I have always maintained  that the Republicans have failed to learn the lessons of 2008 and the new information age that we are in. In many ways they are so stuck in a 1980’s mindset.

by Daniel Henninger

One of the more compelling finds in the opinion-polling swamps is that most people would like to see the entire Congress replaced. A more modest proposal: Let’s replace all the Republicans in Congress with their children or grandchildren. Bring in the 15-year-olds. How could it get worse?

From the House to the Senate, the Republicans look dazed and confused. Three weeks ago, Ted Cruz stood in the Senate chamber for nearly a day, looking like a hero. Today, with the GOP brand in a vertical dive, he looks like a Bozo balloon.

What do children know that the Republicans in Congress don’t know? The kids know, because it is the mother’s milk of their battery-powered lives, that if you don’t recognize shifts in the mighty flows of information, you will be swept aside, abandoned. You will be BlackBerry.

For all the changes in information delivery, not much ever changes for the GOP’s messaging skills.

Wind back to the 2012 presidential election. Recall how after it was over, the GOP promised that it would duplicate the incredible modern messaging machine the Obama team created across every available new-information platform. That delivery system was why across four years Barack Obama kept hammering “the 1%” and “the wealthiest.” He was feeding the machine that was emailing, texting and tweeting this propaganda to targeted audiences.

Now suddenly comes a marketing ploy from the GOP’s backbenches: “Defund ObamaCare.” This idea was supposed to rally the nation against the Affordable Care Act. So if you were to ask students in marketing at the local community college what they thought of “Defund ObamaCare,” what do you guess they might say? […….]Defund ObamaCare is now the Republicans’ New Coke.

Want a look at how a pro is spinning the Washington mess? Punch into Twitter.com and type “Barack Obama” into the search window. Click on “Barack Obama,” next to the “End This Now” logo. The Obama tweets the past week have been fairly amazing. As in the presidential campaign against Mitt Romney, the Twitter feeds going out in the name of the president of the United States are virtually wall-to-wall propaganda.

[…….]

Everyone recalls the 2012 campaign’s carpet bombing of “the wealthiest,” even after they’d been shelled with a tax increase. Barack Obama has found—actually, it was handed to him—a scapegoat analogous to “the wealthiest” and “the banks” for his campaign to suppress votes for GOP candidates in the 2014 elections. It’s “tea party Republicans.”

Barack Obama: “Tea Party Republicans are threatening an economic shutdown. Tell them to #EndThisNow.”

[……..]

Wednesday’s first Obama tweet: “Day 16 of the #TeaPartyShutdown. This can’t continue—Congress needs to #EndThisNow.”

This isn’t routine partisan noise. The Obama Twitter account lists 38,258,000 followers. Unless some of these are fake, that’s nearly 30% of the total popular vote in 2012. All through the week, this number rose as the site poured forth boiling oil.

Virtually every Obama tweet demonizes the tea party. Last week, within minutes of the collapse of the Obama-Boehner talks, the tweeting robot called “Barack Obama” had hung the collapse on the “tea party.”

Wednesday morning (with even the New York Post cover depicting Uncle Sam going over Niagara Falls on the “Brink of Disaster”), the machinery that runs @BarackObama rolled into view. It’s the former Obama re-election apparatus, which has shape-shifted into a 501(c)(4) group called Organizing for Action.

[……..]

Republicans complain constantly that the media “lets him get away with it.” The media is floating down the electric river. No, they—the message-impoverished Republicans—let him get away with it. The Washington GOP is now a political Gulliver, tied down by tweets and twerps.

A month ago, before the congressional Republicans’ General Custer Caucus used “Defund ObamaCare” to vote themselves into their current, bullet-riddled fort, the Obama characterization of the entire GOP as “tea party Republicans” would have been a pathetic stretch. He was the one being laughed at by the whole world for his vanishing red lines in Syria and a foreign policy that even his own defense secretary described as “swinging from vine to vine.”

Not anymore. Barack Obama is Romneyizing the Republicans. He’s doing to Ted Cruz and the House Republicans what he did to Mitt Romney and the 1%. It may be voter brainwashing, but in the expanded media age in which we all marinate, it works.

Someone in the tea party outside the Beltway had better wake up and smell the smoke. The great nemesis has done it again: He’s turning them into political toast.

Read the rest – Obama Romneyizes the Republicans

Goldwaterite Comments:

One of the reasons I opposed this showdown was for the simple fact the Republicans have no message discipline. Besides having turncoats like John McCain back stabbing them, they never have a coherent argument. MacDuff made a very astute observation; Obama and the Democrats state what they are for. Republicans never say what they are for, just what they oppose.

Another factor in my reluctance for this showdown is the technological edge the Democrats have. Despite last years disastrous technology gap, this recent showdown proved the Democrats are light years again in using technology to get their message out. We may laugh at their animal hats, but the Tech savvy Hipsters ran circles against the “uptight” Republicans once again. I do not exaggerate when I say Hipsters are a danger. They once against proved they can outclass anything Republicans throw at them.

Finally once again the Republicans proved they have no tactics nor strategy. Instead of going after low hanging fruit like Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi, they went after Obama. Despite his lower approval ratings, many Americans have an emotional attachment to Obama. He’s more than a President, he’s a cultural symbol. Until the Right grasps this, Obama will chew them out for lunch time and time again.

The only way to defeat the Progressives is through asymmetrical guerrilla warfare. They have the advantage in technology, numbers and message discipline. Only a long term strategy of attrition and going after their weak points like Harry Reid will do them damage. These martyrdom suicidal stands like the recent budget showdown only play into the Democrat’s Party strength.  Sadly the current mentality among Conservatives is one that honors defeat, not one that strives for victory. It’s the honorable loser mentality why and why I have no political hope for the future of the Right. All I can advise people is to take care you of yours for the foreseeable future. Until the Right learns strategic long term thinking and message discipline, the Progressives will rule this nation.

Please read AZ Old Dog’s post on Data Mining.

Here is Politico’s behind the scenes anatomy of what happened during the showdown.