October 29, 2008

  • State the OBVIOUS...

    McCain must state obvious: Obama is a socialist

    Star Parker - Syndicated Columnist - ..

    Star ParkerAs John McCain tries to salvage his presidential campaign over the few weeks he has left, he ought to think about the Coca Cola Company in 1985.

     

    That was the year that Coca Cola, based on what the company thought was good internal market research, introduced a new, sweeter formula to replace the taste that American consumers had always associated with Coke.
     
    The result was disaster. Consumers were unhappy with the new flavor that replaced a product that was more than a drink. It was a time-tested American tradition. In short order, Coca Cola brought the old traditional Coke back to market, and in a real feat of marketing gymnastics, was selling both New Coke and Coca Cola Classic.
     
    Sales of Coca Cola Classic swamped sales of New Coke, and shortly thereafter, New Coke was gone.

     

    Today John McCain heads the ticket of a Republican Party that many Americans have fallen out of love with. It's a Republican Party that Americans once knew but now, like New Coke, has confused its customers, the voting public.
     
    Restoring a brand that has been damaged might be an even greater challenge than introducing a new product. You've got the added complexities of confusion. But this is what John McCain has got to do. And he doesn't have a lot of time to do it.
     
    How can anyone be surprised that Americans are confused with the Republican brand? This was the party that once captured American hearts and minds by restoring focus to principles of limited government, traditional values, and personal responsibility.
     
    Apologies to George W. Bush, but time is too precious for tiptoeing around the truth. We've seen the biggest growth of government over the last eight years since Franklin Roosevelt, and the country is in a mess. It's only natural psychology to associate the mess with Republicans.
     
    McCain must disassociate from the mistakes of "new" Republicanism, show that these mistakes are exactly where Senator Obama wants to pick up, and re-establish the "classic" Republican brand. (    See related video of John McCain)
     
    His approach in the latest debate at Hofstra University showed he is grasping the marketing challenge in front of him. His pitch about Joe the Plumber, and his market-oriented stands on big issues like healthcare and education, showed that he understands he needs to do more than simply say he's not George Bush.
     
    But he's still not being clear or aggressive enough.
     
    McCain must paint with clarity the starkly different worlds that Americans will be buying into when they step into voting booths in November.
     
    Barack Obama is a socialist. McCain must say it. It's not slinging mud but stating fact.
     
    Perhaps a complicating factor in explaining freedom to Americans today is that when "classic" Republicanism was selling, we all still remembered the Soviet Union and communist China. The difference between the United States and the rest of the world then was clearer than today.
     
    When someone said "socialist" or "communist,'' we could look abroad and know exactly what this meant.
     
    There is nowhere where Senator Obama sees Americans suffering from excessive government. The opposite. He sees all our suffering from not enough.
     
    The collapse of communism and socialism abroad was not accidental. Central planning is both dysfunctional and immoral.
     
    Incredibly, Obama thinks that a huge and complex market like healthcare, where a few hundred million Americans spend almost two and half trillion dollars a year, can be improved with more government controls and spending.
     
    And he thinks that parents, in a country that is supposed to be free, should not be given control over where they send their child to school and the type of education their child gets.
     
    To turn things around, McCain must quickly reestablish the Republican brand of freedom and contrast this with Obama's clear socialism.

     

    Obama’s Marxism’s philosophy...

    'Marxism' Philosophy
    Jim Brown - OneNewsNow - 10/28/2008 5:00:00 AM
     
    John McCain and his supporters are hammering Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama for saying in a 2001 interview on Chicago Public Radio that wealth redistribution is a necessary form of "economic justice."

    The McCain campaign and other critics of Barack Obama are seizing on newly uncovered audio from an interview Obama did with WBEZ in Chicago while he was an Illinois state senator and University of Chicago law professor. In the interview, Obama suggested that it was a "tragedy" the U.S. Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, did not pursue "redistribution of wealth" for black Americans.
     
    "Because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change," said the state senator. "And in some ways we still suffer from that."

     

    Gary BauerFormer Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer is the president of American Values and a supporter of John McCain. He says the 2001 audio tape "closes the circle" on Obama's "spread the wealth" philosophy he shared recently with an Ohio plumber.
     
