There are two subtopics here. One is persuading likely voters to vote Democratic instead of Republican, and the other is convincing people who don’t usually vote to get off of their asses, stop making excuses and do it.
We can’t be persuasive by being confrontational. Be nice, and remember that you can only hope to nudge your target a little bit, not roll him/her over completely.
There are many types of conservatives. Recommended reading: “Conservatives Without Conscience” by John Dean. You’ve got to know which flavor of conservative you are dealing with in order to be an effective communicator.
True conservatives should be horrified by what the Republican Party has become. A good strategy would be to learn what traditional conservatism is and be able to explain to whoever will listen how the current Republican leadership has betrayed that tradition. Fiscal conservatives should be greatly disturbed by current budget deficits. Right-to-life people shouldn’t only be concerned about abortion. They should be completely outraged by the death penalty and the Iraq war.
Memorize the Ten Commandments and the Bill of Rights. Be able to argue that the latter is a better basis for government than is the former. Knowing these things will give you credibility with your audience.
Quoting Smartass in Free will, Christianity and The Law - Great Debates - Straight Dope Message Board,
“What gets lost in the shuffle is that reasonable people (whatever that might be) can disagree about moral distinctions. The question about when life begins is a perfect example. For that reason, we should be very careful about what moral principles we choose to enshrine in law. Even though our Founding Fathers were predominantly Christian, they chose not to enshrine their religious beliefs into law because they were still pretty raw from having that tactic used against them.”
I haven’t come up with much motivate nonvoters.
"if you don’t vote then you have no right to complain.
Do you want followers of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson dictating how you will live your life?
A little help, please?
My catchphrase for this election: “Dare to think for yourself.”
Don’t be shy. Talk to anybody who will tolerate you.
I’d say try to split the big business types from the Christian fundamentalists. This is a very uneasy alliance. I’d say it is similar to Dixiecrats, Union activists, and Northeastern liberals who used to be the Democratic party.
Since Bush won’t run again, what would be the point in recruiting anti-Bush voters…why drag him in at all. If you are talking about a national election, then assess whoever the Republicans throw up in the next round and go from there. If its a local election, the same. Work your own plank for the most part, focusing on your ideas and what you can do for the American people, not on all the bad shit the other side is doing. Oh, to be sure compare and contrast (in such a way that your points look good and theirs bad ), but the focus should be on YOUR programs and what you can do for the people.
The thing is ‘We ain’t Bush!!’ didn’t work when you were RUNNING against Bush. I don’t see how it will work any better in the next presidential election…in fact, I would guess it will have less traction, unless Chaney is running. If it McCain or Giuliani or someone like that, how will ‘We ain’t Bush!!’ be helpful? How will recruiting Republicans who are against Bush (and there are a LOT of them) help out when Bush isn’t running?
This is a midterm Congressional election, so if you’re trying to sway a moderate Pub, it’s not enough to say “Bush has betrayed everything the Republican Party stands for.” You have to come up with a convincing argument as to how voting against the Pub candidates in your state/district this year, and turning control of Congress over to the Dems for the next two years, will be better for the “real” Pub agenda in the long run. And you can indeed make a very good case for that, but it’s still going to be a tough sell.
XT- If the House and/or the Senate can be wrested from Republican control, further unconstitutional abuses of power can be prevented or at least minimized. As an added bonus, Bush & company could be taken to task for their past misdeeds and blunders concerning Iraq.
Can you say “subpoena”? I know of some people in the upper reaches of the U.S. government who must be terrified of the possibility of a Congress under Democratic control using it’s subpoena power to investigate and publicize certain ugly things.
I don’t expect true conservatives who liked what the Republican party was pre-hijack to vote Democratic unless the contest in question is down to the wire and they feel the need to see the hijacked Pubbies lose. And I don’t think non-conservatives can push them towards that perspective.
They might be open to an appeal to vote for 3rd party conservatives, dark horse Republican primary candidates, and so on, in the spirit of taking back their party even if it means losing an election or two en route.
A Democrat pledging to vote for a decent Republican in one state could maybe find a matching Republican to vote for a Democratic candidate who seems decent in another, concentrating on preserving the Republicans worth preserving while trying to off the most egregious members thereof. For example, I bet there are a lot of Democratic New Mexicans who would vote for Pete Domenici in exchange for a Republican Pennsylvanian voting for whatever Democrat tries to unseat Rick Santorum.
If you’re talking about fence sitters, and I assume you are, then that’s the last thing you want to bring up. Keep in mind that most Americans don’t hate Bush with every fiber of their being and you’ll be OK.
I’ve never understood why the environment couldn’t be used to woo less fervent Republicans. A platform of encouraging alternative energy sources for the purposes of giving Middle Eastern regimes less economic power, and less of a hold over the U.S would seem to appeal to both Democrats and Republicans.
There are a lot of Republicans out there like me who are fed up with the GOP. It mainly comes down to government spending. Bush and the GOP Congress simply spend too much money and have betrayed us at that level.
It would be very difficult for me to ever be persuaded to vote for a Democrat candidate based on the issue of fiscal responsibility. Democrats want to spend even more than Republicans want to spend, so if I’m fed up with high spending under Republicans, why would I vote for a party that encourages more government spending? After all, Democrats want to spend more money on a variety of social programs and have given voters like myself no plan to cut spending in other areas to fund that increased spending. All they say is “raise taxes on the rich.” Sorry, but most fiscal conservatives also want taxes cut, so anyone saying they will raise taxes on any class immediately disqualifies himself from ever receiving my vote.
