All This "Branding" Talk

by heath | May 27, 2008 at 10:29 AM

Connecticut

(The Connecticut GOP is one of the most forward-thinking state parties in the country, and we're not just saying that because they're a charter advertiser. Heath is right: we need to ban the word "brand" from all talk of GOP revival. -Patrick)

It is vogue these days, as good Republican editorialists, to bemoan the state of the Party ‘brand’. President Bush has saddled us with Watergate-era popularity, Congress is and shall be firmly retained by Democratic majorities in both chambers, and Sen. Barack Obama will conquer and pillage in blue states, swing states, and red states on his way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It is a bleak and jarring picture - especially so for a Party which, barely a few years ago harbored legitimate discussion about a ‘Permanent Majority’.

Perhaps the first problem we face is that we choose to discuss the future of the Party as though it were a Madison Avenue creation - a great theater actress who has fallen on hard times not for poor acting but for bad hair. The Party elders that choose to keep talking ‘brand’ and cease talking ‘values’ are facilitators of peril, not remedy. “Brand” suggests that in our fake and too trivialized society, the best means for political rebirth is a new logo, a fresh basket of buzzwords, and some catchy slogans. Politics is thoroughly common in its ability to place too high a value on transient successes.

For all the rhetoric about transformational elections, 2008 may distinguish itself not for its “return to sanity”, but an escape from it. There is a real need for serious policy discussions. Sen. Obama is not one of these “Third Way” liberals in the mold of Bill Clinton or Tony Blair, he is actively campaigning for President on a cornucopia of ideas that have been roundly rejected in the past.

It falls on us to not be distracted by talk of a ‘new and improved brand’, and instead focus on promoting our values, especially those that we forgot about when Republicans were in power - a smaller government that cuts up the national ‘credit card’ and starts reducing the national debt, a simpler government that requires less red tape and agita to get things done, and a more fair government that does not favor one set of lobbyists over another - rather favoring sensible policy over foolish ones.

Here in Connecticut, we’ve already eaten from the public policy menu Mr. Obama is selling - damn it, we’ve already had two decades of all-you-can-eat buffet - and we know the ill effects: stagnant job growth, the third highest electricity rates in the nation, the highest gas prices on the U.S. mainland, and the heaviest per-capita tax burden in America. Mr. Obama can put all the lipstick on the pig that he wants - what comes out the other end isn’t roses. Republicans can and must make this case in the fall.

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Comments

Your right

Submitted by karasoth on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 10:36.

Shame we don't have a Presidential canidate willing to do so.

I thought we did

Submitted by Lisa on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 11:36.

have a presidential candidate willing to do so. Sadly, he was laughed off the stage at the debates.

Which one was that....

Submitted by Kevin Boyd on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 11:42.

The one who wouldn't campaign or the one who's turned his campaign into Hate America cult with the purpose of profiting from his followers?

Couldn't Disagree More

Submitted by ethan on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 10:58.

Brand doesn't mean fake, it means trust. It means that when people look at the party they see a focused message based on a platform of ideas that we as a whole espouse, and that they believe we will govern under. Brand management is the key to long term success of any idea or product when you have to expand over a wide array of demographics and geographies.

When people look at your brand they know people, values and ideas stand behind it and they have to trust in those. We had developed a very strong brand throughout the 1980's--it was RR's brand--and we used it to great avail in '94 when Gingrich and Co. used the trust built throughout the 80's to leverage the Contract with America into an electable majority. People trusted the party to do handful of things: cut spending, reduce government, and lower taxes. That trust has evaporated as the party failed to govern in that vein, and thus we have a brand crisis.

If you want to win we need people to start associating the Republican Party with the ideas and issues people want to vote on, and redevelop the trust to do what's right on those issues. Branding is good, messaging is good, and with the right ideas and convictions behind it again, ours can be good.

What message are we sending?

Submitted by Patrick Ruffini on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 11:05.

I agree with you that branding talk need not be superficial. Insofar as smart marketers understand that a brand needs to align with a party / candidate / product's core attributes, it can be helpful. And I've written a bit about the power of brands in the context of this election.

But the fact is that isn't what the American people hear when it comes to fixing the Republican "brand." We need to be less outwardly focused on the packaging, and more on what's inside the box.

