The Obama Mess really is Bush's Fault

The 2008 election results were the consequence of Bush's terrible mis-management of the 2006 Congressional elections.

If Bush had replaced Rumsfeld the day before the 2006 election, instead of the day after the election, how many voters would have given support to the Republican administration? Across the USA, how many votes went Democratic simply because voters were sick of Rumsfeld?

Ditto for Ashcroft, who was appointed Attorney General as consolation prize because he lost his bid for the Senate in 2000 to a man who had died in an airplane crash during the campaign.

Nationally, how many votes swung Democratic just because Bush and Cheney were so damn smug about themselves?

The Senate swung to Democratic control in 2006 when Richard Allen lost Virginia by 1,500 votes. Could 750 voters have changed their minds if, when confronted with a meaningless media frenzy over the use of a meaningless word, "macaca," that, in North Africa, is a disparagement . . .and Allen's mother admitted that her family had been Jewish in Tunisia generations back and had hidden it by becoming Catholic (without telling her son) . . .and dumbass Allen said, "Gee, I didn't know" where he could have said, "Gee, how about that! Isn't that great and a lesson to us all!"

Rick Santorum lost Pennsylvania for himself and the Republicans by 15,000 votes. That's after ignoring the advice of professionals to campaign on what he had done for Pennsylvania. He preferred to talk about terrorism. And the majority of Pennsylvanians thought that the Democratic candidate was the ex-governor, when the candidate was the ex-governor's son with the same name.

The result was a muddle, 2006-2008, so that voters couldn't distinguish what was Bush's fault and what was Pelosi's and Reid's fault . . .and the Dem's were happy to blame it all on Bush.

This mess is Bush's muddle, in the sense that he set the stage for it in 2006.

Defining Failure Before the Next Election

Republicans and Conservatives are realizing immense and unpleasant truths: the critical issues of the Obama Presidency do not and will not sell themselves, while the media available to move opinion are biased and shifting.

• Moreover, the decisive votes cast in 2008 - and those that will be cast in 2010 and 2012 - were cast by Gen-X'ers and Gen-Y'ers whose educations were purged of context - civics, ethics, history and geography. Jon Stewart's television show is "teaching" these folks what they didn't get in school - unless someone provides a countervailing point of view in acceptable and comprehensible terms.

Gen-X and Gen-Y do not know what failure looks like. They know only what a loser looks like. *

• What the Right should do is establish "The Of-Course Task Force" to promulgate the certainty that Obama will be a one-term failure. A cottage network must be built to describe endless reasons, rationales, scenarios and speculation to prepare people to believe it.

The Of-Course Task Force should be writing ubiquitously not just about how Obama will fail but also about what Hillary will do and how the Dixie Chicks will feel. In order to prepare Gen-X and Gen-Y, the strengths and weaknesses of those demographics must be accepted and utilized - the obsession with entertainment and celebrity, as well as the confusion and hunger for something that makes sense.

• There are only two scenarios for the preservation of the American Republic - swing voters are prepared or panicked. Unless our republic is going to be wagered on the likelihood of panicking swing voters with war or terror or economic disaster, the task of the Right now is to define (but not illustrate) failure. The present reality is that internet propaganda, counter-intelligence and counter-propaganda have been and are handled much more deftly by the Democrats.

The face of failure must be presented in a hundred ways, so that voters will expect to see it, will know to look for it and will recognize that failure when they see it. Issues and events must be made obvious (the "of course!"). The preaching of a campaign (even an extended campaign like 2008) will not affect those not already prepared to change their minds.

• A long, patient and focused program is called for to alter the context of the coming campaigns - by making what is now unthinkable into what is expected and, thereby, self-evident and obvious. Somewhere in-between unthinkable and obvious is the point where things become "edgy" where late-night comedians and pundits think they are clever. Jon Stewart suggesting that Democratic appointees might pay their taxes is an illustrative and constructive step.

Three years is enough time to accomplish these changes; 18 months is probably not. The 2010 election will turn on panic or it will not turn.

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*for a demonstration of how Gen-X and Gen-Y can recognize a loser, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9z0h1NNk1Ik&feature=related