    "He even goes so far as to criticize the Constitution of the United States because it doesn't guarantee equal outcomes," Bauer points out.
     
    "Barack Obama is saying both to Joe the plumber and [in] this earlier interview that he believes the power of government ought to be used to redistribute wealth in the United States," he continues -- "to take wealth from productive people and give it to people who have not been as successful. And that is socialism at best -- and I think you could even make a case that, in its own way, it's Marxism."
     
    Bauer warns that if Obama's economic policy is implemented, it will "guarantee the U.S. decades of sub-par economic growth and class warfare.    "

    Comments on this article:
    • "I also, like writer one, was born and reared a Democrat. The first time I voted (1960), I voted a straight Democratic ticket. But then, as I grew more mature and intelligent and started looking at the issues, I began to split my ticket and vote for the candidates that espoused my beliefs. When I became a Christian, I could no longer vote for candidates who believed in eliminating babies through abortion, gay marriage, wealth redistribution, and other left-wing policies. I now vote almost always Republican. It is sad that the Democratic party has been stolen by the likes of Pelosi, Reid, and Obama."
    • "I listened to Obama's "pre-Presidential acceptace speech" this morning and in so many words he told us; Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you! I was a JFK Democrat in the early 1960's and now the GOP has evolved to that early JFK philosophy of small governmnet, tax payers keep more of your money and legislate with Godly morality. That wonderful democrat party direction has reversed starting with LBJ and this is why I finally had to reregister to the Republican Party rather than the pro-socialistic far left Democrat Party lead by the three socialists; Obama, Pelosi and Reid! Only God can help us if Obama is elected as our next US President!"
    • "Socialism is coming. America is already leaning too far left and will continue to do so. And one reason is Christians are lazy. A few work their hearts out while the rest are content to set in the pews. Redistribution of wealth should be through opportunities not taxes. But when Christians will not even do what it takes to start businesses and gain wealth then no one will. Stop burying your talents and start putting them to work."
    • "I hope America comes to it's senses and quickly. Obama is rushing everyone to vote early. He is so scared that more and more of his platform and ideas will be researched and people are going to see that he is not the savior/superstar that he appears to be. If they vote early, they can't change their vote. Like sheep to the slaughter...."

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    MARXISM--

    The political and economic philosophy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in which the concept of class struggle plays a central role in understanding society's allegedly inevitable development from bourgeois oppression under capitalism to a socialist and ultimately classless society. (from Answers.com)


    Socialism refers to a broad array of  ideologies and political movements with the goal of a socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to control by the community. This control may be either direct—exercised through popular collectives such as workers' councils—or indirect—exercised on behalf of the people by the state. economic system, socialism is often characterized by state, worker, or community ownership of the means of production, goals which have been attributed to, and claimed by, a number of  political parties and governments throughout history.

    The modern socialist movement largely originated in the late-19th century .. working class movement. In this period, the term socialism was first used in connection with European social critics who criticized capitalism and private property. For Karl Marx, who helped establish and define the modern socialist movement, socialism would be the socioeconomic system that arises after the .. proletarian revolution, in which the means of production are owned collectively. This society would then progress into communism.

    Since the 19th century, socialists have not agreed on a common doctrine or program. Various adherents of socialist movements are split into differing and sometimes opposing branches, particularly between reformists and revolutionaries. Some socialists have championed the complete nationalization of the means of production, while social democrats have proposed selective nationalization of key industries within the framework of  mixed economies. Some Marxists, including those inspired by the Soviet model of economic development, have advocated the creation of centrally planned economies directed by a state that owns all the means of production. Others, including Communists in Yugoslavia and Hungary in the 1970s and 1980s, Chinese Communists since the reform era, and some Western economists, have proposed various forms of market socialism, attempting to reconcile the presumed advantages of cooperative or state ownership of the means of production with letting market forces, rather than central planners, guide production and exchange. Anarcho-syndicalists, Luxemburgists (such as those in the Socialist Party USA) and some elements of the United States New Left favour decentralized collective ownership in the form of cooperatives or workers' councils. from:  http://schools-wikipedia.org/wp/s/Socialism.htm