Republicans need to go negative on Democrats
Tom Coburn has a piece in the Wall Street Journal on the rebranding efforts underway in the GOP.
I think he is right on the issues, but I don't think that is enough to win back a majority. While we won a majority in 1994 with specific issues and programs, we also won because of the negative image of the Democrats with the House Post Office and Bank scandals and their incompetence on a massive health care bill and a super duper collider project in Jim Wright's home district. In other words the Democrat brand sucked at the same time we were proposing solutions they were afraid to bring to the floor.
The same opportunities are available today, if we will only seize them.
The Democrat energy policy is a disaster that is costing people real money, while they pretend to blame the oil companies rather than their policy of strangling all energy production to please the environmental wacko lobby. It is easy to come up with a long list of projects they oppose from drilling offshore and AAWR, to coal plants, to nuclear plants, to wind projects, etc.
On top of the higher cost of fuel and energy in general they are also going to raise taxes on everyone. While they claim to be doing it only on the rich, they will be sucking money out of the economy that would have been used to create jobs and new business. The rich already pay a higher tax burden now than they did before the Bush tax cuts. Democrats cannot and will not answer the question of what percentage of the tax burden should be paid by the rich.
On national security they are also a disaster waiting to happen. They are more interested in the privacy rights of terrorist than in stopping the next attack. Their FISA policy sucks big time and they are lucky that our efforts to thwart enemy attacks have been successful so far, because they are making it harder to discover the next plot.
On Iraq, they have been consistently wrong for over a year and would have turned that country into a disaster instead of the success that is now being achieved. They should pay a political price for being that wrong on such an important issue, but for some reason few Republicans have attacked them as relentlessly on this issue as Democrats attacked us when things were going bad. That has to change. McCain is making the case against Obama on Iraq now. Others need to join this fray and also go after the Democrat leadership.
The House leadership has exhibited several examples of incompetence that should also be an issue. The Democrats are also wasting money on their vote buying schemes in greater excess than the GOP did when they were thrown out. This appears to be Coburn's main point and his recommendations are pointed toward making Republicans more effective at arguing that point. That will be a tough job, but it should not stop Republicans from attacking Democrats on spending. Hey, it worked for Democrats in 2006.
The point is that Republicans really need a relentless campaign to rebrand the Democrats and tie them to their sorry record.
I think he is right on the issues, but I don't think that is enough to win back a majority. While we won a majority in 1994 with specific issues and programs, we also won because of the negative image of the Democrats with the House Post Office and Bank scandals and their incompetence on a massive health care bill and a super duper collider project in Jim Wright's home district. In other words the Democrat brand sucked at the same time we were proposing solutions they were afraid to bring to the floor.
The same opportunities are available today, if we will only seize them.
The Democrat energy policy is a disaster that is costing people real money, while they pretend to blame the oil companies rather than their policy of strangling all energy production to please the environmental wacko lobby. It is easy to come up with a long list of projects they oppose from drilling offshore and AAWR, to coal plants, to nuclear plants, to wind projects, etc.
On top of the higher cost of fuel and energy in general they are also going to raise taxes on everyone. While they claim to be doing it only on the rich, they will be sucking money out of the economy that would have been used to create jobs and new business. The rich already pay a higher tax burden now than they did before the Bush tax cuts. Democrats cannot and will not answer the question of what percentage of the tax burden should be paid by the rich.
On national security they are also a disaster waiting to happen. They are more interested in the privacy rights of terrorist than in stopping the next attack. Their FISA policy sucks big time and they are lucky that our efforts to thwart enemy attacks have been successful so far, because they are making it harder to discover the next plot.
On Iraq, they have been consistently wrong for over a year and would have turned that country into a disaster instead of the success that is now being achieved. They should pay a political price for being that wrong on such an important issue, but for some reason few Republicans have attacked them as relentlessly on this issue as Democrats attacked us when things were going bad. That has to change. McCain is making the case against Obama on Iraq now. Others need to join this fray and also go after the Democrat leadership.
The House leadership has exhibited several examples of incompetence that should also be an issue. The Democrats are also wasting money on their vote buying schemes in greater excess than the GOP did when they were thrown out. This appears to be Coburn's main point and his recommendations are pointed toward making Republicans more effective at arguing that point. That will be a tough job, but it should not stop Republicans from attacking Democrats on spending. Hey, it worked for Democrats in 2006.
The point is that Republicans really need a relentless campaign to rebrand the Democrats and tie them to their sorry record.
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