"Yikes! I Might Be...Militia!"
The long-exposure photo at right, captured by Signaltheorist, shows the 30-minutes-long path of a Roomba® robotic vacuum cleaner. Appearing to have chaos and disorganization at the core of its effort, it reminds this blogger of the recently-announced effort to rebrand the Republican Party.
Unless those efforts are altered immediately, conservative-first party members — including yours truly — are destined to feel as if they’ve been left in a political vacuum, without a party to call their own.
In a commentary today, John Armor helps me make this argument when he recalls from his long-ago days in the advertising business that “rebranding” once meant putting a new name and a new slogan on an old product that the people demonstrably did not want.
“If ‘rebranding’ is all that the Republicans do, it will be a fraud,” the contributing editor at FamilySecurityMatters.org, explained. “It will fail. It will deserve to fail. And, the nation will be the worse for the lack of any competent opposition to present trends in the U.S. government.”
Armor didn’t say it, but I think he would agree that Sen. John McCain’s front-and-center involvement in this rebranding effort fits the description of “an old product that the people demonstrably did not want.” Perhaps, it’s time we throw out the old “vacuum cleaner” that is Senator McCain. After all, “my friends,” he’s been working hard for 27 years and, like most vacuum cleaners used that long, he is surely obsolete by now.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Always On Watch // May 9, 2009 at 9:27 am
I feel as if the Republican Party left me.
I’m very concerned about what we conservatives are to do at the polls in 2010 and 2012. We need a clear choice — not rebranding. So far, I see the Party as a whole doing only the latter.
2 justin // May 9, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Come on, politics is just like any business. It takes marketing. When one product does bad, you have to either dump it, or change it, or at least it’s appearance. Substantively it will be the same, it is just a marketing tool. Otherwise you will never win elections. We are dealing with the American people, who unfortunately are easily swayed by a mob mentality and by shallow marketing messages.
3 hotoffthepress2 // May 9, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Sure, it is, but any so-called “rebranding” effort that features Senator McCain as a headliner is a failure out of the gate.
4 » ‘Rebranding’ Leaves Conservatives in Vacuum NoisyRoom.net: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the face of tyranny is no virtue.” Barry Goldwater // May 9, 2009 at 2:44 pm
[...] By: Bob McCarty Bob McCarty Writes [...]
5 Walther // May 9, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Aren’t we all looking for principled, thoughtful small government values?
The current GOP leadership does not advocates small government. They sold out to the bankers, corporations and lobbyists long ago. Ron Paul and the libertarian wing of the party are the only people with a substantive message these days. Unless we RAISE the bar by explaining the simple yet powerful principles of small government the GOP will become completely irrelevant.
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