Even Mad Men Can’t Rebrand this Bunch of Republicans

[Tx4obama]

Even Mad Men Can’t Rebrand this Bunch of Republicans

Three days after they failed to dump the president they hated and blew almost certain control of the Senate, Republicans are deep into tortured self-examination. Anyone who listened this morning as Joe Scarborough railed against the election outcome knew immediately where this is going ’cause we’ve seen it before. It is about adding people, he said over and over, not subtracting them. “The Republican Party must change its brand.”

Now as I understand the term, rebranding is when Mad Men take an unpopular product and attempt to change its image. The classic example is Marlboro, one of the first filtered cigarettes. The filter was marketed as a health benefit and the little brown tip apparently looked sexy or something so they were quickly adopted by women who were not then a large segment of the smoker market. Sales were lousy; Madison Avenue saw the problem and summoned the rugged Marlboro Man. Same stinky cancer stick but now the smell and the risks were firmly in the realm of real men. Women moved on to Virginia Slims.

Rebranding is often done, more to the point of the current situation, when a name that was once respectable becomes irreparably tainted. Blackwater the military contractor became Xe and moved its headquarters overseas after it and its employees were accused of everything from tax fraud to arms trafficking and overbilling to manslaughter. Even worse they started to lose government contracts. Whether Blackwater or Xe, they remain malicious mercenaries.

So Republicans, according to Scarborough, Haley Barbour, and 74.5 percent of the nation’s political pundits, must rebrand. And the party appears to be taking this to heart. So far I have heard they plan to spotlight Mario Rubio, one of their few prominent Hispanics, and give (per Mitch McConnell through clenched teeth) the President more opportunity to bring them legislation they like. Rush Limbaugh asked with a good deal of wonderment whether they would have to welcome immigrants with open arms and give women birth control pills.

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Full article here: http://www.politicususa.com/mad-men-rebrand-bunch-republicans.html

A Good Read

[cprise]

1. Rebranding won't stick to them anymore

Teflon attitudes have turned out to be a huge liability after all.

[Dan]

2. There is only one thing that the GOP (with few exceptions) will be consistent with

is their ongoing hatred of Blacks (with few exceptions).

My opinion...

So, as part of their rebranding - they have to figure out, how to appeal to Brown people, females, liberals (etc.) and then convince them to hate Blacks.

[Bluenorthwest]

3. Actually they tried 'rebranding' last time. 'We are now the Tea Party'.....

it didn't really work all that well. But after Bush and the blows to GOP public image, the 'Tea Party' ploy was an attempt to engage in Republican politics under a name that was not 'Republican'. Of course the 'Tea Party' never even tried to be a real Party, they were always just a subset of the Republican Party, the subset that tried to get others involved by pretending they were not part of the mainstream Party of GW Bush.
They tried rebranding, and it backfired on them.