Here’s an interesting exchange in an NPR story on the Michael Steele selection for chair of the Republican National Committee:
The consensus emerging from Friday’s gathering was that though the party clearly needs some major cosmetic surgery, its basic tenets are just fine.
“Our core beliefs don’t differ from most Americans’,” said Kevin DeWine, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party. “But obviously there’s a disconnect between our image and our issues.”
“We’ve been too divisive, too strident and, at times, tone-deaf,” DeWine said.
Said Steele: “We have an image problem.” Wrongly seen, he said, as insensitive; unconcerned about minorities; unconcerned about the lives, expectations and dreams of average Americans.
Fascinating – so now, they’re going to go with the Andre Agassi, John McEnroe “image is everything” strategy? (see here for more analysis of the GOP’s failure in this attempt, highlighting Ohio’s John Boehner, House Minority Leader, no less)
My guess? Not gonna work. The GOP has blared through people like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter and Dick Armey and Sam Brownback what their “basic tenets” are.
Lipstick on a pig, folks – lipstick on a pig:
The Lipstick: Michael Steele.
The Pig: The GOP basic tenets.
Didn’t work when Sarah Palin became the lipstick and the same basic tenets were the pig. Not sure how this is going to change much either.
Folks – “image is everything” was a slogan – the reality of which was that Agassi and McEnroe, beneath it all, had the talent – only in their head was the image everything, and the ad agents hoped to make it that way in ours too so we’d buy stuff.
Not to mention that the other axiom in this equation about image is that perception is reality. And if you’re going to use an image, it’s going to become perception. And if in reality your basic tenets don’t embrace what you’ve now created as a perception, you is gonna fail, big time, with massive disappointment in those you thought you’d attracted with that image and perception.
Huge risks. Huge.