We Need To Reach The Middle's Radar

This week gave me a new insight into the biggest problem we face in turning America around from this Marxist onslaught brought forth by the Obama administration and the Democrats. I saw where one of my Facebook friends posted that Brittany Murphy died at 32. My first thought was that she must have been someone this poster knew personally. Then seeing more comments I realized that she was some sort of celebrity. I asked my wife who she was, she handles all the entertainment industry news for our family, so she started trying to tell me where I would know her. What I found was that I had truly never heard of her before, and had never seen her in anything she had ever done. She simply was never on my radar until her death notice.

With this I thought back to all the holiday family get togethers over the years where my relatives would be having these discussions of television programs, and the characters on them, and I would be sitting there clueless of what they were talking about. I have never been interested in network programing. Sports yes, television shows no. Never knew who shot J.R. and didn't care. The only show I have ever allowed myself to watch is "24." My son has tried to get me to watch "House", but just seeing the trailers makes me avoid it, it looks like something I would like and could get hooked on. I have no interest in being committed to watching a show.

This isn't a condemnation on those who do, it was just never part of my world. What it did teach me is I now understand those blank stares I get when I talk politics, economics, civics, and history, which are the topics I enjoy and read, study, and watch things about. These are topics that are not on most people's radars, and are things that make many feel like their eyes are glazing over.

So if that is how it is, how do we reach those who are not interested in politics, who are more interested in what is happening on their favorite sitcom, or American Idol? This is going to be key in winning back America, is getting the attention of the masses. Right now we are having a heated battle between the 10% who are passionately on the right, and the 10% who are passionately on the left, and we are gaining the attention of 20-30%.

The key to success is to capture the hearts and minds of those who are independent, or in the middle politically. John Adams taught us that in any war 1/3 of Americans would be passionately for it, another 1/3 would be passionately against any war, and the real battle ground is for the hearts and minds of the 1/3 in the middle.

So how do we do it? How do we get their attention? Once they are paying attention, how do we package a message that will captivate someone who has spent their life not paying attention to politics and hasn't a lot of understanding of it?

Something that I have sent to the GOP on several occasions is an idea that I think might work. Instead of spending our campaign advertising money to run ads that attack our opponents that tend to sound just like the ones our opponents use to attack us, how about using that money to educate?

Imagine if you will an ad campaign that uses the same teaching style that "School House Rocks" used to. Where a catchy song is used to teach about one of our platform issues, where the listener would find it stuck in their heads, but would have a new understanding of how something works, and why.

The democrats require an uneducated, ignorant electorate to have any chance of moving their agenda forward. The conservatives have to have an educated electorate who understands the consequences of different approaches to an issue to win. The schools have not educated, and our society doesn't watch the news, doesn't read the paper, and has almost no understanding of economics, history, civics, or politics. How can we hope that they will understand our message unless we package it in fun 30 second jingles? It is worth a try.