Dear Republican Leadership, People don’t want ‘cool conservatism’, they want the damn truth!

Republicans are meeting behind closed doors, some with Rove, to discuss what can make our messaging better. According to Politico, here’s a few ideas being thrown around:

POLITICO – Rule one: Stop talking like the world is going to end. Budgetary politics is important to the GOP, but voters are going to stop voting for a party that talks about gloom and doom around the clock.

“I think that we need to make being fiscally conservative cool,” said Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.), chairwoman of the Administration Committee and a close ally of Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

Rule two: Stop repealing regulations no one has heard of. It’s nice to be the party of cutting red tape, Republicans say, but no one has heard of boiler MACT or utility MACT. So spending time throwing these bills on the floor is absolutely useless. Package regulation cutting together, and explain that people’s energy will be cheaper, Republicans say.

“Does anyone have any idea how this fits their family? No. No one has any idea what that is,” said Rep. James Lankford (R-Okla.), a member of leadership who is leading the agenda-crafting effort. “Just an individual bill that deals with one regulation that people can’t connect to? No more of that.”

Rule three: Sand down the party’s rough edges. Pass education bills and immigration legislation. Stop screaming about red ink and spending too much. This one is going to be tough, since House Republicans haven’t been able to pass a bill called the Violence Against Woman Act for more than a year.

It’s a nagging problem for the party, whose main legislative agenda has been opposing President Barack Obama.

MORE…

Rule one and three kill me. People don’t want to be glad-handed and pandered too which is what it sounds like Republicans are looking to do. No, people want the truth! The biggest problem with the last election cycle was the candidate and he was afraid to tell people the truth. How many times are we going to pretend that a weak mushy message is going to deliver us the election?

No, we need people with conviction so that when they utter the truth it resonates with people. That’s one of the reasons Obama is so popular because he sounds like he makes sense. He lies with such conviction people believe he’s telling them the truth.

It’s about TRUTH and it doesn’t have to be draped in doom and gloom. Rather, the truth when communicated properly is inspiring and mobilizing. I know, I’ve heard it. It takes charisma and it takes charm – there’s no doubt. But if we get conservatives on stage that can do that we’ll win the next election. We need to stop tying ourselves in knots over moderate candidates losing and realize that the one thing we’re not doing is the one thing we need to do.

One final point. The sleepers out there are going to wake up at some point and they are going to look back and see if someone was actually telling them the truth when they didn’t want to hear it. When they wake up and realize that Republicans didn’t give them the truth when it mattered, then they won’t look to us then for the truth either and we will become irrelevant.


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