It was a remarkable week as North Carolinians voted on Tuesday to ban same-sex marriages and domestic partnerships, President Obama on Wednesday historically stated that he supports gay marriage, and then, less than 24 hours later, Willard Romney’s campaign was rocked by the story that, during high school, Romney led an assault on a fellow student who had longer hair and was thought to be gay. Obama’s use of the presidential “bully pulpit” only made it that much clearer that Romney and the Republicans have a “bullying pulpit” problem.
The Romney bullying story, and Romney’s incredulous answers about it (saying he doesn’t recall the incident but somehow recalls that he didn’t know the sexuality of the victim at the time), are bad enough by themselves. But they are much worse when viewed as part of the larger narrative against Romney and the Republican Party as mean-spirited bullies in virtually all areas.
How do you plant a political message and watch it grow into an expression on the tip of everyone’s tongue? If you’re the Republican Party, you take a term like “class warfare”, get your leaders and like-minded pundits to say it over and over, and, within a couple of days, it’s stuck in voters’ brains like a successful television commercial jingle.
It doesn’t even matter that you’re fighting a real plan with a mere label. Your phrase becomes the basis for the debate. Then, President Obama has to come back first by denying that he’s guilty of the label being applied to him, and then embracing the label as a badge of honor.
Either way, it’s much better when your side controls the frame and the labels that get applied to you and your opponents.
http://youtu.be/aHDtEPlpe-E
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:
The following is a list of phrases widely used by Republicans in the political arena. These simple, catchy phrases, many of which were developed using focus groups, are part of the Republicans’ successful, coordinated effort to frame issues in their favor. See how many of these phrases you recognize as part of everyday political discourse that you read or hear in the media or in discussions with people you know. Notice how nearly all of the phrases are loaded terms, framed by the Republicans to benefit their party and/or to criticize the Democratic Party.
“Ability to defeat the enemy means taking the offensive. Standing on the defensive indicates insufficient strength.” —Sun Tzu, “The Art of War”
As we indicated in “A Messaging Manifesto For Democrats”, during the run-up to the 2010 Congressional elections, while Republicans went on offense with charges against the “Ground Zero Mosque” and that “Obama is a Muslim,” “the Democrats weakly offered up rational rebuttals, and then wondered why most Americans weren’t swayed.” Republicans know that, to win political battles, you must go on offense to frame the political debate in your terms, using language favorable to you.
The summer of 2010 was the second summer in a row in which Democrats lost control of the political message, and the news cycle. Given the 2010 election results, how did that work for you?
What’s the Problem?
In the summer of 2009, Republicans and their Tea Party surrogates took over Congressional town hall meetings, repeating false phrases such as “government-run health care.” Democrats dawdled for weeks, and when they finally responded, all they could muster was “no it isn’t.” Guess who won that battle? The “health care reform” law passed by the Democrats who control Congress and the presidency was severely watered down.
