“I would say that the Medicare issue is simply too narrow and too complicated to work well, it engages only seniors” I don’t entirely think that is true as we will all get old (hopefully), many of us have elderly or ear-elderly people we love, and Medicare can be a jumping off point for talking about health care policy. And I don’t think that it is too complicated. It wasn’t too complicated when the Romney team was talking about it. You are of course right that Medicare + nothing would be insufficient, but winning on this issue would be big.

On the Benghazi issue”: This is where the media environment is so important. If this was a Republican, the “Team Blue” narrative of the attack would be known to everybody since the mainstream media would intensely examine every element of the Republican administration’s shifting story. It would be a lot easier for the opposition to make the case. Romney can still make a case but it takes longer, and he has to focus more on it.

I agree with you on the 47% comment, though I’d note that if the party sympathies of mainstream journalists or the Party of the candidates were reversed, we would be hearing a lot about how no Americans were killed at the fundraiser as a reason for focusing on the Benghazi attack rather than the Obama-version of the 47% remark.

Joseph, as for the Catholic Church’s position on contraception, I’ll leave that to my Catholic friends as I would do a poor job of it being a Reformed Protestant.

However, I do think I can speak to your bafflement regarding Libya. If the lesson you drew from the Iraq experience was the lesson you described above then with all due respect let me suggest you learned the wrong lesson. If you look at the state of Iraq from the time we invaded to when we began our exit, there was a clear period of time in which we were achieving the stability and cooperation in the region that promised success , and that was in the aftermath of Petraeus’ Surge.

It’s an unfortunate thing that the American people were never introduced to the details of Petraeus’ strategy, but I can recommend the book that he contributed to in which is stated in detail the principle behind the surge:

http://www.amazon.com/Marine-Corps-Counterinsurgency-Field-Manual/dp/0226841510/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348885946&sr=8-1&keywords=Petraeus+counter+insurgency

In it Petraeus characterizes an insurgent theatre as essentially consisting of a large, civil and passive population largely intimidate by a minority of bad actors. Effective counter-insurgency consists in effectively demonstrating the will and ability to protect the larger civilized populous from the intimidators. If and until that happens the general population will not cooperate with the counter-insurgents no matter how well intended they are for fear of the bad actors.

The Iraq war was lost the moment Bush acquiesced to pressure and declared an exit date. Granted there were plenty of earlier indications that the US wasn’t going to stick it out, but the statement of an exit date pretty much communicated to the Iraqis that they would be on their own again, which left them with the only option of aligning themselves with whatever power was left in the region, which is why Iraq in now on its way to becoming a Satellite State of Iran. And a similar story is playing out in Afghanistan.

So you are right that tough talk in the absence of effective action is pointless. But similarly ineffective are sweet words in the absence of action. And what is REALLY inept is supporting the overthrow of strongmen in the Middle East without willing to do the hard work of protecting the general population from the bad actors who inevitably fill the power vacuum. But thanks to the present administration’s Cairo Doctrine, that is exactly what we now have, effectively a geopolitical-scale insurgency in the Middle East.

I realize that the sacrifice entailed, especially as it was experienced in Iraq, was seen as far too much to the American sensibility. But there is a simple logic to Geopolitics: when you won’t support your allies and refuse to confront your enemies, then in a very short time you will have no more allies, and you will be surrounded by enemies. Or put another way, if you think Iraq was costly, just wait and see how costly the Middle East is if it is allowed to go out of control.

To paraphrase something I said in my previous post: sometimes being conservative requires being patient enough to allow reality to make your argument for you. Unfortunately, presently there are a number of emerging crises, domestic and geopolitical, that, if not promptly and decisively dealt with now, will, I suspect, prove untenable by the time the lesson is finally learned.

You can’t have just a slogan, of course, you need to frame a narrative that will cross broad voter interest and then find a way to simplify it so all you have to do is say the catchphrase and everybody knows what you are talking about.

I would say that the Medicare issue is simply too narrow and too complicated to work well, it engages only seniors. And the Benghasi issue is too spontaneous and spur of the moment to use well unless you have a National Security narrative already in place, as George W. Bush did.

Why the 47% tape issue was so potent was that the Obama campaign had already developed a narrative about Romney’s indifference to anybody but his rich buddies, and then they had the extraordinary good luck to find explosive evidence to confirm it. But it was the prior narrative that made the difference.

Now note how the breadth of that narrative cuts across all ordinary voters, whatever their hobbyhorse issue. Obama’s campaign also had time to establish a shorthand for this as well: Bain Capital….Cayman Islands….secret bank accounts….predatory investment….plant shutdowns…..and now 47%. Pair any one of these with the name Mitt Romney and everyone recognizes the narrative immediately.

