The inestimable Karl Rove (inestimable, in that conservatives either wish to buy him a scotch or label him Ruling Class, dependent on whatever he last said to Bret Baier) published a WSJ op-ed on March 17 claiming “The GOP Race is Underway.” Don’t worry, the piece sums: the failure of anyone to step ahead in the 2012 GOP race is tactical. Mitch “Mitt” Huckaromney is busy analyzing, outreaching, and sweater-testing and any day now he’ll reveal himself as the George Washington you’ve been asking for since Rick Santelli’s rant.
This being the most recent thing I’ve heard from Rove, I’m definitely calling him Ruling Class, at least until his next awesome tweet.
The presidential race, a Rove expertise, is different from a congressional contest, as I have been taught since enrolling in Intro to American Politics as a college freshman: appeal to the base — but not too intensely — for the nomination; appeal to the centrists and independents for the General.
But this is not common sense, it is “the science is settled.”
If you’ve lived 30 years, maybe 25, you’ve seen enough politics to understand that career advisors simply have no idea how to win a campaign; they (Bob Shrum) often lose (Bob Shrum). Yet Introduction to Logic — which I should have been well-advised to take instead — presents that even a great advisory won/loss record does not imply talent: it is simply a statistic, we cannot prove the advisor’s relevance to the win.
What the political class advisors are able to do is retain an encyclopedic knowledge of what happened, and attempt to draw on that base of knowledge for the current client.
This is, logically, a dart throw.
Perhaps it’s even a case of convincing the politician that such an advisor is necessary, for the sake of said advisor’s continued employment. Because we all know America — we are its citizens — and we know what drives us to hair loss about politics, and we know the best advice a candidate can get, always:
Tell the public where you stand, over and over again, until they are aware.
If that doesn’t put you ahead, pack it in. The public doesn’t agree with you.
The day-to-day news cycle doesn’t matter, and if you’re convinced it does, do some overhead squats to stabilize your spine.
Yet too much of that advice and soon enough the candidate remembers it on his own and James Carville’s doing voiceover work, so let’s resume selecting excellent neckties.
Appealing to the base for the nomination? You’d better already be the base. Move to the center, following? No, your challenge is to convince the center why the center is stupid.
The left must play a different game. The Democratic base is closer to the center than the far left, and the center is a group of people who actually do change their minds with daily news cycles, because that’s what relativism is. Perhaps the left’s tacticians have influenced/misled those on the right: the leftist candidate must feign middle and must have that relativistic dearth of integrity to do so; but the GOP candidate must be conservative and remain that way, as position integrity/objectivity is kinda what makes a conservative.
Mr. Rove: the reason there is no frontrunner right now is that everyone is following Rovian strategy and is sending out feelers, which sounds disgusting. Nobody — excepting the GOP candidates wondering why they aren’t polling well — read your op-ed and felt relieved.
The self-evident truth regarding running as a conservative — an identity which overwhelmingly comprises America’s biggest voting bloc — is that conservatives do not care who wins the GOP nomination. They are happy; they are self-sufficient and will fight on their own. If the party gets onboard with the base, good for the party, but the base is aboard with the Constitution first and the GOP second or never.
This has been evident since the Founders; this was demonstrated truth during the 2010 elections. How can you not know this yet?
We want statesmen, not Miramax thugging around for Best Picture. We truly don’t concern ourselves with who you are, your face, your alliances, what state you were raised in. We don’t care about your name. Seriously — don’t even tell us your name. We want John Doe, the vessel of Constitutional originalism, who understands natural rights are the way of nature and not the Founders’ trendy theory, and that natural rights are most threatened now by a weak border, Islamism and Communism, and — above all — the biggest government to ever exist, and that’s what he’s going to spend the next four years working on, and eight if we so honor him.
We’re begging for truth, not Rovian theory. Be American, or keep diddling and lose the West.
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