But Pat

Submitted by karasoth on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 11:10.

When Congressional and Presidential leaders focus on the Box

"Conservatism: Now with Global Warming fighting power" they have generated some contempt for the idea of branding.

President Bush

Submitted by goldglove51 on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 11:01.

President Bush didn't "saddle" Republicans with anything. If Reps didn't see what was coming...massive prescription drug entitlement, federal education spending, weak border enforcement...they weren't paying attention in either '00 or '04. Further, Republicans in Congress, save for the few (Eric Cantor, my own rep, is one of the exceptions) have traipsed happily down to the corner of Pork Ave and Earmark St., in the name of 'winning elections', thank you Tom DeLay and the K Street tragedy...I mean strategy. Has anyone seen Tom Davis' "explanation" of the Reps troubles? Failure to vote for an increase in SCHIP funding???? How tone deaf are these people? Most Republican voters couldn't give a rat's a** about SCHIP...they want smaller government, low taxes, protected borders, a sound currency, and victory in the war on terror. You have to have a serious case of Beltwayitis to actually think that a vote on an obscure federal program is a cause of the pending disaster in November.

SCHIP

Submitted by karasoth on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 11:04.

Yes thats right Congressman Davis. Republicans don't support the Republican congress because they didn't make over 50% of the kids in this country (including middle class kids whose parents DO have health care) waifs of the state. Yes clearly thats whats wrong.

goldglove51...

Submitted by Kevin Boyd on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 11:03.

All I have to add to your comment is Amen.

re: brand

Submitted by Alexander Brunk on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 11:05.

I actually disagree. And the reason is that there is not a consensus as to what "Republican principles" are. If you asked Tom Davis and Mike Pence the question of what should define us as a party going forward, you would get very different answers.

It's hard to argue that Republicans are about smaller government when it has never really been the case except for a few brief years in the mid 90s.

Small government, yes we can

Submitted by karasoth on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 11:08.

Smaller government means smaller taxes. Smaller government means their is less government telling people , buisnesses and families what to do. Smaller government is something every kind of Republican can get behind.

re: small government

Submitted by Alexander Brunk on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 11:15.

I support small government, but my point is that there are a lot of Republicans who don't. Many just pay lipservice to limited government while voting for more spending left and right. Others have embraced big government republicanism completely and don't even pretend to support reducing the size of government.

I would love to see a Republican party with limiting government as the core principle. But we're a long ways away from that, and pretending otherwise is not going to help us get there.

And they don't support it

Submitted by karasoth on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 11:18.

Because Republican politicans aren't saying why they should. Small government if you believe America should be a godly and moral utopia guided by the principles of the bible is not an oxymoron. but I think oxy there is a word to describe the lack of intellect republican leaders have put forward in selling it I think we know what that word is

Tom Coburn

Submitted by HouseGuru on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 11:10.

Senator Coburn has an OPAD in the wall street jurnel today anout the GOP brand. don't talk about the GOP brand before you read the article

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121184690228421415.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

Alexander

Submitted by goldglove51 on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 11:13.

Keen grasp of the obvious, although government was most certainly not smaller in the mid 90s; the military was. Unless I've missed something, 'Republican principles' are, at the very least, those which I've posted. Writing about principles, and governing by them, unfortunately, are two different things. Gingrich won the Congress for his party via a simple, elegantly posited document. He did exactly what he promised...and the party abandoned him when the Democrat media machine attacked. Eliminate the Dep't of Education? A great idea, left dusty on the shelf. Davis and his ilk are walking around blind without a cane if they think that voting down spending of ANY kind hurts his party.

Republican leaders lack courage

Submitted by karasoth on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 11:15.

There is a lack of courage to defend conservative principles. When you have to spend over 51 cents to get one federal education dollar the Department of education is broken. We could fight and win that battle if more republicans and conservatives had the courage to do so.

Much has been written

Submitted by goldglove51 on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 11:30.