The important narrative is the one about the challenger and his party. The incumbent has had four years to cement his narrative into public consciousness, and its pretty hard to take it away from him.

If it were me, I’d say the two broadest issues were employment and government debt. Everybody worries about these. And the narrative should have been about what Mitt Romney will do about the debt. And the catchphrase could be Make America Solvent Again. And so on from there.

An attack on the incumbent is only effective if the challenger is seen as a viable alternative first. Mitt has never established this. And “winning” any issue is secondary to developing confidence in the man.

Could Romney catch up and do this? I don’t know. But at the very least I’d say he has to cut completely through the narrative already pinned to him. It really is about him from now on and not how well anybody debates.

From my vantage point, you have to take these matters on a pragmatic, issue by issue basis, without an a priori stance unrelated to the issues, and, probably, from your vantage point, this is an abandonment of fundamental values. But merely re-articulating the fundamental values is really not enough.

Consider the Catholic Church’s stance on all forms of birth control. It is disingenuous to merely state that “being fruitful and multiplying” is an absolute moral command without adding that this is so no matter how much the world population keeps rising and even if it rises to the limits of death from massive famines and beyond. Simply to ignore the actual consequences of an absolute moral demand is just not honest.

Every value contains the seeds of an ultimate conflict of duties, and I, at least, think that those who assert them in public policy should be honest and straightforward about that possibility, first to themselves, and then to everybody else.

Now, beyond that, your stance toward Libya absolutely baffles me. There is forty years of evidence that terrorists will not cease to be terrorists merely due to our engaging in tough public talk about them. They are going to try to strike at any vulnerable target, no matter what.

Also, if rioters are going to riot across the entire Islamic world our tough talk is not going to stop them either, and I can’t see any sensible action to be taken other than patiently waiting for things to settle down. Can you think of one?

Further, we have clearly discovered, once again, that it is not sufficient to topple a country’s government by military force. You also have to prevent an insurgency developing or your military action is a bad bargain. Finally, insofar as we would like others to be free of oppressive regimes, we are unable to start the process and can only support it once the oppressed themselves are ready to brave the dangers and make a stand.

As far as I can see, tough public talk that we can’t back with clear and effective action has salutary effects only on our National Ego. And preening up our National Ego can easily thwart our national interests.

Joseph, I don’t think your message needs to be all that simple. I think folks appreciate that a guy knows what he is talking about and has taken the effort to try to explain their ideas to the general public. It was part of Bill Clinton’s appeal.

And we don’t have to use hypotheticals. Romney was winning the Medicare debate in August. He had the Obama campaign on their heels. What he had to do was resist the temptation to go back to his “Pablum For Morons” default speech. He couldn’t do that. Now he is flailing around desperately trying to find a message. And the flailing makes it that harder for any particular message to be heard. He was actually back to rapping the lyrics of America the Beautiful this week.

Though I do suppose it is easier to have a message if you actually have beliefs or else a Bill Clinton-like sense of what the public wants to hear. Romney doesn’t seem to have either of those.

For what it’s worth I think from a historical perspective what intellectual conservatism is experiencing in this election (and probably will continue to do so going forward until the next great catastrophe) is the continued migration of the culture away from classically republican values and toward a sort of post-historical global liberalism.

I think this for a number of reasons. In the absence of history disrupting societies well laid plans, the appeal of a technocratically managed world sheltering us from the inconveniences of existence (a la Obama’s Life of Julia) is just far too seductive for the bulk of society who define their purposes around some concept of naive self-realization. And those who see themselves as the managers – politicians, media, academia – obviously have a vested interest in promulgating this vision.

It really isn’t until history mugs the utopian vision that the collective mind is clarified and citizens start to appreciate the profound limitations of the managed society. Until such time, thoughtful conservatives have to expect to have their arguments challenged, and misrepresented at every corner.

So when Romney has a press conference stating, what ought to be obvious to the press, that what took place in Benghazi was a logical result of Obama’s conciliatory approach in the Middle East, the press disregarded the content of what Romney said, and proceeded to invest the next few news cycles to Romney’s over impulsivene press conference. When the 47% video came out, the Romney campaign released Obama’s “I believe in redistribution” video. One got coverage the other didn’t.

The fact is, the simple ability to communicate a single message is confounded by a political environment that, for all intents and purposes, has become profoundly hostile and is invested in disrupting whatever message the Republican candidate advances. It really isn’t until the periodic mugging by reality that societal perception is forced to collide with reality momentarily, revealing the natural order of things that conservativism, having its grounding in a wide-eyed appreciation of the permanence of that order, starts to make sense to the public.

For all that, I welcome the fight, however challenging it is at any given time.

