Understanding the GOP: Michael, Sarah, Bobby and Joe Explained

The "new" GOP continues to fascinate this blogger; it puzzles me greatly, it repells and attracts, it is like a untranslatable transmission from the realm of the living dead. It seems morbid and comical, striving and dead, focused and frayed...these and more contrary characteristics all mushed together under one lid. Insincerity, cynicism and falsity need to be redifined when speaking of the GOP these days; they just have no meaning to the GOP.

To unravel confusion about the GOP, I recommend viewing the GOP indirectly, out of the corner of the eye, because nothing is there. At worst, 'Smoke and mirrors' comes to mind. At best, and this in my mind is the key to this puzzle, the GOP uses a current American marketing device to transmit its message - brand selling. The GOP is not real, it is a protrayal, an insincere projection of an selected image that is not real,...it is a brand that is imaged, symbolized, and marketed as a label that hopefully will invoke automatic, unthinking, pavlovian-reflex knee bendng in its believers and viewers who will then...buy it.

Brand marketing. Brand culture. Branding. Face, dress, suits, image, surface, slogans, brand jingles. What sells. Brand marketing and selling are characteristics, not character, and carry no moral content except success (make the sale) or failure. The GOP is a party of image, and images per se are ghosts.

What is absent in GOP brand selling is depth, reality (Steele's plan to attract "keep it real", hip hop nation is laughable - the 'hood' is as real as it gets in America), well-thought-out precepts, sensitivity and more.

Because sincerity is not part of their concern, because sincerity is simply irrelevant when the focus is on selling the label, the GOP actions can't be judged in a normal way. If it does not sell, then simply change the label and appearance until it does sell - there is no looking back, or need to preserve consistency. There is no real attachment to the "product" because in the mind of the GOP, it is the label that sells and thus the label is all important. "Product" is irrelevant. This is a different way of thinking to most DEMS. This difference explains why the GOP can accuse the DEMS of being bleeding hearts, because the GOP regards sincerity and heart as extraneous to selling the label.

Selling itself as a label allows the GOP turn on a dime in ways that can confound and amaze. McCain lost real credibility by bringing in a Palin and posting Jindal in the wings, both brand labels that GOP felt would counter what they saw as the Obama and Hillary labels. The rest of us saw these moves as extreme, mind boggling examples of cynicism and falsity. But by GOP standards, this was a simple move because they saw only superficial qualities in both Obama and Hillary - skin color and a female - labels in their minds.

The GOP can never get it that DEMS feel deeply about the greater societal meaning of an Obama or Hillary. According to GOP precepts, 'greater meaning' is dangerous thinking because it detracts from the attention to the label.

Joe the Plumber is another good example of label marketing. That Joe is not a licensed plumber, owes back taxes, and in other ways is not the best example of hard work and success, nevertheless he is easily labeled as blue collar, mid American with a hoped for link to that voting bloc. Understandably, from their modus operandi of brand-label sell, the GOP is unconcerned about licensing and all, and they are genuinely puzzled by the outrage and disbelief caused by these moves. Likewise, Michael Steele being the new RNC chair of a 98% white party represents no moral contrast or emabrassment issue for the GOP because Mr. Steele is not seen as a person, he is merely a brand label that will assist the selling of the product. But the question leaps forth - what exactly is the product? Why the product is nothing but success.

Superficial investment in label sell is why the GOP in power can accomplish nothing meaningful or lasting because it only values success, and surface labels - corporate jets, power mansions, wealth. Most importantly and dangerously, the GOP focus on success, means its ultimate goal, power and influence, is meaningless except for the label it provides. The GOP has no thought behind what it wants to do with any power it might win. It is power for power's sake.

But what is the ultimate power game? War. War is the biggest sell of all...because if I win, I know for certain you lose, because you are dead, along with your wife and kids, your nation, your culture. In this picture, War killing and success bear no greater meaning than a record sales year for Campbell soup. But nevertheless, it is a win and palpable. This is why the GOP is so focused on winning, when the best, more strategic, outcome might be something less than total defeat and destruction. In war scenarios, the GOP ideology for total win is a pair of handcuffs - self-trapping and leading nowhere and logically to lame retreat with nothing accomplished.

This GOP superficiality is big problem for Democrats who even (admittedly often according to ancient, well thought out spiritual thinking) take themselves by their own hand along the road to understand differences, to see and confront their own reactions, and try to attain the goal of enlightenment with regard to their interactions with the rest of humanity. Hey, sometimes DEMS follow the philosophical precepts of the founding Fathers of the Republic. The GOP will lay claim to founding fathers as labels, however, without regard to what the Fathers actually wrote ot thought.

DEM goals are character qualities that don't guarantee success because they are inner goals. The GOP is outwardly directed on label symbolism that can be seen read in print, logo-lized; but these labels dont have to represent truth. Truth in labeling is not a GOP quality. Why do you think during a GOP administration the country experiences a watering down if not outright falsity (to DEMS, mothers with children, drinkers of water, many breathers of air, etc) in regulations for food, water, pharmaceuticals, accounting, banking, etc..

And finally, Sarah, Michael, Bobby and Joe. They show no embarassment at their seeming misplacements because they have bought into the Label. It's All about the label.