The slow pace of exposing the corruption of the GOP--and it becoming an issue that the media and public pay attention to--is driving most of us crazy. But this very slowness is killing the GOP in a way we could never accomplish.
It's called Assumptive Branding.
The key to any marketing effort is, of course, branding: the fixing in the customer's mind a certain image and set of perceived realities around a product or company (organization). Thus you get Volvo connected with safety, Starbucks with good coffee available anywhere, Crest with "no cavities", and so on. In politics, we've been stung quite badly by the GOP assumptive message: tight budgets, smaller government, tough on terror and crime, more freedom, and a higher level of moral values.
Which, as it turns out, is pretty much 100% bullshit. But in the mind of the political consumer, the folks not thinking for themselves, this has been a set of assumptive truths. And it turns out it's bloody hard to change these assumptions. It's the GOP's brand. One, two, three articles about lying won't immediately change the assumptive image. We keep thinking we have to expose these lying bastards so the American public sees them for what they are...
Now we don't have to. The GOP is doing it for us. For the last four years, since taking office and certainly since 9/11/01, the Republicans have been making one mistake after another, lying and cheating and changing the rules--and getting away with it.
But as we all see, the chickens are coming home to roost. Here's an example using Tom Delay:
We've had one little story after another about Delay on the take, changing the rules, lying about his deeds, and getting away with it all. It pisses us off that he's still walking around breaking the law--and in a congressional leadership position--but the longer he slimes the congress with his presence, the more aware America becomes of his lying, cheating ways. The assumption in the consumer mind becomes that Delay is a lying, cheating, slime ball politician. By the time 2006 mid-term elections arrive, most people in America will see Delay as a slime bag, without any need for further negative advertising. He has to fight to be seen as merely OK, which is a great way to lose a congressional seat. And we can paint any Republican running for Congress who has backed him as his partner in slime.
The underlying assumption about Delay (his brand awareness) has become negative--at least in the majority of voters, which is all we need.
The war is cooking Bush's goose a little more ever single day. Day after day the image behind the brand is changing, going from a war hero in the face of terror to a lying cheating mean little SOB who wants to kill our children for nothing anyone can figure out.
Frist, Chaney, Bush, the whole gang is re-branding the GOP every day with a new assumptive message: lying, cheating, slimy politicians after their own piles of money and power and not caring a hoot for mainstream Americans. These guys are doing it to themselves, doing our work for us. They are re-branding the GOP and because they see themselves as divinely right, they will keep lying and cheating and acting like we are buying it right up until the 2008 general election.
Which means we have two elections to market progressive Democrats as the honest alternative, the folks who actually care about people, about fairness, about the truth.