Albeit the way I think of it, a single message is easier if you have a single messanger.

I have answers for Brian, and could explain why RCP does what it does.

I don’t necessarily agree with Pete that Romney threw much away with the whole flowers thing. So I don’t think there is much proximate cause here.

Arguably that is concrete policy of a type. Sort of the family law policy of the Romney household. To be “confuscian” it is the Li of the Romney household, or the manners and mores which structured a loving household, that raised an intelligent man with good habits. “Li” is basically habituated culture as policy. Not simply the policy or instructions, but the muscle memory(in the Japanese manufacturing context) and habit of practicing them.

In my opinion in order for Obama or Romney to have the sort of impact the rhetoricians would suggest, it would be imperative that Obama and Romney served as role models.

This in my opinion is also strongest basis for being able to claim that those who dislike Obama are racist. That is they often complain of “Rap” music and defects in black culture(often times with very shady proximate cause generalizations), but are unwilling to elevate Obama as bearer of a higher standard, or in fact the Op-standard.

I don’t see why you couldn’t evangelize the “Li”/character habits of an Obama or a Romney, in which case what Romney has to offer could then be broken down as the complete envangelism of Mormonism as a religion of character. Frankly at this point I think Obama wins (he is certainly up 5 in Ohio, and Romney won’t win florida). So what would really be interesting in my opionion would be a sort of full scaled evangelism of what Mormonism has to offer in terms of living well and achieving the american dream.

I also agree with Joseph Marshall about the state of the economy, republicans have no policy answers for the middle class, that don’t at the end of the day culminate in something like the development of good/better habits.

But in truth democrats have no answers either. The only real source of trickle down economics lies in patent(literally because of the 10 year window in the inventor gets a monopoly…after which point it enters the public domain for use by Phosita.), it is the diffusion of better technology, or process for accomplishing a given solution, better and faster. So really Article I section 8 clause 8 is the only progressivism I believe in, and because this is still functioning, it masks the very real problems Joseph Marshall has mentioned in other places.

But there is something of “progressivism” in the character habits of a Romney or an Obama, and it would be nice if we could get past the audacity of Hope, and see some of this “trickle down”.

And to keep repeating to ourselves that the now-elected President has an inherently bad character. Not that his ideas are wrong, not that his policies are dangerous, but that he is morally corrupt in one way or another.

McCain, to his great credit, got up on the floor of the Senate a few weeks ago to call a halt to this silliness.

It’s perfectly legitimate to challenge Obama on his record, but you have to have a clear and rational alternative. And you have to stop talking nonsense about a perfectly ordinary family man, with a beautiful wife and kids, who is personally faithful, likes to brew and drink beer, and, even at 50, is up for a tough game of basketball.

Money is not enough, saturation of television ads is not enough, character assassination is not enough–it didn’t work last time, and Mitt actually has absorbed the idea that it won’t work now.

A clear and rational alternative. And one that you believe in. This is a Republican problem and not just Mitt’s problem. The social conservatives of the party have a clear and rational alternative that many, if not all, believe in. But the rest of the party really doesn’t and are too scared to do anything more than shove it into the party platform, which nobody ever reads anyway.

What are they scared of? That a majority of the country really doesn’t like the flavor of that alternative, and, if you stand by it, you will lose, particularly if you can’t convince anyone about it because you don’t really believe it yourself.

I’m sure by now you’ve asked yourself, “Why is this Marshall character over here? He’s obviously a committed Liberal.” I’m here because most of you are intelligent Conservatives of the non-mouth frothing sort, who really ought to have an alternative to both what is in the Republican platform and the Democratic Party that they actually believe in. Probably you already do.

But I can tell you that it is so heavily encoded, self-referential, tied to an arcane set of books that no ordinary voter has read, and articulated in such vague and general terms that it is largely unintelligible outside of your closed circle.

Abstractly, and beyond my own partisanship, I think this is a shame. By definition, a democratic society needs a clear articulation of every point of view in order for the People to make an intelligent choice. The lack of one erodes the intelligence of even your opponents and is objectively bad for everybody.

And encourage you, even for my sake, to start doing the thinking you need to do to talk about the alternative you believe in clearly to everybody else.

Also, along the lines of my previous comments in another thread, averaging “likely voter” numbers and “registered voter” numbers and “all American” numbers, and hoping to get a “better” number though averaging, is truly absurd. Those differing assumptions aren’t statistical differences!

Romney’s a terrible candidate, Obama’s a terrible president. I wouldn’t vote for Obama for all the tea in China, but don’t think I can vote for someone as worthless as Mitt. I just can’t see how Obama can win, but then, I can’t see how anyone tolerates Joe Biden being taken seriously either, so what do I know?