Let us plan the complete and utter destruction of the Republican Party...

I posted a response on the "THIS ELECTION WAS ABOUT ONE THING ONLY...RELIGION " thread, but I think this merits a thread in its own right...


While I agree that, "We must come up with some powerful ways to frame religion to our benefit, and get the "moral" vote back where it belongs...with the party of truth, justice and fairness," I think we have to plan on something bigger: the complete elimination of the party of Plamegate, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Iraq-gate, the Iraq quagmire, etc. and so forth.

But to do that, folks, you're gonna need red-state votes- supermajorities.

How do we get them?

Not by just framing messages, but by framing ourselves.

Mao Zedong (http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/MODCHINA/MAO.HTM) had values that were 180 degrees out of whack with the peasantry, but he had their support and they had his back.

Why?

Because he supported them and they knew it.

We need organizations in red-state areas that are truly reaching out to the reddest of the red states, and to make 'em blue, by delivering on their real needs, and to be identified as lefties delivering on their needs.

Then we will get their votes- enough of 'em to bring the Repub party to utter destruction.

BTW, it's the Repub's friggin' playbook- only they have the fundie megachurches as their "peasant associations."

We need to duplicate their ground level organizing.

we have the values of the "peasants" they just don't know it.

Anyway, I am SICK of the word values. It is code speak. We should change it to morals.

We are the party of morals. It is immoral to turn your back on the poor, the environment, the world.

We have let the conservatives tell the world who we are. We need to tell the country who we are. What we are saying is not getting through because it is not in sound bites.

Know why it works? Because people feel they are helped by their churches.
And they are, sort of- they get companionship, they get a sense of belonging, and a sense of worth.

And in all that they tell 'em how to vote.

Give people a more effective companionship, sense of belonging and worth, as well as real hope, and the Republican Party will cease to exist.

our platform embraces differences and encourages tolerance. those do not go well with fundies. liberals and progressives will always be at odds with the fundies. i happen to believe in the Jesus=liberal paradigm, but that would land me in hell with fundies.

You think Chinese peasants were favorably disposed to removing the cult of honoring ancestors?

No, and we don't have to give up our values either.

We have to actually be visibly helping red-staters, with a brought-along political agenda.

But first and foremost we have to be seen as helping.

Don't worry, enough help & they'll buy any agenda we want to sell.

but we have to do more than "sell" something - it has to come from the heart - it has to be sincere.

I am just a guy selling water by the river. ;-)

they are just a big paradox of what they say, how do we get their vote?

spent all his time with beggars (the poor), whores (sexually 'different'), lepers (chronic disease sufferers), and generally downtrodden (pretty much all the middle-class) people. how many repubs can say the same? they were right there hammerin' the nails.

Red-stater Evangelicals are "whores" to some of the "liberal" "Pharisees" here.

they have an idea of us- we have an idea of them.

Our ideas are not them, and vice versa. We have to change their minds though as to who we are and why we take the positions we do.

They want a united country?

Hell, let's give it to them, but let's make sure that we all know the terms and conditions.

Our terms and conditions are to try to help people, I think, to use government where it is most effective to use government to protect us and our environment, to make sure that all can prosper, and to make sure that all can act in freedom of conscience.

"Political power grows out of a barrel of a gun"...

just to take the organizing example of Mao et al. and use it to our advantage.

as they say absolute power corrupts absolutely, but I know one thing, that is we will be stronger and ready to take on the next round

because if we aren't somebody really nasty might be.

Remember, there's folks way scarier than George W. Bush lurking in the smarmier areas of the American right.

We all know that the current crop of Republicans is a scourge on our country, which is why I'm of the opinion that it needs to be stamped out permanently. And why not? Rove and Co. are trying to do the same to us.

We hear all this talk about "morals" and "values". This is really nothing new to American politics. However, the current crop of pukes have managed to tap into their base and work them up into an evangelical fervor, which translates into a large scale GOTV. Our problem is that we have been trying to appeal to people's intellect and reasoning--two qualities that have been the basis of our democracy for 250+ years. But in order to win future elections, we'll need to do our share of emotional horsewhipping.

Am I saying we try to out-fundamentalist our opponents? Not at all. What we need to do is simply appeal to people's emotions, not their intellect. We need to tap in and find the emotional core of our base, and attempt to bring out those same emotions in independent and swing voters. What emotions we need to tap into are not clear to me right now, so we need start brainstorming RIGHT NOW.

This:

http://www.eeinternational.org/news/TFS/904.pdf

is what we're up against.

They have an organization to be envied, since this "religious" organization is a political organization.

Whether we do it through our religious institutions, or our unions, or hell, through the party itself (once upon a time the Communists did this in the US, and that's at least part of the reason why we went leftward during Roosevelt's time) we gotta do it.

WE WILL NEVER WIN ANOTHER ELECTION! Bank on it!

Vote with your dollars; it's the only vote of yours they care about

They own the media, so no amount of effort will pierce their Berlin-Wall of ignorance, because it's intentional. We have to go to the source which corrupts our political system and media, and owns the GOP.

The GOP has the backing of thousands of Corporations, billions of dollars, and the entire mainstream media.

All they care about is the dollar, so, hit them DIRECTLY, and where they're most vulnerable.