In recent weeks, Democrats have made progress with their leadership management skills. Here is what they have figured out: When your opposition is burning down, don't get involved. Sit back and allow it to happen. For example, when the GOP floats the story that Obama is building concentration camps to house conservative critics, just hush, sit quietly and let them tell that story. When Glenn Beck goes on the air to tell us about those new Obama concentration camps, don't interrupt him even when it's clear that those buildings he's afraid of are probably mental health facilities. Or when their party leader Sarah Palin suggests that Obama's health care reform plan includes a death panel that will condemn elderly Americans to die if they require too much medical care, remember; Sit quietly and let the lunatics loose on themselves. In fact, be jubilant when other GOP party leadership stands beside Palin and endorses her as she rambles incoherently about this imaginary ghoulish new death panel. The Democrats have recently figured out that the art of sitting silently when the opposition is so vulnerable requires incredible discipline. When gun-toting healthcare teabaggers are showing up at town hall meetings to shout, scream, and appear unbalanced, Democrats should make sure they schedule as many town hall meetings as possible. Allow it to unfold on the nightly news with regularity.
In politics, sometimes silence really is golden. So when opposition leaders like GOP Congresswoman Michele Bachmann tells the media that Obama has youth "re-education" programs in place to brainwash children into becoming liberals, make sure Democratic leadership does not disagree, comment, laugh, or shout ... just be silent.
If Democratic leadership ever begins to doubt the value of sitting silently as the lunatics define the image of the GOP, they should go online and google these words, "Orly Taitz implodes on MSNBC." What they will see in that video will tell the backstory about how difficult it has become for Republicans to contain the loon factor within their party.
Democratic leadership will easily conclude that Taitz who identifies herself as "a birther spokesperson," a realtor, and a dentist is helping to seal the fate of a GOP that is developing the image of a deep south regional party destined to wander farther and farther into the wilderness. As Democratic leadership watches wack-a-doodle Taitz implode on behalf of all conservatives, the key will be to ensure that Democratic silence is deafening.
The Taitz spectacle is no less of a gift to Democrats than the videos flooding the net that show a black woman being attacked at a teabagger town hall meeting for holding up a Rosa Parks poster. Or the video that shows immigration protesters shouting that illegals should be bused back to Mexico "after we put a bullet in their head." Public approval ratings of the new GOP are falling to levels that compete with those of Dick Cheney and Ann Coulter. The saying, "Never look a gift horse in the mouth," is a peculiar one. It simply means to hush, don't say a word and graciously accept a gift when it comes your way. These days those gifts are too many to count.
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The reality is that no conservative thinks "Death Panel" means that a group of people sit at a table and decide life or death fate. The reality is that Sarah Palin used this phrase to convey that government will be deciding the pro-rata of medicine. That is scary to them because of what they see with other government agencies.
We will lose this battle until we understand what is really happening. What we are seeing in the conservative movement is not huge, it is epic. When I hear Bill Marr talking about how dumb these people are, I realize the opportunity for change has passed us by. We are acting like spoiled angry children and they are talking about the real issues.
The problem with your theory is that too many DC bubble-dwelling Dems end up thinking the Tea Baggers are "the voice of the people" if the rest of us stay silent.
Obviously it's great when Beck, Coulter, Bachmann and these Tea Bagging lunatics get air-time....it exposes their idiocy for the world. But that does not mean we don't debunk it or mock it. In fact mocking it (see Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert) goes very far......we have to make them into the jokes they really are.
However, the rest of us out here in the trenches should not cease from pointing out the mad ones frothing at their mouths -- if nothing else but to keep the images burning in everyone's consciousness.
THEN let them rage on as the rest of us stand dumbstruck and appalled, as well we should be.
We don't have to shout back at them like their lunatics but the left needs spokespeople out there debunking the bull, so should the 'unbiased' media and both should castigating the right wing for their sick twisted lies.
We need the sunlight on these people, it always serves to erode their support.
That worked like a freakin' charm for Kerry in 2004.
"Be cool".
Smug Rethugs thought they had this battle in the bag as America watched the wingnuts spin out of control. Many of us were bursting at the seams waiting for the president to fight back, but his strategy remained calm and measured.
America has witnessed the tea bagging, gun toting, swastika sign carrying lunatic circus roll across the country and run its course. Now the adults will move forward with the strong health care legislation that the majority expects.
The Rethuglican Party retreats deeper to the South.
But at least the decision making about policy issues now doesn't depend too much on what voters think. It rather depends on what representatives in congress think and know and understand.
In that sense, speaking truth to power and speaking truth to stupid is at least the same thing, when it comes to Bachman or Palin.
Oh wait, you're not supposed to do that either...
Well, well, I'm still thinking about it...
To your point, keep it up and the Reps will pick up even more than the 20 seats expected right now. ROFL.
Hope this centrist President is right. Don't believe his party knows how to follow its leader.
I'm willing to wait a spell. After all i have socialized medicine, i'm attended to by the VA health system.