calimary
calimary's JournalI wouldn't doubt that for a nanosecond!!!
Some other DUer elsewhere here reminded about the Mormons' "retroactive baptism" thing, and how maybe that same mentality might have governed the "romney resigned retroactively" mess that ed gillespie made this morning. Wonder if he came up with that or the response strategists had already been kicking it around in the back room somewhere.
Worth considering. It's always good to have an understanding of the enemy, what makes him tick, and how he responds. Examine their backgrounds and, therefore, their conditioning - either by being taught it or experiencing it for themselves. Keep in mind their motivation, and how basic it is. Shit - and every time you have to factor some extremist religion or cult into the equation, that ALWAYS leads to bigger and nastier messes. ALWAYS try to get into the mindset of the enemy. Helps guide you toward their weaknesses and prepares you to spot their mistakes. They're as invincible as Goliath and Achilles' heel.
BUT EVEN SO: ALSO consider this at all times: We do NOT have this thing won yet.
Yes! Keep pounding! My husband wants to know where the longform tax returns are!
Considering how this might already have outrun the GOP's rapid response strategists, it ought to be GREAT fun to watch some of the late night comedy that WILL arise out of this. Can't wait to hear Leno, Letterman, Conan, Colbert, and Jon Stewart have a go at it!
When you're trying to run for president and trying to have yourself taken oh-so-serious as a candidate, and you become a national joke, methinks your troubles are only getting started.
Granted, this is only July. But November is much closer than we all think.
CONSTANT VIGILANCE, like Mad-Eye Moody always warned Harry Potter! Never let down your guard! And NEVER play by their playbook!
SUPERB analysis of this, alcibiades_mystery! I think we're all starting to smarten up.
So many of us are recognizing what's REALLY going on here.
This is IT.
It's all strategy. You accurately and shrewdly point out that they're used to this tactic working. Turn it back on the Dems and make them AND it the story. Deflect, deflect, and then deflect some more. But - gasp! - it isn't working. They can't deflect because this haughty elitist would-be king and his queen, the lady ann of dressage, are so accustomed to their word being taken as law instead of taken out for an un-spin-cycle spin. The questions keep coming and at least SOME reporters and writers and bloggers are smelling smoke and building themselves a hard-on to find the inevitable fire somewhere nearby.
And they're not used to this. They've been experts at attacking and deflecting and distracting for years! It's always worked the way they schemed and manipulated and timed and dictated. But it's always depended on the same accompanying conditions: that Dems would always cave, back down, capitulate, apologize, resign or otherwise fall on their swords, and go away quietly. These seem to be different Dems, though. They don't act as expected - OR AS PREDICTED. They're outside the comfortable, well-worn, long-established parameters of the playing field. It's a lot harder to manage. The GOP's desired result depends on a set group of conditions being met, establishing a climate, a foundation, that leads to that desired result. That's why they like to stack the deck. They're all about tilting the playing field. They have to - because that's the only way they're assured of winning. (Why do you think they're all over voter suppression at the state level these days?)
The nice thing here is this:
We talk a lot about battle tactics. Some of us have read or at least skimmed Sun Tzu's "The Art of War." Some here have studied other warriors' tactics and strategies, based on the premise that this is actually a war we're fighting. This is war. The other side has certainly declared it against us. The GOP is falling back on some of their old tricks. Their default positioning. Do this, the Dems react like that, then you close the deal by doing thus. It's worked for years! And what happens after you've seen the same tactics always work in the same way? You start getting used to it. It's always worked, so you figure it's always GONNA work. You have no evidence to the contrary - BECAUSE it's just always worked. So you fall into complacency and start getting arrogant, and maybe just a very tiny bit, you drop your guard a little. It's a pattern, a habit, and soon enough, a republi-CON "law of nature." It becomes an "IS" is you will. As in, this just IS. That's how it IS. Remember those snot-nosed rich ladies driving into and out of the romney fundraisers in the Hamptons - about how it just IS - the common people simply don't understand how things are and how things work. The template is in place.
