Mama’s Band Of Idiots

By the time any one of us reaches or has reached that grand know-it-all stage age of eighteen, just how many times have we heard or said, “My mama didn’t raise no fool!”?  Well, if she didn’t, mama should report having been the victim of baby theft, because many of those now masquerading as mama’s own flesh and blood are obvious impostors.

It should come as no surprise that this year’s 2012 Presidential Campaign will be a bellwether point in the country’s ultimate fate—either to be a sovereign society of the economically free or to become one of history’s failed societies.  Once the whim of the masses and the will of the people are no longer in opposition, there is nothing left to derail our lemmings leap beyond no-return.

As we watch Team Romney mount its assault on what some many see as an undefeatable Obama Machine, we hear pundits and neophyte constituents, alike, offering campaign advice, with the ruling consensus being for Romney to follow McCain’s lead—assuming one can tolerate using “lead” and “McCain” in the same breath—and keep far away from anything that could be considered an attack on Obama’s character and render him deserving of sympathy votes.  They advise to stick with the facts and figures of his failed performance.  Well, as our old friend, Ronald Reagan, was fond of saying, “There you go again…” being the Idiot Conservative.

Scratch a Conservative and you’ll find fact, figures, and sound bites that are fit for Ivey League grads and an already stuffed choir.  But, it’s the congregation, stupid, not the choir that needs the message. And the congregation doesn’t pat its feet to facts, figures, and glib sound bites.  Instead, most people don’t make important decisions based on hard data; those decisions—like Presidential votes—are made based on impressions.  And the strongest impressions are made based on a well-crafted message that is replete with a blend of logos, pathos, and ethos.  If ANY story is to be intuitively plausible, then each of these tenets must be employed when crafting that story, for, if either is deficient or omitted, the story is unbelievable and will not favorably resonate with the recipients.  So, Romney Operatives, take note.

Logos:  Logic

Does it REALLY take the brain of Einstein to understanding that a board is not lengthened by trimming off more, no matter how good the intention?  Does it take the genius of Stephen Hawking to understand that escalated spending, atop of escalating debt, is not the shortest route to economic growth?  And, does it take the ability to read the stitching on a fastball to know that our current state is unsustainable?  And, for mama’s band of mental midgets (no offense to midgets), “unsustainable” means, you can’t keep this crap up!  Romney must be able to present logic that enfranchises respect and admiration, but not derision of mama’s logic-challenged.

Ethos:  Emotion

Ethos—the emotional seat of the soul.  Now, this the Liberals and Democrats have in spades.  Conservatives just don’t get how to position themselves for emotional buy-in by putting a moral wrapping around their logic.  Neither Democrats nor the average voter think logically.  Instead, they feel, and no amount of reason can eclipse those feelings, no matter how loudly spoken or religiously drilled.  And, when good looks and glib remarks are like oxygen to emotions, Democrats will own the emotional response, UNLESS Conservatives can learn how to craft a message that touches the voters’ souls and not just rely on the power of logic and trust in an inept electorate to get it… right.

Pathos:  Ethics (Right & Wrong)

A sense of right & wrong appears to be a value never learned on the playground by Obama and his team.  And it shouldn’t take the Pope to understand the extent to which Obama will effortlessly lie, unchallenged by the mainstream media.  Of course, we understand that spin is an intractable part of politics, but, as a lying sack of hanging chads, Obama is a politician of a different ilk.  He ostensibly prefers mendacious assertions over truth and honesty.  And, though no one gets out of bed every day, expecting to be the fool, but on Election Day 2008, millions returned from the polls bigger fools than any baby mama might own.  Like a John promising anything just for a few intimate minutes with the unsuspecting, Obama has spent the last three, plus, years promising to love his supporters in the morning, but has only slipped way, stealthily, leaving an IOU on the bedside table in the form of the healthcare bill.  You just couldn’t make that crap up, you fools!

By now, we’re starting to see the Obama Machine starting to experience chinks in its thinly skinned armor in the form of gross ineptness.  And, short of a meltdown by the Romney Team, coupled with a message that balances the logical, emotional, and ethical case of Obama’s one term, not only is it a question of CAN Romney win, but a question of by how much.  The country has been Obama’s fool long enough, and the disenchanted underground that was left in the wake of the 2008’s travesty just may rise up and smite the one by whom they were all made mam’s most gullible of fools.

Some might say that there aren’t enough of these to turn this tide, but, in the lyrical genius of Mel Waiters, “the smaller the club, the bigger the party”, and there certainly is something about this room.  And if what I say isn’t worth thinking about, to paraphrase Little Milton, …grits ain’t grocery, eggs ain’t poulty, and Mona Lisa…well, her name was Leroy.