Archive for April 23rd, 2011
Brainstorming Easter focus group questions – what will you ask Independent and Obama-voting relatives at holiday meal?
There is a line in the sand all of you will cross at some point between now and 2012…when you realize every get-together you go to is a focus group that can be mined for valuable political intel.
All of you are reporters and election consultants, even if you don’t yet realize it.
But, there is a true art to intel gathering that takes practice. It is hard to be a good listener and a subtle questioner. Too often, people who are passionate about politics turn others off by seeming too aggressive…or “spoiling” gatherings by politicizing them.
It is much more effective (and pleasant) to be a subtle questioner instead of a determined crusader.
There’s a story a nun taught my class in grade school about the sun and a storm cloud trying to take a coat off a man…where the cloud summoned all sorts of bluster and power to berate the coat off the man; the guy just clung to it even harder and refused to budge.
The sun just quietly turned up his natural brilliance, in time making it impossible for the man to cling to his heavy coat; the heat was increased on him without him knowing it until it became impossible for him NOT to change what he had been doing.
This is how we are going to win in 2012, with this sunny and non-blustered approach to getting the Obama voters of 2008 to take off their hopeychangey zombie shirts and put down their Kool-Aid.
If you get the chance at brunch or dinner tomorrow with people you don’t see often, take the opportunity to ask them how they think Obama is doing.
Ask them if he has met their expectations or kept his promises to them.
Ask them to look at him as an employee they hired, and find out what sort of an evaluation they would give him.
Then listen.
If they bluster and get defensive, don’t feed energy into the maelstrom. Just ask them why they are so emtional and make them explain themselves.
Keep questioning any blanket statements they make.
If they use pejoratives directed at Governor Palin or other conservatives, ask them to justify the attacks with facts. Ask them why they feel this way…and why they use such words against a wife, mother of five, and grandmother who has never done anything to hurt them.
The way we beat Obama and the Left next year is by getting really good at making the most out of every informal focus group we are part of every day.
SOMEONE has to be the grownup who leads every group and directs every discussion.
Why can’t that be you?
Why can’t this start now?
Anyone have any great tips and really effective strategies for being a skilled, sunny questioner of Obama voters like this?
Mississippi town foils Democrat activist Fred Phelps’ latest evil scheme
http://www.retirelikeme.com/2011/04/21/mississippi-town-destroys-westboro-baptist-plans/
Fred Phelps is a six-time Democrat Senate, Congressional, and gubernatorial candidate. His family members are long time associates of Al Gore. Phelps is the activist/agitator founder of the Westboro Democrat hate brigade…the group that travels the country wishing AIDS on gay people whenever they are not trying to ruin military funerals.
Phelps and his fellow Westboro Democrats are emotional terrorists.
Recently, Mississippi residents foiled Phelps’ attempt to disrupt a young Marine’s funeral.
Read the story linked at the top.
My favorite parts were when pickup trucks mysteriously blocked all Kansas-plated cars in a hotel parking garage and Westboro-looking people were coincidentally detained for questioning regarding an unrelated crime until the funeral was over.
The best and most effective way to counter Phelps and Westboro is to educate the public about Phelps being a longtime Democrat activist and perpetual candidate.
The Media works overtime obfuscating this…and most people don’t realize Phelps is a Democrat hate machine, because the Media wants to paint Westboro as some twisted agent of the religious right.
Which it is not.
It is impossible to believe anyone who has ever picked up a Bible and read it will join Phelps’ emotional terrorism against anyone.
It’s also clear as day how terrified the Democrat Party is of people speaking the truth about Phelps’ long history as a Democrat candidate for office.
The only way Phelps will stop is if the DNC and its Media stop him.
And they won’t do that unless enough Americans make the connection that Phelps is a Democrat emotional terrorist manifesting the same hateful sickness that infects much of the Left.
Marines in Afghanistan take the internet by storm
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCrG6TzG-nw&feature=player_embedded
The Marines are members of the Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 169 and MarineMedium Tiltrotor Squadron 266 (Rein)…currently serving in Afghanistan.
Oh how I love these guys….and gals.
OO-RAH!
Saturday Open Thread: April 23rd, 2011
Bo...the most popular Obama
What’s on your minds this Saturday?
What are people talking about in your part of the world?
Boystown shop windows on Halsted celebrate upcoming wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton
It’s not unusual here in Boystown to spot queens all dolled up in Halsted’s shop windows…but a few stores have dedicated displays to Prince William and Catherine Middleton’s upcoming wedding, on April 29th 2011.
The most inventive and interesting windows in town always belong to Beatnix…a hodgepodge of a shop that’s part vintage, part novelty, and seemingly the Midwest’s chief clothier to drag queens of all shapes and sizes. It’s the Bergdorfs of female impersonators, with Andrew McCarthy and Kim Cattrall in all their Mannequin glory quality windows.
There’s a little Kentucky Derby action thrown in as well over at Beatnix. The last time Queen Elizabeth II was in America, I believe she attended the Derby, so it’s all fitting that way.
A racier take on the Royal Wedding pops up a few doors north, with pop artist Lee Kay’s new installation “The Royal Bedding”, where the soon-to-be Princess Catherine wears kippers & mash on her head and Prince William sports his old water polo gear….while Her Majesty and Prince Phillip awkwardly officiate the honeymoon.
It’s actually a restrained scene for Boystown…and nothing if not colorful.
Are there little nods to next week’s events popping up where you live?
Are you going to watch the wedding?
What do you think of William and Catherine and “The Firm’s” handling of their marriage…especially considering the disaster of William’s parents?
Or, like my boyfriend Justin…do you just not care about any of it?
Gold Action Item: Think of ways to consistently ask Americans if they received the hopeychange Obama promised them in 2008
I have been told the Cocktail Party GOP establishment does not want Americans asked on a regular basis if they got the hopeychange Obama promised them in the 2008 election.
Say it with me: the Cocktail Party GOP establishment is stupid, and far too dependent on consultants who eat their crayons.
The thinking (if you stretch the word enough to cover this folly) is that “Republicans need to save this attack for 2012″.
Right.
The same way the Party of Stupid is forever saving this, reserving that, and generally abstaining from winning strategies…for one inane reason or another.
The article at the top of this post predicts $6 gas this summer…with a massive surge in food prices. States are so broke, many cannot even afford to keep funding their food stamp programs. That means disaster, not hopeychange, is barrelling down on millions of Americans…many of whom were stupidly Obama voters in 2008.
On a daily basis, people who voted for Obama three years ago need to be asked if they received the hopeychange they were promised and if they are in better shape than they were back when they drank all that Kool-Aid.
I do not see any way that people who did NOT vote for Obama in 2008 will be so charmed by his job performance that they support his re-election.
I have never heard a McCain/Palin voter wish they could time travel and pull the lever for Obama instead…not even for the free ride in an operational, flux-capacitored DeLorean.
That leaves our focus on asking the non-crazy, but misguided 2008 Obama voters if all the hopeychange hype and Media zeal was worth it in THEIR DAILY LIVES.
Make people realize what a bad hiring decision they made in wanting to take a chance on an untested, mysterious, exotic who never delivered on the soaring promises of his job interview.
Give people a BUSINESS and not emotional decision to make…and watch them vote in their economic best interests to evict the Obamas from Washington.
Remember: the GOP Cocktail Party establishment will fumble this, because part of me thinks the consulting firms these fools rely so heavily on WANT to lose important elections.
We have a year and change to prevent this.
And it starts by asking every last Obama voter in the country if they got the hopeychange they were promised.
Does anyone out there REALLY know a soul who is better off today than he or she was before The Golden Age of Hope and Change began?