Meanwhile, however, the opposition has changed it up a little. They're not following the unspoken rules about how they're supposed to react, and how their response is supposed to go. Suddenly, the ol' reliable template doesn't fit anymore. If you're suitably preconditioned to something always working the way you expect it to, you will be thrown for a loop as to how to respond when something suddenly STOPS working the way you expect it to. You won't have the ol' template to work from, because all of a sudden the template doesn't work in this case. THAT IS WHY so many teabaggers and other knuckledraggers have trouble articulating beyond the talking points and the bumper-sticker sloganeering. The response template was provided to them free, reinforced with repetition and effective results, and they didn't have to think about this or reason it out for themselves, and frankly, they didn't even have to understand it - just like we "common people" were told was how things work.
And what happens when you don't exercise your muscles? They become flabby. Then sometimes they go as far as to atrophy. Well - works the same way in the human mind. That's why so many experts recommend stuff that keeps the mind active - to Alzheimer's patients. Keep it exercised and nimble. That's not what the GOP has preconditioned most of its operatives below the rove/kristol/ailes/luntz/romney level on the zigurrat to respond to. They're all rendered a bit psychologically lazy, spoiled, and flabby after so many years of the same reliable template working for them so well, like it always did. But it's a mile wide and a millimeter deep. Barely scratch the surface or ask the wrong question or probe just a bit below the veneer and the whole thing starts to go to pieces. They have no experience or practice dealing with anything else.
They're probably gonna be hiring a whole bunch of crisis-management PR firms in the next week to try to get out in front of this again. But there may be nothing left to get out in front of. The train, as they say, may already have left the station with a solid majority of the electorate on it. Remember the mistakes of John Kerry and how easily he was swiftboated on his military experience. That meme was left un-tamped-down by his campaign until it had already started sinking in through the national pores. And once it did that, he was sunk. Oh yeah, he finally woke up and started raising a defense and tried to go on offense, but we waited for a week while the Kerry campaign did nothing and the questions grew and he just started looking worse and worse and fishier and fishier, and they gave up on their ivory-tower "don't DIGNIFY it with a response!" shit. Which clearly wasn't working. Once it seeps into the public consciousness - either consciously or unconsciously, the seeds of doubt are sown and take root. And the candidate is done. If this sinks in deep enough in the public mind, it won't matter how many hundreds of millions of dollars they throw mitt's way. The impression will have been made. First impressions and all that. And as we all know, if those first impressions are negative, you spend the rest of your life living them down.
The Dems just have to hold firm, defiant, NON-COMPLIANT and CERTAINLY non-apologetic, and keep asking questions. The enemy is all standing their with their dicks caught in their zippers and they do not know what to do or how to respond. This is unfamiliar territory to them and they don't have an effective counter-strategy for it. Blind-sided like Tom Cruise, who wasn't expecting any pushback from his "mousy little wife" he thought he knew and had under control, who'd never dare to defy him. Nicole Kidman let herself get rolled. Katie Holmes is DIFFERENT. Same thing going on there as the GOP is grappling with now. This is not the Nicole Kidman party they're dealing with (at least in this case). If this sinks in deeply enough, it may already be too late to turn around.
Funny - does that mean it's OUR turn to be the "Party of NO"?
Even the "common people" know when they start smelling a rat.
OH crap - ran too long again... sorry.
Understanding mitt - you have to understand the CEO mentality.
I posted this elsewhere, but I want to make sure people see it - the CEO mentality is what's governing every action and thought and dodge and two-step that mitt romney is attempting as his Bain Capital involvement gets messier and messier. It's very helpful to understand who he is, where he comes from (the MINDSET, not the geography), the superiority complex, and the sense of the overriding entitlement of the ruling class:
He's a CEO. CEOs are accustomed to answering to basically nobody. I mean - look at the CEOs who've gone in to testify before Congress. They skate and slide and bullshit-blather and fast-talk and fancy-step but they don't cough up much. They're imperialist weasels who recognize NO public obligation or responsibility or accountability. Because they believe it simply doesn't apply to them. And they don't do so because there's this imperiousness about the level of CEO. You're on top of the ziggurat. You're The Big Guy. Everybody else is underneath you in rank. You don't work for anybody. They all work for YOU. And they're damn lucky to have their damn jobs too, so they should just shut up and stop annoying His Lordship - who doesn't owe them any explanation on anything, EVER! And besides, they have no right to ask - CERTAINLY no right to demand anything of him!
