The GOP has spent billions on public relations and marketing and now after losing badly in the election they are claiming they are bad at it. They still believe they need a new rebranding or marketing plant. They still don't realize what President Obama did to them.
Here's what he did. In the 1970s, a social psychologist named Milton Rokeach conducted a experiment with the celebrity Ed Asner. They developed a half-hour TV show to determine if they could change people's values and the surprising thing is they did. People often put a high price on personal freedom and control and the GOP constantly plays to those theme.
The President campaign, just like that old experiment, was meant to show that personal freedom shouldn't be placed above the freedom of others. As the President is fond of saying, we're in this together and everyone deserves a fair shot. He emphasized that economies grow when the middle class, not the wealthy, grow.
That poses a value question to voters: me politics versus the politics of mutual support.
Before the election, many independent voters still believed that supporting the rich gave them more jobs or created more wealth. The President has not just debunked that idea, he's exposed the phony values behind it. People will forget an argument but are less inclined to forget basic values.
The President won the election but perhaps more importantly he has exposed the selfish underbelly of the GOP. We need to work for candidates that will keep pushing that theme.
For a long time, the GOP played on the idea that supporting the rich is a good idea and for them to reverse that position would cost them their funders and their supporters so they are stuck unless they can convince independents that giving to the rich is a good idea again. We must work hard to let people know that's not only a bad idea but it's also shows poor values.
We should learn from President Obama's approach. He exposed the truth about GOP values in a way that independent voters could understand and we must continue to use that approach in future campaigns so our gains are not lost.