Since there seemed to be a lengthy thread on what to criticize Fred Thompson about, I thought I'd write this diary...
I think we need bullet “Talking Points” points on each Republican presidential candidate. And, we need to have them prepared early, no matter how fringe they are at this time. Then when the nomination process is finished, we have to pound home the theme on each candidate.
It sounds fairly easy, but I know organizing Democrats is sometimes only slightly less difficult than herding cats.
Let me explain my thinking on this issue.
Back in 2004, we had a hundred different criticisms of Bush: Lying us into Iraq, tax cuts for millionaires, trashing the environment, huge deficits, mishandling Iraq, 45 million without health insurance, Bush flip-flopping on a ton of issues, losing bin Laden, industry lobbyists “regulating” their industry, the return of inflation, shrinking wages, job outsourcing to China and India, etc, etc. While our ads were often terrifically creative, they did not focus on any one theme about Bush. Heck, MoveOn.org had a great contest where members submitted their own anti-Bush ads. Many of them were wonderful, but were all over the board again.
In 2004, the one criticism of Kerry that Republics promoted over and over and over again was that Kerry was an opportunistic flip-flopper who could not be trusted with national security. Every mention of Kerry was focused on that one theme. As soon as Kerry had wrapped up the nomination, Bush held a press conference that basically labeled Kerry as that, and every Republic radio show host, media pundit and op-ed writer followed suit and pounded that one theme home.
More at the link:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/31/104228/334