GoP Messages and then I analyze

I wracked my brain for every message I could think of that's been bandied about. I then pseudo analyze them and mock them. I poke at or editorialize some of them. If you think of more messages that I forgot, please add them. They aren't in chronological order...they aren't in any order but the order that I can put them down on paper. So I guess you'd say the strongest or most repeated messages are first.

{I didn't realize there'd be that many messages. This is insane}

Various Campaign Messages over the last 3 months or so:
-McCain is experienced,
-McCain is a maverick
-McCain is a war veteran
-McCain is a proven leader due to his war experience (despite flipping on most everything that made him a maverick to run for President)
-McCain is ready to lead on day one, Obama will need on the job training
-McCain will win the war--and win it right--by winning it.
-McCin is bipartisan when he needs to be
-McCain empathizes with people that lost their jobs and wants them to be retrained
-McCain will keep us safe from terrorists
-McCain won't repeat the mistakes of Bush
-McCain is vigorous
-McCain is in great health
-McCain's cancer is under control
-McCain takes responsibility for the end of his first marriage, but won't discuss what he did wrong because it was a long time ago
-McCain is a family man
-McCain left jaw is just big-boned--a greek goddess will be born from it
-McCain likes to drill for oil
-McCain believes in global warming
-McCain likes the environment
-McCain is a straight talker
-McCain is unafraid to take bold stances on controversial issues
-McCain is not a political insider
-McCain gets along with people from both sides of the aisle
-McCain has a man-crush on Joe Lieberman. Lieberman reciprocates the affection.
-McCain will fight for lower gas prices
-McCain will fight for anything that means you will vote for him
-McCain likes euphemisms for violence in speech
-McCain would rather win a war than lose an election
-McCain is deeply religious, and fiercely personal about his beliefs--personal meaning he won't discuss his religious views at all except for a few anecdotes about other people's religious beliefs
-McCain dislikes judicial activism
-McCain is for change
-McCain is against change for change's sake
-McCain is for experienced change--the kind of changes he'll make
-McCain is against Obama's change
-McCain will quickly find and kill Osama Bin Laden
-McCain will fix the economy
-McCain empathizes with your economic hardships
-McCain will fight lobbyists and special interests
-McCain likes Hillary supporters now that she didn't get the nomination
-McCain likes the idea of businesses improving health care
-McCain dislikes the idea of a government bureaucrat getting between you and your doctor...so not true here's a link to a rant directed entirely to this false myth
-The Democratic ticket is upside down
-The terrorists will hurt us again if McCain isn't elected
-McCain will stare down Russia like Reagan did.
-To prove he likes women he got an attractive, inexperienced woman nobody knew who ran Alaska to be his running mate and called everyone that criticized his judgment in doing so sexist haters.
-The Democratic ticket is upside down (said by a talking head surrogate during dem conv.)
-The terrorists will hurt us again if McCain isn't elected (GoP 9/11 horrorfest tribute)

Analysis: McCain used to have some political credibility although I'm biased against him because my first impression of him was as a child listening to his outspoken criticism against recognizing the MLK holiday in the 80's (the maverick eventually caved into the political pressure and flip-flopped). He seemed pretty bigoted about it to me back then and I was confused about how angry he sounded about it in his speech. I didn't watch football, but I remember the big deal about the NFL boycotting Arizona and taking the superbowl away from 'em (there were also probably some other reasons, like Sun Devil Stadium is extremely hot, is entirely outdoors, and as a venue to watch football just sucks ass as we both know, hehe).

The messages seem all over the place. Some are contradictory. Some are co-oped from Obama's messages a la Clinton. Clinton was really good at that. He took his opponents idea and if he didn't improve it, he made it sound better than the original. There aren't specifics beyond what we've seen as the dysfunctional status quo the last eight years as far as economic and military plans. He does seem to want to address alternative energy with his kitchen sink approach that I forgot to add to the message list because it lasted for a couple of weeks and then he got tired of photo ops in front of oil wells I guess. I like how you can see he is critical of some of Obama's messages and when that fails to help him, he co-opts that message with the "me-too" approach that Obama ended up criticizing the GoP for.

