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Why There is No Substance to the Election - the Ryan Plan
I have a solution to this problem for the Democratic campaign, which I'll describe at the bottom.
In the context of the article, this bit of information is used to explain why Priorities USA pivoted to focusing on Mitt Romney's career at Bain Capital. But we should consider what this information means for the Romney campaign. His actual economic policies are so unpopular that people simply refuse to believe he could actually be advocating them. And that is precisely why he isn't advocating them. He is not talking about what is actually in Paul Ryan's budget proposal at all. Nor will he. It polls so badly that you can't even run ads against it because people don't believe anyone would be so radical as to propose such things.
So, that's the starting point for understanding this election. Team Romney is trying to steal a page out of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign by making this an election all about the economy, stupid. But his economic plans are unmentionable. Their substance is taboo. All substance on the core issue is off limits. Romney is waging a campaign on the economy without articulating any specifics.
The specifics exist, of course, in the Ryan Plan or Romney's 29-page economic plan (or however long it is), but he's not interested in discussing those details. Why would he be? He might as well indicate that, if elected, he intends to infect every American with chlamydia. For the same reason that Bill Burton and Paul Begala discovered that Romney's economic plan was not ripe for criticism, Romney knows it isn't ripe for advocacy either. It's just this toxic thing that neither side wants to touch.
But it really is what the Republicans want and intend to do if they get the power to do it.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/7/13/94640/5016
So, that's the starting point for understanding this election. Team Romney is trying to steal a page out of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign by making this an election all about the economy, stupid. But his economic plans are unmentionable. Their substance is taboo. All substance on the core issue is off limits. Romney is waging a campaign on the economy without articulating any specifics.
The specifics exist, of course, in the Ryan Plan or Romney's 29-page economic plan (or however long it is), but he's not interested in discussing those details. Why would he be? He might as well indicate that, if elected, he intends to infect every American with chlamydia. For the same reason that Bill Burton and Paul Begala discovered that Romney's economic plan was not ripe for criticism, Romney knows it isn't ripe for advocacy either. It's just this toxic thing that neither side wants to touch.
But it really is what the Republicans want and intend to do if they get the power to do it.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/7/13/94640/5016
There's a great passage in Neal Stephenson's old novel Zodiac, where the hero talks about how corporations violate pH regulations by a factor of 50,000. And he describes that he doesn't tell people the actual 50,000 number. He says: "the companies dump more than twice the legal amount." Why? Because people just don't believe the real number. "More than twice the legal amount" is completely true, and people believe it, and it provides the right emotional reaction!
And so that is the solution for the Democrats and the Ryan plan: don't describe the full incredible plan. Describe some parts of it, and/or tone it down to whatever level where people (a) believe it and (b) emotionally connect with the fact that it's bad. We'll still be telling the 100% truth, and people will "get it."