They Think You're Stupid

by Herman Cain

  The polling results detailed in the above tables show that the politically homeless who took shelter in the Republican Party in 2004 were primarily White conservative voters who were energized to vote because they wanted to maintain our current leadership during war and also by the necessity to defend our nation from attacks on our moral foundations. The majority of Black, Latino, Asian, and ideologically moderate voters have still not been persuaded by the Republican Party to embrace the Republican policy agenda.

  Further, many conservative Republicans were frustrated by policies enacted or advocated in President Bush's first term, particularly massive federal spending on new entitlement programs and proposals to stem the flow of illegal aliens across our borders. They were not frustrated enough to vote against President Bush, but they were still unhappy at times.

  One initiative that upset many conservative supporters of President Bush was the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003. Beginning in January 2006, all forty million Medicare patients, regardless of financial need, will be allowed to sign up for a benefit that provides reductions in the cost of their prescription medications. The cost estimates for this new Medicare entitlement top five hundred billion dollars and will surely exceed that figure throughout the life of the program. Just look at the history of the growth in Medicare costs.

  In 1965, when Medicare was first enacted, it cost six billion dollars to implement. The estimated cost twenty-five years into the program (1990) was supposed to be twelve billion dollars. The actual cost in 1990 was 109 billion dollars! That's a 900 percent miss! For most conservatives, this new Medicare entitlement is directly opposite to the conservative ideology of restrained federal spending and responsible budgeting.

  President Bush also upset many conservatives with his plan to allow illegal aliens to legally hold jobs in the U.S. The plan would make illegal aliens eligible for temporary legal status for six years, as long as they are employed. Presumably, they could reapply after six years. The plan would not, however, allow them to automatically become citizens at the end of any six-year period. President Bush argued that this new program would allow illegal workers who currently hold jobs to come out of hiding and participate legally in the U.S. economy, while not encouraging further illegal behavior.

  Although President Bush should be commended for trying to fix a problem he inherited from decades of Congress not dealing with the issue, conservative Republicans viewed that proposal as a "shadow citizenship" plan for people who came to this country illegally. And unlike what the administration believes, conservatives believe such a plan would encourage further illegal behavior and that it amounts to granting amnesty to those here illegally.

  U.S. House Majority Leader Tom Delay, a Texas Republican, stated that he has "heartfelt reservations about allowing illegal immigrants into a U.S. guest-worker program that seems to reward illegal behavior" (Ralph Z. Hallow, "GOP to finesse immigration issue,"The Washington Times, 23 August 2004). Many other Republican politicians shared Delay's concerns, and Bush's proposal prompted citizens across the country to mobilize in opposition and voice their objections to what they feel is the wrong solution to a grave and growing problem.

  Congressional Republicans since 1994, as well as the Bush administration since 2000, have demonstrated leadership in dealing with our enemies abroad and have achieved a number of legislative victories in domestic policy, such as tax cuts, reforms in public education, and welfare reform. Unfortunately, the Republican Party and its candidates continue to suffer defeats in the public relations arena because they do not adequately connect the rationale behind their policy agendas in a language that relates to the political layperson.

  The Bush administration allowed Democrats and members of liberal media outlets to separate the war on terrorism from many of the reasons the U.S. went to war against Iraqi leaders. Iraqi leaders were, in fact, sponsoring global terrorist activities and murdering millions of their own citizens. Democrats framed the war in Iraq as a search for weapons of mass destruction. When no large caches of such weapons were found, Democrats and their accomplices in the media accused Bush and the Republicans of losing the war on terrorism, making the U.S. unsafe, and prosecuting the war in Iraq to increase oil companies' profits.

  Republicans have also done a poor job communicating the effects of cutting or eliminating income, dividend, and estate tax rates on producing economic growth, job creation, and individual prosperity. They mistakenly assume that most of the public understands elementary economics. They do not. Instead of framing the issue of tax cuts around the personal benefits available to individual taxpayers, such as more money in their pockets, and their companies will be less likely to lay people off from their jobs, Republicans defend tax rate reductions by arguing that federal coffers will swell and businesses will grow and hire more employees. Individuals care more about not being laid off than they do about a business growing.

  While the Republicans are technically correct, Republicans must remember that businesses do not vote in elections. Leroy and Bessie Public vote in elections, and in the back of their minds is the thought that the Democrats might be right when they charge that tax cuts only benefit the rich.

  The Republican Party demonstrated in 2004 that it is capable of turning out large numbers of voters who support a conservative policy agenda. It failed, however, in getting many of the politically homeless to feel comfortably at home as full-fledged Republicans.