Besides that he seems most other politicians except for a temper and a collection of a few odd friends from the other aisle like Lieberman and Fiengold. He's corrupt, but not obscenely so. He's out of touch. His loose cannon reputation hurt his ability to get enough friends agreeing he's the best nominee in his "prime". He's flip flopped on a lot of issues. He was decently moderate for a republican until he sold out his positions on abortion, the war, and caved into the evangelicals. He could have been president but he was at the right age in the wrong time. It's past his time. I mean, McCain couldn't get past Bob Dole 12 or 16 years or so ago. Now he's just too old. Reagan lost it during his second term and people don't want to see that in another president.

The GoP must be tired of trying to find things to ding Obama on. Well on to Palin messages...

-Sarah Palin is charming
-Sarah Palin's family is charming and attractive looking
-Palin is more experienced than Obama
-Palin is a "chief executive"
-Palin makes "chief executive" decisions, unlike Obama
-Palin is fiercely pro-life
-Palin has a Down syndrome child she could have aborted to prove it
-Sarah Palin is not perfect
-Sarah Palin's family isn't perfect either, just like you and me
-Sarah Palin is pro-abstinence only education in school
-Sarah Palin is like you and your family--just in Alaska shooting moose
-Sarah Palin dislikes terrorists just like you
-Sarah Palin dislikes big federal government, except when it's giving her state money
-Sarah Palin put the Mayor jet on ebay...it just failed to sell
-Sarah Palin is hot (surrogate/fan/voter message)
-Sarah Palin still flies around
(((losing objectivity...)))
-Sarah Palin charges Alaska for her living expenses while working from home instead of the governor's mansion. I guess the analogy would be if your employer rented a house for you in India to teach some Indians your job but there was a family emergency like your spouse dying and you needed to care for him or her. So you fly back to the states, care for your spouse, do your job via videoconferencing to those guys in India, and bill your employer for your mortgage payment, grocery bills, and fuel costs while you're living in your own house...did I miss something? Yes the government/taxpayers pay for you to live somewhere. That somewhere is the governor's mansion. If you don't want to live there, fine. But it's not fair to bill the taxpayers for another house, namely your own, making the taxpayers pay twice and not claiming that as income for IRS purposes. I don't think any of us could get away with that...
(((back on track)))

Analysis: She has a b.s. in communications. She jumped around 4 colleges to get it. Most of her job experience involves governing a town smaller than Plainfield in Alaska. Bizzut, you or Puck could go run Plainfield just fine. So could that guy across the street from you. I wouldn't trust the fat guy that lived next door and tried to kill your cats, though. She governed the state of Alaska for a little over 2 years. McCain couldn't find another woman with a bit more education and/or experience than Palin? I'm dissing Palin, but I'm questioning McCain's choice/judgment more. Given a choice of people to run with, he chose the pretty chick, lol.

He left his first wife because he wanted to live fast and loose when he came home from Vietnam, dumping his wife like garbage to go party. He might have committed bigamy just to satisfy the younger model's urge to mark her territory. This part of his life is so damning of him as a man he chose to lie about it in his memoir and won't discuss it in detail publicly, so it must be kind of a big deal to him. Now here he is, hand in hand with another younger woman (no I don't believe they're doing anything, but old men like that thrill you get with an attractive, younger woman on your arm). He was and still is a party boy. His character flaws prevented him from rising to the top 20-25 years ago or so and now that he's finally got his chance (because everyone in the GoP sucks because the party over-Bushified itself) he's too old and still making the same mistakes he did back then, and then some because he prostituted his political integrity away to the evangelicals and the neocons. He's now just some kind of idealogical and political amalgamation of conflicting crappy ideas that if made into a living being would resemble Jabba the Hut. But that's just my opinion.

Anyways here's messages originated by the GoP describing Obama:

-Obama will raise your taxes, McCain won't
-Obama is inexperienced
-Obama is out of touch
-Obama is "elite"
-Obama feels "entitled"
-Obama is arrogant
-Obama is a flip-flopper (I think this was the second message after the inexperienced...it's long dead now once McCain's huge record of flip flopping 6 months before the elections started to be messaged afterwards)
-Obama is a political opportunist
-Obama is unwilling or unable to stake out positions on controversial issues, evidenced by the number of "present" votes on difficult issues
-"He's not one of us"(this one is said over and over again by MSNBC)
-Obama has never made an executive decision
-Obama is corrupt
-Obama never wrote a bill in the Senate
-Obama's message of change is deceitful when claiming to bring change and new politics, the proof he is just any other politician is the purchase of his home
-Obama is unpredictable (not overtly stated, inferred by McCain stating that nobody knows what Obama means by "change")
-Obama's religious beliefs may not be mainstream, making him potentially dangerous
-Obama's religious beliefs may be dangerous because of Rev. Wright
-Obama doesn't like or respect women
-He's politically ambitious
-He's selfish
-He's not patriotic (long dead)
-His wife is not patriotic (lapel-gate)
-His wife is an angry black woman as evidenced by her "proud" speech
-Michelle Obama's personality is "aggressive" (this stopped after Obama complained)
-Obama will embolden the "enemy" and the "terrorists"

