A Republican By Any Other Name Is Still A Republican; Rebranding a Failed Brand

[TornadoTN]

So I found myself wondering today what the other side was doing in terms of appealing to voters on their website and printed media. As a marketing and advertising businessman myself, I always find these types of things interesting and at the same time informative. When a company or organization is selling a product, they have a lot more latitude to embellish a bit because they are trying to sell people on something that people are initially unaware of or perhaps only have a passing knowledge about. It's entirely different for incumbents in a political race to "re-brand" their product after having made their case once to the people of their area and actually having to go back and answer for their progress (or lack thereof).

I embarked on a journey to find incumbents in close races to see how they were presenting themselves to voters this time around compared to their last campaigns. I went to DailyKos and looked up their latest battleground polls for House races and pulled a few names off at random and set out finding their websites:

(These are Republicans obviously, so click at your own peril)
http://www.kuhlforcongress.com/ Randy Kuhl NY-29

http://www.davereichertforcongress.com/ Dave Reichert WA-08

http://www.leeterry.com/ Lee Terry NE-02

http://www.johnshadegg.com/ John Shadegg AZ-03

http://www.shelleymoorecapito.com/default.aspx Shelly Moore-Capito WV-2

http://www.thelmadrake.com/ Thelma Drake VA-02

http://www.peopleforenglish.org/ Phil English PA-03

http://www.culbersonforcongress.com/ John Culberson TX-07


Interestingly enough - the word "REPUBLICAN" is a very hard word to come by on these sites. In fact, several of these completely omit the word from the website entirely! They instead opt to use words like "INDEPENDENT", which is an interesting choice. By it's definition, it completely separates themselves from the Republican party, especially since the word "REPUBLICAN" is curiously absent. Of additional note, if you dig just a little deeper, some of these don't even mention that they are incumbents or when they do, they are merely mentioning that they opposed a Bush measure.

I could probably go deeper into this than most people will care to take the time to read, but the facts here are clear. The Republican brand is shot. Finished. Moreover, these candidates are running against themselves more than they are against their Democratic challenger in the sense that they must spend money to explain their previous positions, essentially negating their entire terms worth of work and hoping against hope that people just wont notice or they will find someone who just fell asleep for the past 2 years! We've seen this happen in the Presidential race to some extent and the Obama campaign has been masterful at not letting McCain get off with not shouldering the burden of the mess that he created.

This leads me to my next thought - I believe that an Obama win this election cycle will effectively split the GOP into fragments. We are already seeing a rush away from all things Republican across the country, not just by Democrats or Independents, but by Republicans themselves! The various factions within the party are fighting a "he said-she said" battle between each other over who is to blame for this mess when in reality, it was everyone in their party. A loss of the Presidency and more ground being lost in the House and Senate will be the catalyst to cause the GOP to fracture further and this may be the time we see a third party spin-off of it and gain some traction. Think "Ron Paul Republicans" and you'll see just how real this possibility could be. Regardless, it further weakens the GOP to the point of near breaking and that's good for our party if we can get our proposals passed and set out to fix the economy and restore our dignity on the world stage.

To sum it up: Keep fighting. Keep exposing these Republicans who are running away from their party affiliation. Keep donating money to the Democratic challengers in these races!

If you want to donate to the challengers of the politicians I have listed above, here's the link to Kos, where you can find those candidates:

http://www.dailykos.com/tag/dkos%20poll

Next up: breaking down the messages and ads of the challengers and contrasting them to their opponents!

[louis-t]

1. Yeah, I know a lot of former repugs now calling

themselves 'Independant'. Still spout the same rhetoric, though.

[On the Road]

2. The "Whig" Brand Hasn't Been Used in Awhile

Or, they would have some nice predecessors if they called themselves Federalists, but it doesn't really sound like small government and states' rights.

[greenvpi]

3. Gop!

That's what all of the spam I've received in the mail says. They're lieing and claiming to be some other group called the Gop rather admitting their criminal ties. That should be illegal.