  To borrow a term popular in business and marketing, the Republican Party has a "brand identity problem" that it has not solved for many voters. You can have the best product, but if it is not perceived as the best product, you lose. If the Republicans solve their brand identity problem, they have the opportunity to persuade many of the politically homeless that their long-term economic interests, and the best interests of the entire nation, rest with the Republican agenda to protect our economic and moral foundations. The conversion will not be a revolution. But it can be a rapid evolution.

  Republicans Have a Brand Identity Problem

  The Democratic Party has successfully convinced millions of Americans--primarily those in their favorite groups--that Republicans represent only the interests of wealthy Whites and Fortune 500 companies. Democrats accomplished this task by instilling in their members powerful feelings of jealousy rooted in a haves vs. have-nots mentality and by blaming Republicans for creating great disparities among the public in wealth and economic achievement.

  Republicans have attempted to counter the Democrats' false claims and logically challenged ideology, but it takes generations to undo political beliefs more than seventy years in the making. Many of the politically homeless are not ready to support Republican candidates because Republicans have not made serious attempts to connect to voters in the traditional Democratic base and explain why their policy positions and solutions to the big issues benefit all citizens, regardless of race, religion, or economic background.

  Whereas the Democratic Party has an ideology problem, the Republican Party has a brand identity problem. Brand identity is based upon people's perceptions of you and your message. Brand identity for a product, a business, or a political party is driven by one thing--messages in the mind over time. Those messages create brand identity, over time, in the mind of the consumer.

  My business goggles taught me that people hear not just with their ears, but they hear with their hearts, their eyes, and their heads. The ears are simply a vehicle to feed the heart, the eyes, and the head. Democrats usually go right for the heart with emotional rhetoric. Republicans usually go to the head with facts and an understanding of the logic.

  When I became CEO of Godfather's Pizza in 1986, it was a failing company. The company literally was about to go under. Our sales were declining, company morale was declining, and our brand identity was blurred. My own management team and employees no longer knew the Godfather's mission. My number one task was to get everyone to realize that we had a brand identity crisis. Our manag
ement team had forgotten, and our customer base had forgotten, that Godfather's made the best-tasting pizza. Why? Because we gradually stopped making the best-tasting pizza. As a result, we lost customers, we lost profitability, and we were losing our company.

  Both political parties spend millions of dollars trying to sell their brand identity during elections, when a lot of the perception of their brand is created between elections by . . . (drum roll) the media.

  Let's illustrate the power of brand identity. If I were to say the term "Big Blue," what company pops into your mind? How long did it take you to answer IBM? If I were to say "copiers," what product comes to mind? Most likely, it is Xerox. How many times have you done as I have done and incorrectly said, "Would you make a Xerox of this for me?" Or "I'd like a Coke," and someone brings you another cola product. These are examples of strong brand identity. The brand is so strong that it becomes synonymous with the product.

  Strong messages are not enough, though, to create a strong, positive brand identity. The messages must be credible. There must be substance underlying the message. At Godfather's we decided to have one goal--make the best-tasting pizza. To achieve this goal we had to eliminate a lot of barriers that prevented us from achieving this goal. It's called focus. Basically, Godfather's was trying to be all things to all people before I arrived. They were trying to provide multiple products to multiple groups of consumers in an attempt to attract everybody. Instead of achieving "the best-tasting pizza," they ended up with a conglomeration of poor products.

  This is the direction the Democrats have taken their political party, and the Republicans have started to drift in that direction by losing their focus on fiscal responsibility. The Democrats tell anyone who will listen that their policies appeal to that person or their group and that the competition (the Republican Party) is too busy focusing on one consumer group (the rich) to care about them.

  When most people stop and really look at the primary tenets of what it means to be a Republican, they quickly realize that they are more ideologically aligned with the Republican Party. But they quickly go back to their perception of the party and denounce any formal affiliation. That's the weakness of the brand.

  The Republican Party has allowed its primary competition (Democrats) to define its image and what it stands for. Because of this, there now exists among millions of citizens a perception of what a Republican is that differs from the reality of what it means to be a Republican.

  Do you remember the story about Scotty, the college sophomore who accompanied me one day as part of a job shadow project at his school? Scotty told me, "A Democrat stands for the little people and a Republican stands for the rich guy."

  I then asked Scotty if he had heard of the term "GOP."

  He said, "Yes."

  I said, "Do you know what GOP means?"

  Scotty replied, "No."

  I said, "What if I told you it stood for 'Grand Old Party'? What would that suggest to you?"

  "Sounds like a bunch of old dudes," Scotty answered.

  Perception has been allowed to cloud reality. The Republican brand is perceived by many Democrats as showing a lack of compassion toward the poor, the elderly, and children in public schools. The brand is thought by millions to be unaccepting of racial minorities and uncaring about blue-collar workers struggling to achieve their American Dreams. Nothing is further from the truth, but a lot people do not know it. As a result, Republicans are experiencing difficulty connecting to the all-important middle or politically homeless voter.

