Posted by
NOTLEGALROADKILLYET on Sunday, January 28, 2007 12:38:29 PM
When I found the Ronald Reagan quote last night, I was actually trying to verify the Karl Marx quote that I had used in an earlier essay. While I was there, I decided to see if there were any interesting and usable Reagan quotes.
Ronald Reagan was a very positive politician. In 1984, his campaign slogan was "It's morning in America."
Republicans need to begin to think about how their party, their officials, and their candidates are framing the issues. I think that a reasonable analysis of the issues would show that we have become the "anti" party. Pick an issue that we feel strongly about think about how we ourselves frame it.
We are the anti-abortion, anti-tax, anti-immigration, anti-stem cell research, anti-public schools, anti-this and anti-that party. It is clear that a large part of the business community has begun to think of us as anti-business or they would not have supported Ritter in the last election.
I'm not saying that we should change our positions, only that we need to frame them in Ronald Reagan like terms.
Today's Gazette Telegraph provides a good illustration in "
Immigrant issues not at top of to-do list" by Ed Sealover.
Search that article and find a single "It's morning in Colorado" issue. You won't. It is an anti-immigration issue. Worse, we seem determined to push the costs of our anti-immigration policies on the business community, reinforcing our emerging anti-business reputation.
Incredibly, no one, including the bill's sponsors, believes that any of these bills will pass, meaning that they are symbolic only. Here we find our local legislators making negative press for our party with no real hope of accomplishing anything useful. Lets do positivie symbolism, if we are going to do symbolism.
If the party wants to prosper, it must find positive issues and identify spokesmen to put them forward.
Party leaders need to examine the words and deeds of each of its current vocal spokesmen (the folks whose names appear in the paper weekly) to see if they have a history of putting a positive message forward. If not, those spokesmen need to be asked to step out of the spotlight to make room for someone with a Ronald Reagan like message.
It can be morning again in Colorado for Republicans, but first we have to find the sunny side of our issues.