The Obama 2008 campaign won for a lot of reasons, but one of the biggest is that it used Alinsky-esque tactics to demean and belittle its opponents. It smeared them as racists. It smeared them as scared little morons clinging to their guns and religion. But all of that can be summed up in three words: "They ridiculed us."
It's hard to stand up to ridicule. It's hard to fight it. It's a classic playground tactic, and the Left have proven they have a playground mentality. Bullies insult your looks, your size, your intelligence, your (ahem) prowess, even your sexuality. And Liberals insult Ann Coulter's looks, Rush Limbaugh's size, Scott Brown's sexuality and the intelligence of EVERY conservative, but probably Sarah Palin's the most often today.
I want everybody to read the following words: SARAH PALIN. Now, what went through your mind? That's easy. If you're a Leftist, or even a centrist, the first word you most likely thought was "idiot". If you're a right-winger, you probably thought "It's a shame so many think she's stupid."
The Left used ridicule on her intelligence non-stop, and continue doing so today. She cannot deliver a five-minute interview without it being picked apart, and anything that even appears to be a gaffe making headlines. If Sarah Palin were to say that the sky is blue, there would be story after story saying that Palin is obviously not intelligent enough to know that the sky changes colors and anyway, it's actually black and we only see it as blue during the day. These stories would likely come with mis-leading headlines such as "Palin Can't Tell What Color the Sky Is" or something along those lines.
Ridicule worked on Sarah Palin. While it energized her base, it has successfully polarized the rest of the country, with many who would otherwise agree with her political standpoint believing she simply must be an idiot.
Contrarily, we constantly hear about how much of a genius Obama is. Any thinking man can look at the last two years and ask "Just what about his performance as President makes you think he's a genius?" The man can't talk without a teleprompter. Every one of his plans to save the economy has only made it worse. He says one thing and does another. Worse yet, he somehow fails to see that more than half the country HATES what he's doing. They didn't want Obamacare, for example, and his approval rating shot down to 47%. Now that there's talk of repealing it, suddenly it's "skyrocketed" to 53%, but I expect that to drop as Obama continues to pursue his agenda, oblivious to the repudiation of said agenda the American people have routinely shown.
2012 is now less than one year away. The time to get serious about who's going to run against Obama is getting closer all the time. At this point, nobody from the Republican party looks to really be surging ahead. None of them really have the base or support they'd need to actually win the nomination, much less the race. But whoever we choose, whoever ends up as Obama's opponent next year, I know what they need to do.
They need to ridicule Obama. They need to laugh at him. They need to make him look foolish. They need to point out just how many times this joke of a president has screwed up.
Can you imagine? On the debate stage, Obama gives his "scholarly"-sounding lecture, uses words like "hope", "change", "winning the future" and other nice-sounding meaningless platitudes...
...And then his opponent will openly laugh and say "Listen to yourself! Even you don't know what you're saying! So I'll spell it out for you. You are responsible for unprecedented levels of government spending. You have not made good on a single campaign promise. Every plan you've put in place to improve the economy has only made it worse. Unemployment has risen on your watch. You have made us appear weak and subserviant to our enemies and you have offended and alienated our allies. The only thing you set out to do that you actually accomplished is creating a bank-breaking healthcare bill that the American people didn't want, and now you appear to be trying to take credit for its repeal. You are a disgrace to the office of president. And you are a joke."
Of course, racism charges, or Uncle Tom charges should the nominee be Herman Cain or Allen West, will be levelled against whoever has the guts to do that. The response should be? More laughter. "You can't seriously believe the race card is still gonna work. If you honestly believe that calling everybody racist will automatically silence all opposition, you really are pathetic."
Right-wing talk-show hosts, columnists, bloggers and TV personalities have been doing this for the last three years. It's time to take it on the campaign trail. Whoever we nominate, should it be Sarah Palin, Herman Cain, Chris Christie, etc. has got to make it their mission not just to get their own arguments across but to leave Obama humiliated by the time they're done. People like Ann Coulter or Andrew Breitbart understand that Liberals don't see this as political discourse but ideological war, and they've been treating it like a war for decades now. It's time for us to do the same thing. The best way to win a war is to take the best defense your opponent uses and turn it against them.
Let's be the laughers in this next election, rather than the ones allowing ourselves to be laughed at.
