Thu Jan 5, 2012
posted under General
Political rhetoric coming from the Republican candidates in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina etc. stress racial and class separation based on the threat of a giveaway Obama administration.
During the 2008 campaign Obama made an offhand remark to a man at a rally to the effect that wealth would be redistributed if he were elected. The man was “Joe the Plumber” and we know how that played out.
During his press conference in Iowa on caucus night Newt Gingrich said “most important for America is jobs not wealth redistribution, paychecks not food stamps.” That same night Michelle Bachman said “we will repeal his socialized medicine program.” Romney stressed the same themes with an additional emphasis on “job creators.”
By looking at the content of the speeches one knows the results of the research among Republican voters. Those points in the speeches were revealed in the polling and focus groups research carried on by all candidates. When mentioned by the candidates, the words are meant to touch that response in voters that says “you know how I feel, you know my concerns.”
Then there was the speech by Rick Santorum that shared the simple life experience of an immigrant family fleeing Italy’s fascist Mussolini that through hard work realized the American dream. His description of his grandfather’s hands, big and calloused by a lifetime of digging coal, struck another responsive chord not revealed by research: “He is like me, and he feels my concerns.”
Rick Santorum’s speech was a very powerful expression of political philosophy delivered in simple easy to grasp words. Santorum mentioned that his grandfather worked in the coal mines until he was 72 years old and had worked for a mining company that paid in coupons that could be redeemed at the company store, or if he wanted, could be paid in money but it was less than coupons. The message in that vignette is “we have been exploited too.”
The question ahead is if Santorum can move his success to New Hampshire and South Carolina and beyond. That will take money because he needs TV ads to make the jump to national contender. Santorum did what others didn’t: he humanized the message and made it personal.
Polls can tell you what voters want but it takes a real person to make it work.
For Democrats the night saw the end of the Michelle Bachman campaign and a further entrenchment of the far right political movement.