Democrats can’t appeal to voters like me (and there are many of us out there), so we will all likely hold our nose and vote Republican.
To tell the truth, though, I’m actually going to vote for the Democrat challenger to our GOP Congressman because the guy is so moderate he should be a Democrat. I’d do anything to get rid of him, including voting for a Democrat in the hopes that in 2008 the GOP can recapture the seat.
The concepts of the big-spending Democrat and fiscally sensible Republican are really outdated stereotypes, it seems to me. There was a budget surplus before Bush took office. The numbers have gone from black to a glowing lava-like orangish red.
I’d be much more comfortable if the $250+ billion dollars spent on Iraq had instead been spent on securing ports and borders. The Republicans are very weak on “homeland security”. They’ve chosen to leave the gates weakly defended.
A recent issue of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists quoted Warren Buffet as saying nuclear terrorism on U.S. soil is “inevitable”. He said he couldn’t see a way that it won’t happen.
My vote is up for grabs. I usually walk the line just right of middle. I have not been happy with the current administration. However, if all we get is “We’re better than Bush” as a message, it won’t court my vote. Don’t just tell me what Bush has done wrong. Tell me *specifically *what you will do right - *how *you will do what you say you will do.
Yes, and this surplus was produced under a Republican Congress, so it’s not an issue of Democrats being all that fiscally responsible.
We had a large surplus in the 90’s because the economy was doing very, very well and tax revenue was pouring in. The surplus was not a result of any fiscal discipline on behalf of Congress or the Administration. I worked in the Senate during part of this time and remember clearly the Clinton Administration threatening to veto certain appropriations bills if their spending was not increased. Republicans, of course, buckled and gave in.
The deficits under Bush can be attributed to the weak economy (which took quite a hit from 9/11) and the military/homeland security spending that arose out of 9/11. While I don’t agree much of this spending was necessary, it’s not like Democrats have tried to stop it. Democrats went along with all of Bush’s spending on military/security and then complained that Bush’s increases in spending in other areas (education, health care, etc.) were not big enough. And when Bush and the GOP tried to take minor steps to reduce the growth of entitlement programs (the Deficit Reduction Act), Democrats fought tooth and nail against it. Democrats have no plan to reduce the deficit except raise taxes. If they proposed to reduce spending, they may get my vote. But a platform of “tax the rich” and spend even more money than Bush does not signal any sort of fiscal responsibility to me.
If you look at the growth in federal spending, you’ll see it was something like 3% under Clinton and 6 or 7% under Bush, so I don’t think that’s right. I don’t have time to look up the exact numbers right now, but I’ll do it later if no one else beats me to it.
You are probably right. If you find these numbers, though, also see how much of that spending was military/homeland security related. While I’m not happy with the increase in spending in these areas, I do understand the rationale that with 9/11 we need to spend more on them.
I’ll also freely admit that with a Republican President and a Republican Congress, spending was more likely to increase. With a Democrat President, the Republicans were not willing to go along with some of his proposals to increase spending and put the brakes on to a limited exent. With a Republican President, though, Congress wasn’t willing to stand up against him and so spending increased rapidly, especially in the military/homeland security departments.
I’ll concede that Bush and the Congressional GOP are horrible on spending matters. You don’t need to produce any evidence of that. My point is not that the GOP is great on spending but that Democrats are worse. Democrats did not oppose this increase in spending but instead called for even more spending. Democrats have no plan to actually reduce spending. They only plan to raise taxes. That is not a way to attract disaffected Republicans like myself who don’t like the GOP spending spree. If they want to attract our votes, the Democrats need to show how they would cut spending.
There’s another side to that coin. Republican control of the legislative branch of our government is sufficently absolute (even tyranical) as to preclude the possibility of Democrats stopping anything supported by the Republican leadership. If there has been an exception to that statement, I am unaware of it.
According to the Wall Street Journal, quoted from “Conservatives Without Conscience”, page 130, “…at the end of 2005 there were a staggering 13,998 earmarked expenses, costing $27.3 billion. When the Republicans took control in 1995 there were only 1,439 earmarked items.” For the uninitiated, “earmarked” equals “pork barrel”.
In the House, maybe. In the Senate, however, the Democrats have a lot of power. I’m also talking about proposals put forward by Democrats, too. Even the amendments to the budget bills or appropriations bills in the House, even though they have no chance of succeeding, just want an increase in spending and higher taxes. They don’t advocate for a reduction in spending.
Earmarks, while unsavory, are fairly irrelevant. Earmarks do not increase the cost of appropriations bills; they merely reduce the discretion the executive branch has to spend that money by earmarking part of that money for specific purposes. Furthermore, earmarks are used by both parties. Look at how much West Virginia and Hawaii receive, for example – states with two Democrat Senators.
Well, now, I’m just a country boy, not sophisticated in economic matters. Wouldn’t know a Laffable Curve from a slider. Does kind seem to me that cutting taxes while launching a major military intervention is a mite sketchy. Might go so far as to call it batshit pizza.
'Course, I’m open to hearing sophisticated reasoning as to why that makes perfect sense.
It is possible to cut tax rates and increase tax revenues, although I don’t know if what Bush did was the right way to get that result. And just psychologically, one can argue that cutting taxes while waging a war is the wrong way to go. (Or the right way, depending on what outcome you’re hoping for. )
), but the focus should be on YOUR programs and what you can do for the people.