Analysis
The "He's not one of us" "elite" and "entitled" are, at least to me, covert ways at digging at racial stereotypes imprinted in the audience. The anti-Michelle Obama were even more overt but they stopped very quickly along with the anti-patriotic b.s.. These are two lawyers lol. The angry message was the most troubling to me. I really wish I hadn't watched the fox news when it was bash Michelle Obama week and heard her described the way she was. Palin becomes the vice presidential pick and the first word that comes out of the GoP when her record is question is sexism? What was the crap that went on about Mrs. Obama when she wasn't even the candidate? Mrs. Obama is probably better qualified to be McCain's V.P. than Palin....but I digress.

In the context of affirmative action dialogue anti-affirmative action opponents often refer to minorities as feeling entitled to certain jobs or college spots despite not being academically or professionally qualified and that some hypothetical white person does not get this job and that white life is ruined as a result. These kinds of words elicit that thinking underneath, maybe not even consciously, but at some level those phrases repeated over and over simmer with the other messages we receive and it ends up a strange unsettled distrust of the black person despite the guy saying and doing all the right things. The lever then gets pulled by emotional strings pulled based on the effectiveness in the messages, images, in combination with that individual's personal experiences, and present situation.

So now my explanation why I took the messages and went hogwild with analysis on only the racial implications of them and none of the other stuff...

It's funny (because it's rare that Puck would choose a news program to record), Puck recorded a 20/20 or nightline segment 2 nights ago that dealt with elites in society that are either extremely wealthy or famous and how that affects how people treat them. After that it went into how race in society still affects people. They sent a black lady and a white lady into the same store at different times but with the same lady working the department. The cameras show the worker check in on the black lady over three times and counting the number of articles of clothing. The receptionist never checked the articles of clothing on the white women nor checked up on her in the dressing room. They also sent out sets of resumes with the exact same qualifications, but one set had "white" names and the other set had very ethnic names like Shaniqua Thompson. Whites applicants got callbacks. They also showed some really old footage of whites coming into businesses with help wanted signs up and whites getting interviews while blacks being told the position is already filled. They showed older footage from what seemed like the 80's of the same thing happening with apartments. I guess that's what made me go there today to take all the messages and look for what attempts to tug at people's stereotypes.
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I think underneath the rhetoric and imagery, a lot of Americans fear or believe that Obama is somewhat like the african-american basketball NBA player stereotype

What attributes would one give this stereotype?

extremely gifted

more focused on style

maybe lacking fundamental skills

greedy

puts their individual performance over that of their team

entitled

arrogant

undisciplined

selfish

morally corrupt

angry, hostile, aggressive

unappreciative

White athletes are characterized by a lot of these too. You have to be competitive to be at the top levels of pro sports. A competitive personality has a few ugly wrinkles to it like outbursts of aggresiveness at coaches or teammates when the team is losing yada yada.

lacking in strategy (this point hasn't been articulated quite this way but if you take a few of the points above you could infer that a combination of some of these messages nudges/grabs at the audience's/consumer's/voter's stereotypes of african americans as threatening, unpredictable, inept at higher level thinking (i.e. lack of NFL quarterbacks until very recently, lack of NFL coaches, NBA head coaching derth, MLB--Campanis interview on nightline). That was just examples where the stereotypes slipped out in public discourse. They are old examples and no doubt things are improving, but those perceptions still float around and affect some people on differing levels. It could affect some undecided voter's "gut" when they're on the fence. I'm not trying to argue these people are racist. They are people affected by the media growing up to a small extent to be a little fearful of black people, just as blacks are affected negatively by seeing the same imagery, just they see people that look like themselves being the bad guys and wonder why that is and may be to some extent a little less hopeful about where their lives might lead to.

Enough with my preoccupation with how race may subvertly (guess I just made up that adverb) be affecting this election.