A Simple List of Political Rules
There are four central tenets of modern politics that everyone should understand, but few people do:
1) Never tell the truth, but tell people what they want to hear.
2) Voters have short memories and that always plays to your advantage
3) Because of short memories, voters can be riled up into large groups, and never underestimate the stupidity of people in large groups.
4) Voters are not as wise, intelligent and reasoned as they think they are.
All of these points are related to one another, and depend on each other to be successful. Here is a short illustration of now these points work:
1) People who have lost their homes deserved it because they lied about their incomes on applications, and because the federal government made it too easy for folks to get outrageous loans. This led to the housing collapse which started the day President Obama took office.
2) Because no one remembers the two wars launched under the Bush Administration, the disappearance of trillions of dollars into those wars fueled by out–of–control government spending, the Democrat in the White House is blamed for TARP and the stimulus bill. (Both of these originated under Bush).
3) Egged on by professional liars (i.e., right–wing talk radio), the stimulus bill, TARP and previously ignored out–of–control government spending enraged citizens to want to “take their country “ back and fight any government proposals (health care reform) as a threat to their liberty. So hundreds of people flooded town halls about health care reform with a list of demands that had little to do with reality, wedded to outright stupidity that Medicare and Social Security were *not* government programs, death panels and an ever growing list of nonsense that was treated like a fact. On top of that is the belief that government spending became out of control the day President Obama took office.
4) All voters pretend they want to listen to candidates to “understand what he’s about.” But consistently, most people decide at the last minute when voting, having made up their minds only when entering voting booth. If voters were as intelligent as they claim to be, they could see through points 1–3 early on and there would be far less self–congratulatory “independents” or “swing voters” because they *should have already made up their minds.*
Perhaps I should add one last rule to this list: self–deception is everything.