It's a CEO mentality. A Major-League Superiority Complex. Every CEO is a KING of his own little fiefdom in the corporate world. And the CEO mentality has no business in government at all, much less in the White House! The president is NOT a CEO, and certainly no king! George Washington himself put a stop to that! That's not how it's structured or how it was intended. The president is - gasp, choke - a PUBLIC SERVANT. In the PUBLIC SECTOR. And believe me, romney, with his CEO mentality, clearly doesn't fancy himself as anybody's servant, that's for DAMN sure!!! He's an aristocrat who, he believes, was born to rule. His word is law, and you're not supposed to question it, you're just supposed to follow his orders. He believes that his being a CEO entitles him to say "Jump," and YOU, lucky commoner, are entitled merely to ask "how high?" Just like everybody else in the corporate structure beneath him, that he sits on top of, has to do in the private sector. And yeah, that's how it works in the private sector. But it DOESN'T work that way in the PUBLIC SECTOR, in which a president operates.
romney WILL, however, bring that kind of mentality into the Oval Office if Heaven forbid he's elected. That's what he's used to, that's what he knows, that's where he's come from, and that's basically who he is. george w. bush had this disease too, if you'll recall.
It's the World's Biggest Entitlement Program: yet another republi-CON who presumes it's simply his birthright to live in the White House, by some Divine decree. They're just better than you. They're the ruling class and you're one of the peons. You don't get it, you certainly weren't educated for it, and you can't POSSIBLY understand how it all works. And just like one of those haughty rich bitches in the Land Rovers and Rolls Royces who breezed in and out of those romney fundraising orgies in the Hamptons, they're just simply SUPPOSED to be on top, and you, the common people, don't even begin to understand it. So there's simply no way you can be up there on top with them, at their level, breathing their rarified air. That's not your place and was never meant to be. THEY belong on top, and YOU belong someplace else. Somewhere underneath.
Anyone remember leona helmsley? Of the lavish New York City hotel the Helmsley Palace? She appeared in all its glossy full-color magazine ads, presenting herself as the Queen of the Helmsley Palace. And the ad slogan was "...where the queen stands guard." Her haughty, dictatorial behavior and the way she treated people underneath her - earned her a "title" alright: "the Queen of Mean." Famous for her declaration that "only the little people pay taxes." Well, she got sent up the river for income tax evasion in the late 80s. Everyone figured Marie Antoinette finally got her cake shoved in her face, and she didn't live and breathe arrogance and elitism for very long. It's a major-league superiority complex. mitt romney is a male leona helmsley. Only the little people have to answer for what they've done. Only the little people have to answer questions or provide documents or otherwise show proof. He doesn't have to. You don't understand. He's actually King. And Kings bow to no one. Any more than they have to cough up answers in detail and or submit to accountability in general.
And YOUR job is simply to shut up and stop asking all these questions, and just take his word for it. And then vote for him. PERIOD. Besides, his very own Queen, Her Ladyship ann of Dressage, says it's their turn now, anyway.
(From this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1016&pid=35365 )
My dad was a CEO - granted, he owned a very small company that would hardly be a blip on the radar screen of the mitt romney world. But I saw that attitude manifest itself all over the place.
UNDERSTAND THE CEO MENTALITY!
UNDERSTAND how they fancy themselves. The ruling class mentality. Those unfortunate rich broads in their Land Rovers and luxury cars that were streaming in and out of the Hamptons during those recent big-ass fat-cat big-ticket romney fundraising orgies inadvertently gave the game away. How untouchable and superior they are and better than you. Ideally, they're supposed to keep quiet about it so nobody's tipped off. But in their arrogance and OBSCENELY large sense of entitlement, sometimes they forget, and slip up and blab it all to the public (that's not supposed to know, and certainly not entitled to ask any pesky questions about it).
