prescription drug plan in his May 6, 2006 weekly radio address. In implementing Medicare Part D, the Republican Congress was all for extending deadlines for health insurance programs until President Barack Obama extended the March 31, 2014 Affordable Care Act signup deadline. But what was perhaps more striking about Bush’s announcement was its almost childlike simplicity of the language and delivery:
The average premium that seniors pay is a third less than had been expected, just $25 per month instead of $37 per month.
Thanks to this new coverage, America’s seniors are now getting the modern medicine they need at prices they can afford.
During George W. Bush’s presidency, Democrats made plenty of fun of Bush’s “Bartles and Jaymes” simplicity of speech. Before that, Democrats mocked the simplicity of presidential candidate and then President Ronald Reagan. But such simplicity often works. Indeed, Reagan became known as “The Great Communicator.” For these reasons, we now list Messaging Maxim #6: Keep it Stupidly Simple.
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