The example we both cited, “Contract With America”, and the one I cited, Reagan, have two things in common – substance and style. Your post, for all its’ substance, lacked some of the stylistic nuances needed. Yes, it’s a thought-work in progress, but from your writing style and your previous posts, it struck me as oddly.. lumpy.

I frequently run into people who miss on the order of style and substance – the builder who says “It’ll look fine once it’s painted” or the web site guru who says “We’ll add some pretty to it later on”. Neither ends up working out real well – the style is integral to the substance, and the substance is integral to the style – both must grow together.

So, to your point, yes someone can “Michael Bay” this, but – look to your example again – how far out from the 1994 election was the contract, with its’ easy-to-quote bullet points available to the average Repub candidate? Time is running out. “Adding the pretty” or “giving it the Michael Bay treatment” won’t help if the ideas are inherently off-key. “the pretty” should be the bald, naked ideas themselves.

I’m a little concerned with “We can no longer afford …” as the catchphrase. It sounds a little too much like “Daddy” taking away the car keys or the iTunes… Which, in a way, is what we’re saying. The other issue with it is the Dem/Lib response – just ratchet up class warfare again.

I’d rather tap the edge of the Tea Party movement – not “We can’t afford”, but instead “We won’t pay for…” or “We refuse to pay for…”

As a cat from Illinois, “We refuse to pay for corrupt government” sounds pretty damn good.

Mew

Seconded. Especially given the last couple generations of Americans, who appear to have the attention span of a fly and the reading comprehension of Klem Kadiddlehopper.

Dark-Star on June 20, 2009 at 9:04 PM

I wasn’t writing for Klem and his short-attention-span ilk… I was writing for Hot Air readers, who I assume can handle eleven paragraphs to make a case for putting together a platform for the most desperate internal struggle America has faced since the Vietnam War. I wanted to make the case for why each of those things belonged in the platform. At this level, I thought it needed to be a comprehensive case. I assume somebody in the Republican Party apparatus can edit it down into a smash-cut Michael Bay movie trailer format, for presentation to the people who think Twitter posts are too long.

2010 will be the last chance to stop some very bad things from being done to this country. In fact, the perception of 2010 as a tight battle against a resurgent Republican party, against a backdrop of increasing discontent with Obama’s policies, is crucial now, to scare Democrats away from some of the nuttier items on the Obama agenda, like the health-care fever dream. This leads me to think the items on the Republican platform should be debated and, if adopted, understood in depth, so they can be defended effectively. I think the “we can’t afford liberalism any more” theme is the right one to hit, but success will involve more than simply repeating a slogan over and over again – especially since the media will not be interested in helping to disseminate that idea.

Later, it will be important to boil the platform down into sound bites, as acat suggested. For the moment, I thought Hot Air readers deserve more than a USA Today editorial, and made the corresponding effort.

The apparent inspiration for this, “Contract With America”, worked not because it had a great communicator – Newt is too damn eggheaded – but because each point was a sound bite, and each sound bite could be put together in a media buy, or used to season a campaign speech, or … well, *communicated*.

Again, these are points that will resonate – they resonated for Reagan, they resonated for Gingrich, they will resonate for whomever can boil them down into nuggets of sound-bite-y goodness and (this is key) get other people to say them too.

Mew

Too long. Too verbose. Deeper thoughts like this are very needed, but this cannot be the leading edge of the blade.

Seconded. Especially given the last couple generations of Americans, who appear to have the attention span of a fly and the reading comprehension of Klem Kadiddlehopper.

Too long. Too verbose. Deeper thoughts like this are very needed, but this cannot be the leading edge of the blade.

As for whether this can be sold by the same Repubucrats who sold the fiscally conservative (and socially conservative) down the river during Bush 2.0′s first term, well, Tip O’Neill is still right – all politics is local.

Want to win, Repubs? Read *AND COMPREHEND* the above positions. Pick the top two or three that resonate in your specific district. Live them. Every conversation with anyone even remotely associated with media needs to contain one, every speech must hit at least one and ideally 2-3. Oh, and don’t forget linking your opponent to Obama….

Mew

But to me the most important thing about our winning is going to be no weasel wording. A candidate is going to have to be firm, have a backbone, and not remotely look like a moderate. After the disasters this Administration will have created, the public is going to want strong and solid leadership.

If you read the Republican Platform, you see the same thing, lots of positions taken on various issues, but no base foundation that brings it all together.

Also, we need a decent alternate print media for our cities across this country. Do you think with all of the local rags struggling that perhaps a regional version of the Washington Times could be that? I’m wondering if the existing printing capacities could be utilized for this because we know they are running well below their capabilities. Believe it or not I still like to spread a newspaper out but not one that insults me everyday.

* Real scientists see “the debate is over” as the antithesis of what they actually do for a living.

* Similarly, a free nation ought not be subject to the chilling phrase “settled science”, which is itself not a scientific phrase, but is rather a slogan that is intended to shut down inquiry, and as such is abhorrent to the spirit of American science.

* The role of government in science is to provide adequate and unbiased research funding for the common good, not to play referee in determining which lines of research have potential and which do not. This must remain a scientific decision based on evidence, not a political one based on pressure from extremist factions or celebrities. E.g., stem-cell.

* Science does not determine what is moral or immoral, human judgment does; the question of whose life is worth living is not a scientific question, it is a moral one.

* No practitioner of science or health care can be required to perform scientific experiments or procedures that are morally abhorrent to him. This should be obvious in a free society.

First, it has become increasingly obvious that the costs of defined benefit pension plans can only be sustained by government entities — and that short-term/long-term dichotomies eventually lead government entities to overextend the plans (see “bankruptcy of Vallejo, California”). Even while the benefits side is driven out of control, the pile of money entrusted to the plans’ trustees grows — and, itself, becomes subject to graft and fraud, as well as unreasonable meddling in public markets (see “history of CalPERS”). Defined benefit plans themselves are creatures of the tax system, and the Feds have huge Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation obligations (similar to the backstop to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae).

The solution is clear and simple. Defined benefit pension plans should be entirely phased out and replaced by 401K/403B plans.

Second, there is the spectacle of public employee unionization. In a thriving economy, public employers would compete with private employers for employees — and unfair practices by either employer would be simply remedied by having the worker leave the job. Unfortunately, many public-sector jobs don’t have private sector analogues, so there is — in effect — a monopsony. That is to say, a single buyer who a number of sellers compete to serve. For example, there aren’t many private employers of prison guards.

As the old saying goes, “monopoly is no cure for monopsony”. If the public sector unionizes, it produces an entity that argues for its interests against a division of government that supports its interests. The inevitable result is a rapid and deep tap on the public till.

A huge improvement to the problem of political interference in the economy would involve replacing all defined benefit plans with fully funded individual 401K/403B plans and eliminating public employee unions.