World's Biggest Entitlement Program: the GOP's presumption that the White House is simply their birthright.
(From this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=952680 )
Print it out and send it, by snail-mail.
Paul Begala once said that 100 paper letters would change the course of a newsroom. PAPER letters, that can be xeroxed, passed around held in the hand and looked at repeatedly, posted on the coffee room bulletin board, and placed in the public record. When it's on paper, it carries more weight.
Dammit! You beat me to it - well, uh - wait!
Post 18, farther downthread.
But wait! I declare that I posted "Radioactive Mitt" retroactively before you did!
EXCEPTIONALLY Well Done!!!
I think you probably didn't get comments in the beginning because we were all too busy reading and studying what you wrote - so we can apply it in our own circumstances.
CONFRONT THEM WITH THEIR SHIT. All they have is talking points and slogans and bumper sticker phrases because they really don't understand any of this. They're just angry and lashing out, and acting out. They just know what sounds good in feeding their outrage and indignation. And they'll believe anything at this point.
Gonna be Radioactive Mitt before too long.
It's important to understand where this arrogant, imperious bastard comes from, though. Then you understand his motivation.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1016&pid=35365
What made him think he could get away with lying? Indeed. Consider this:
I wrote about it here - based on what I've observed for years about CEO behavior and the CEO mentality. Call it the World's Biggest Entitlement Program - he's yet another republi-CON who simply presumes that he's entitled to rule in the Oval Office, that the White House is his simply by some Divine decree:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1016&pid=35365
My dad was a CEO - granted, he owned a very small company that would hardly be a blip on the radar screen of the mitt romney world. But I saw that attitude manifest itself all over the place.
UNDERSTAND THE CEO MENTALITY!
UNDERSTAND how they fancy themselves. The ruling class mentality. Those unfortunate rich broads in their Land Rovers and luxury cars that were streaming in and out of the Hamptons during those recent big-ass fat-cat big-ticket romney fundraising orgies inadvertently gave the game away. How untouchable and superior they are and better than you. Ideally, they're supposed to keep quiet about it so nobody's tipped off. But in their arrogance and OBSCENELY large sense of entitlement, sometimes they forget, and slip up and blab it all to the public (that's not supposed to know, and certainly not entitled to ask any pesky questions about it).
mitt romney and Her Ladyship ann of Dressage WILL bring that attitude and that mentality into the White House with them if, Heaven forbid, he wins in November. Guaranteed. They just assume it's their birthright already.
Hey, grits - you don't have to explain or apologize about this to anyone.
You have every right to be hard-ass about this. We all do, but you ESPECIALLY, considering what you endured.
I, for one, believe paterno should be dug up out of his grave and his carcass stood up in court and put on trial for this. He knew. And he kept silent for the greater good of money and football, and to hell with the young victims involved. Something else was far more important than the innocent, trusting youngsters under his and his staff's supervision. He KNEW, and he covered up. He's every bit as guilty as are all the administrators and athletics department people and other apologists at that damn school, AND the alumni with their hard-ons for football trophies. PLUS the civilians who turned a blind eye, like Pennsylvania's THEN-attorney general and now governor tom corbett.
http://www.alternet.org/news/156318/the_shocking_truth_about_joe_paterno,_penn_state_and_governor_tom_corbett?page=2
I wasn't abused. But I'm a Catholic and it disgusts me how my church has done the same thing to altar servers for YEARS and nothing's been done, everything's been covered up, and the vast majority of these fiends have gotten away with it - perpetrators, deniers, and excusors alike. And I strongly disapprove of football because I see it as organized brutality where bullies can go for cover and to get rich. Football to me is little more than a cathedral built for the worship of physical barbarism and ill-gotten gain (mainly because I think you shouldn't be able to get rich through a practice that chiefly involves physical violence and injury). I've never liked football because, to me, it glorifies all the wrong things. I'm glad my son was never interested in playing.
You have our total support and sympathy, grits. And you're completely correct about how you feel. They should all burn in Hell for this. Including paterno. STARTING with paterno.
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