One of the things those of us on the right side of the aisle need to do in order to start winning elections is to reinforce the support we show our weaker spined politicians when they do something right. There are two reasons for this, which I’ll discuss later. We need for them to embrace what they represent, and we need them to believe in the political profitability of acting in a positive manner.
Just a brief example of what I’m talking about here. Next week, Harry Reid will take to the various media outlets who repeat his blathering with nary so much as a question, or any evidence of scrutiny, and he’ll proclaim that the Republicans in the Senate and in the House are nothing more than obstructionists, with no clear message beyond wishing to prevent our first Black President from enacting his agenda, which was voted for favorably by an electorate that chose him to be our President.
Immediately after this, every GOP pundit, Congress Critter, consulting spokes person, and their grand mother, will take to the Sunday talk shows and proclaim just as vehemently that this is categorically untrue. What they should be saying is this, “hell yes we’re obstructionists, and the American People should be thanking their lucky stars that we are providing that last line of defense between them and the ravages of Socialism.” We, as a group need to embrace our beliefs, and we need to project that unapologetic message. We are after all right. Apology for standing up for our principles is nothing more than an admission to being on the wrong side of things for many voters.
It is well past time that we stop living in fear of these worn out and tired charges offered by the left. More to the point, since they themselves are truly guilty of everything that they claim to be against, we need to stop ceding the narrative to them. When they call us obstructionists, we need to say, yes we will endeavor to obstruct your attempts to inflict pain upon flesh and blood human beings because you wish to create Utopia for imaginary ones. When they claim that we have no plan of our own to solve America’s perceived problems, we need to say yes we do, we wish to re-institute the free market system that you’ve harmed by instituting policies that have in fact caused the problems that you claim to care so much about.
While in college, I got a dog. While the German Shepard may have been cute, her proclivity for urinating indoors decidedly was not. In attempting to break the dog of this habit, I used a rolled up newspaper and gently rapped her across the nose when ever I found a puddle. Our Fraternity Adviser suggested another method.
He told me to do two things. one, soak an old rag in the urine and tie it to a steak outside along the pathway of her frequent walks. She’ll smell the urine outside on her walk, and she’ll get the idea immediately. Next, take some cheese with you on your walks, when she goes outside, reward her with a treat. The positive reinforcement will be a far stronger motivator. After that, she was trained within 48 hours, and never went inside again.
People can be trained in much the same way. They must be told the right way to do things, and the assumption that they know automatically without being told is fallacious. Positive feedback goes much further than its negative counterpart. How many times have we all seen the helicopter mother at the playground admonishing her child not to smack his head on the iron bar at the top of the ladder to the sliding board, and watch her kid seconds later smack his head on the iron bar at the top of the sliding board? How many times have we choked back our own speech, begging in our minds to tell that foolish woman to please start instructing her kid to start ducking his head when he neared the top? Warning the child about what he should avoid doing wrong, more often than not becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
Our Congress Critters are certainly no different. As Milton Friedman stated many times, if we are waiting for the right people to get elected in order to affect the changes we wish, we’ll be waiting for ever. The only hope we have is to make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things. Just like little dogs perhaps, our elected Congress Critters need to hear positive feedback when they obstruct destructive agendas. They need to have spelled out for them what victory looks like, and what we as people in a position to reward their behavior would consider outcomes worthy of reward. Perhaps a cottage industry of I heart obstructionists bumper stickers might come in handy. After all, one of the intentions of our founding fathers was specifically that men with power would find many and constant obstructions in their path.
How good common sense became dirty words in political battle is still beyond me, but one thing is for certain, we don’t have to go along with it. We can stand up and say, yes I am for free and unfettered markets, personal freedom, and strong obstructions to consolidated federal power, and be proud of those positions. The last time somebody did that, he won two Presidential elections with the states he’d won numbering in the 40’s. Of course, there were a lot of people, who during the primary that said, nobody this conservative would ever be electable. As it turns out, they were wrong.
Cross Posted from Musings of a Mad Conservative.
Tags: Obamacare