Much has been written recently about the Republicans' need to 'move on' from Reagan, that somehow his solutions were those only for the issues and problems he faced 25 years ago. Utterly ridiculous. I'm well aware that Reagan is gone, and the Cold War is over; but those principles that he held are every bit as important today as they were in 1980. I'm not looking vainly for another Reagan. I'm simply looking for men and women who will hold true to his principles, not just in word but in deed. Most of you here weren't around back when the question wasn't just whether or not to raise taxes, but by how much. Ronald Reagan changed the debate, to the point where his opponent in 1984 signed his own political death warrent when he promised to be "honest" with citizens about his intention to raise their taxes. He changed the debate in foreign policy from the disastrous detente of Ford to calling the Soviets what they were; he was completely toasted in the press, by Dems, and even in his own party for that, yet he was spot on, and it marked the beginning of the fall of that Evil Empire.

Reagan had political courage

Submitted by karasoth on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 11:36.

Period.

It's all a matter of context

Submitted by Tom Readmond on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 15:33.

I think all this talk of "branding" kind of misses the mark in terms of how to move forward, because we have a brand. The "GOP Brand" is more of an issue when it is diluted. My old boss, Grover Norquist, talks about Republicans who support tax increases being a "rat head in the Coke bottle." Someone who gets a rat head in his Coke bottle is not only never going to drink a Coke again (even if millions of other Coke bottles have no rat heads), but he's going to tell all his friends about his rat head experience, and potentially ruin Coke for them too.

So the Brand analogy applies more to the importance of Republicans sticking to the core beliefs that make the GOP appealing, lest they dilute the value of that brand to voters.

The conversation about how to move forward in 2008 and beyond is more an issue of how we reaffirm the GOP Brand, rather than reinventing it.

I agree

Submitted by karasoth on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 15:58.

100% with this. Republicans need to be republicans

"Branding" needs to be real

Submitted by Langley Perry on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 16:51.

Branding is just a cute way of saying "say what you mean, and mean what you say." The Republican message or "brand" is not sticking anymore, because after the GOP was given control of the House in 1994 after 40 years of Democratic control, the revolutionary Contract for America fervor dissipated pretty quickly as many rank-and-file got cozy in the majority.

We had a Republican President, a Republican House of Representatives, and a Republican Senate for quite a few years of George W. Bush's time in office - and the "brand" touted by the GOP was conveniently forgotten.

After the thrashing at the polls the GOP got in the 2006 midterms, you would think that the leadership in the party might wake up for once. Not so! The Republican caucus in the House can't even stomach taking a one-year earmark moratorium, and their whiny excuse is because the Democrats won't do it with them: http://www.savethegop.com/2008/05/27/congressman-tom-cole-r-ok-4-unaware...

(link from Save the GOP, a movement conservative blog that I and several others write for)

Have you guys heard about a comments thread on a post by Rep. Tom Cole on the NRCC blog being flooded in the past few days with comments from angry conservatives?

No matter how much those in power in the party dress up a "brand" and try to market pet issues and whatnot, as long as the party continues to abandon First Principles, Federalism, Constitutionalism, sensible budgeting, and free market principles, the party will continue to be lost in the wilderness.

You are so right

Submitted by Just Plain Bill on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 17:33.

I was one of the commenters in that thread.

It was truly remarkable. 2,600+ responses and less than 10 of them were supportive of the Republican "brand" as it is currently practiced.

The comments were all, as far as I could tell, conservative Republicans, that were so frustrated that they were changing thier registration to Independen, Libertatian, Conservative, anything other than Republican.

The comments contained the platform that the Republican Party needs to adopt and adhere to.

Win the damn War

Balance the Budget

Make Government smaller

Lower Taxes

Drill Here, Drill Now

If adopted and adhered to, it is a winning message and "brand".

Good Comments

Submitted by Whitehorse on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 23:53.

Pat is right on the money when he says Republicans need to focus on the content of the "box," not just the packaging. No new "brand" is needed; Republican leadership needs to get back to the brand we in the grassroots still hold. Individual freedom and economic liberty still sells well because it works. I give that personal responsibility can be somewhat of a tougher sell to some, especially when the other party is promising government candy. To use another cliche, we can lead the horses of the Republican leadership to the water but can't make them drink it. I honestly don't have an answer on how to get Republican leadership to see the answer to the problem, even while select Democrat candidates win by talking more conservative than their Republican opponents.