Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin – who currently resides atop my short list for 2016 – paid a visit to the Minnesota state capitol yesterday.
He spent some time visiting with lawmakers.
GOP ones, anyway. A DFL linked Twitter account noted that Democrat lawmakers stayed away from the Governor.
I can see why. Every Democrat who crosses his path gets defeated.
We need to bring him to Minnesota in 2016.
Don’t let a black cat cross your path. Of course, if he had visited the University of Minnesota campus, they wouldn’t have been allowed to say “black.”
If the Dems were honest with themselves, they would call Gov Walker the Money Pit. They threw tens of millions of dollars in the effort to oust him and have nothing to show for it.
One difference between Wisconsin and Minnesota, and why Walker has had success where Republicans in Minnesota have struggled……the opposition left in Wisconsin are idiots.
They let Madison kooks and wackos become the face of the anti-Walker forces. Their logo is an ugly blue & red Marxist/fascist fist. It looks like something out of the 60s. As do most of the anti-Walker types. They dressed up in costumes and marched around Madison with smug smiles on their faces. Screaming about how much they hate Republicans.
Think about the optics that the small businessperson or farmer, who just put in a 70 hour week (and doesn’t get to retire at age 56 with a full pension) sees. Or the low wage worker who just wants to get ahead on his own. They may not like much of Walkers policies, but they sure as hell don’t want these wack knobs to get control of the state
.
I’ve told this to liberal relatives in Wisconsin and they just get angry that I bring this up. They don’t see any problem with the Madison kooks.
Compare this to Minnesota, where the left seems to understand basic marketing principles.
The left in MN isn’t smarter or more aware of markets or marketing principles; they just don’t get challenged here. When you put the pressure on them, as was done in Wisconsin, their true nature and fundamental incoherence are exposed.
Chuck is right if the conservatives in MN kept images, quotes, videos, speeches of Phillis Kahn, Betty McCollum and DG in front of voters, particularly outstate, suburban and exurban low information voters it wouldn’t take long to start seeing the drift to the conservative side of the ledger.
Its time we used Alinsky tactics on the orcs. It may not be plesant but it does work.
Cesare, I don’t know that that’s Alinsky tactics, just good politics. Sometimes every marketer needs to realize that letting people speak for themselves is how you do things. Roll tape.
BB
Here’s the Rules, What I’m suggesting is in bold
* RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.”
* RULE 2: “Never go outside the expertise of your people.”
* RULE 3: “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.”
* RULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
* RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”
* RULE 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy
* RULE 7: “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag”
* RULE 8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.”
* RULE 9: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”
* RULE 10: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.”
* RULE 11: “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.”
* RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
Understood—my point is that “roll tape” does not have to be ridicule, but can rather be “let the person judge for himself”. It can lend to a cheerfulness about the matter (e.g. William Safire, Rush Limbaugh) that is far more becoming than what we see with the “Occupy Feedlot Lagoon” movement.
Also….you have to be the “good guys”, while the others have to be viewed as angry and selfish. Independents in Wisconsin (who tend to vote Democrat for President) looked at the angry people in Madison and thought “but how does their cause benefit me? They just seem to be in it for themselves. And they are kind of scary.”
The left in Minnesota and elsewhere has been very good with controlling the language. And when you control the language, you control the debate. Why, who can be against Marriage Equality? Not participating in a gay wedding? No no no, you have to say “refuse service to Gay-Americans”. Hobby Lobby wasn’t asking that they only give 16 or 20 types of free birth control to their employees (leaving out abortion pills). Its “not allowing contraception coverage to their employees”.
It will be interesting to see how Governor Walker does when he is facing a more intelligent/slicker opposition. So far, he looks ready for it. When the trick questions come up (a set up for a gotcha moment), he seems to know how to handle them.
BB
Chuck makes a good point.
All I’m suggesting is that we use Alinsky tactics but since we are assuredly smarter than the likes of Kahn, McCollum, & DG, we do it better. We don’t have to look and sound like DG we just have to present DG et al to an audience outside of her little echo chamber for others to mock and ridicule her. I know this is true because I routinely cut and paste postings from her site to L-I Dems I know asking them if this quote or that correctly describes their position. The answers are usually no. She is a gold mine of idiocy and invaluable at persuading fence sitters that there’s “something wrong” with the metro area liberals/progressives. That is the important goal; to persuade Low Information Voters that there is something wrong with the metro DFL – let them figure out for themselves that the GOP is the more rational choice
Walker/Brownback and Voodoo Economics will make America great again.
On a more serious note. I want to see a Republican candidate who can get out there and actually operate in front of actual human beings. I want them to have the mental agility, speed and fluency of issues that are relevant to actual American voters and not just things that are imagined inside the Republican bubble. I don’t want to ever have a Republican candidate be so tone deaf to the lives of ordinary Americans that they’re unable to connect with them. I often think we’ve been on the wrong side of that equation.
Emery says he wants a Republican candidate who can operate in front of actual human beings? I assume that’s in order to draw a contrast to the presumptive Democrat nominee ……
The current governor of MInnesota is proof that those sitting behind you are more important than whoever is sitting in front of you.