  How did the Republicans allow themselves to become perceived as an uncaring, unaccepting, uncompassionate party comprised of "old dudes"? For too many years, Republicans have done little to combat the negative and divisive rhetoric of the Democrats and liberal members of the print and television media. In addition, Republicans do not package their message in a format that connects on a personal level with Leroy and Bessie Public.

  When Republicans make statements like "We want to eliminate the Department of Education," Leroy and Bessie Public hear, "Republicans don't care about education." When Republicans say, "We want to end all affirmative action programs," Leroy and Bessie think, "See, I knew they were racists and elitists." When Republicans say, "We need to build more prisons," Leroy and Bessie wonder, "Where are the programs to keep people out of prison?"

  There is merit to the ideas of reducing the size and influence of the U.S. Department of Education and eliminating quota-based hiring mandates. The solutions to these issues, however, must be explained to the public in terms of the direct benefits derived from their implementation. Voters want to know how policy solutions will affect them personally, and not necessarily how many billions of dollars will be saved.

  The public is much more likely to support changes in education policy if they are explained as allowing more local control of curriculums as opposed to eliminating an entire U.S. department because its bureaucrats are too liberal. "Education reform" is a nice term, but it is not the language of real people. Republicans need to say that they support strong, accountable public education. More citizens depend on public education than on private education. The fact that most teachers and administrators are more liberal than you does not mean you have to take a negative stance toward public education as an institution. Public education will be the only option for millions of children for a long time. We need to make it better.

  Taxpayers will understand the logic behind cutting marginal tax rates on income when they see their personal incomes rise and increased job opportunities become available. The term "tax cut" does not resonate with all potential voters in the real world. Tax code replacement does resonate with small business owners frustrated with the compliance costs of filling out all their tax forms and watching valuable cash generated by their business being sucked out by unfair inventory and depreciation rules. Connecting with voters, like connecting with customers, requires a marketing and communications plan that adequately describes your superior product and inspires potential consumers to buy it.

  Perception Is Reality, but Reality Matters

  If the Republicans solve their brand identity problem, they will have an expanded voter base for decades. This will not be accomplished by simply loudly criticizing the Democrats during election time; it will require a deliberate plan between elections to inform and inspire voters.

  Since the Contract with America stalled after Newt Gingrich left Congress, the Republicans have fallen back into the often used Democratic techniques of negative rhetoric and blame of the other party to win elections and to explain their policy agendas to voters. Republicans were put on the defensive by the Democrats most of the time. This contributed to gridlock in Congress and an expansion of the great divides and helped produce the close presidential elections of 2000 and 2004.

  I understand that running a campaign is different in many ways from running a business. But political parties, like businesses, will never grow their voter base by promoting their product only to repeat customers and by constantly criticizing their competition. Businesses rely on their loyal repeat customers to keep the business going but are engaged every day in a battle to expand their customer base and show their competitors' customers why their product is better.

  There is at least one big similarity between running a campaign and running a business. It's the thought, care, and attention that go into developing the message for the media campaign. For federal elections, this is critical and expensive. But not nearly enough attention and resources are expended between elections. Political campaigns are often focused primarily on securing the base and generating support for a candidate by telling the base all the reasons not to vote for the competing candidate. Businesses are focused primarily on spreading the positive news about their product or service. This in turn helps build a positive brand identity.

  Millions of advertising dollars are spent by political campaigns each election cycle to portray competing candidates as the worst people on Earth, barely deserving of oxygen
, let alone your vote. Truth is often the first casualty of an intense, negative campaign war, which leaves all but the dedicated base of political activists and observers confused and uninspired to vote.

  The next casualties of an intense, negative campaign are the issues and, worse yet, the solutions a candidate proposes. Many candidates spend too little time discussing the issues and solutions to problems. Voters do not want to hear only how bad things are. They already know that. They want to hear credible hope that things can be better. Voters have always been inspired by hope, and they always will be.

  Republicans also damage their brand identity when they repeatedly attack the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates. They are in effect attacking the party where many of the politically homeless once belonged. Many of the politically homeless have their political roots in the Democratic Party, and may still have family members who consider themselves Democrats. The politically homeless view attacks on the Democratic Party as an attack on some of the ideas they once supported. When Republicans focus their attacks on entities rather than specific issues and solutions, they alienate the politically homeless and a large pool of potentially Republican voters.

  Since Democrats have co-opted most of the credit for civil rights gains, an attack on Democrats is viewed by many and especially Blacks as an attack on positive civil rights legislation. These attacks send a clear signal to the conservative base, but they send a negative signal to Blacks and other minority groups. Voters then question the racial sincerity of a political party that would attack the institutions they believe opened up opportunities and equal access for all citizens.