Republicans need to learn how to speak their language. But first: they need to learn how to listen. You can't sell people even on demonstrably superior ideas if you can't explain them in language that your audience actually uses and in terms that they actually understand.
Instead of dwelling in the theoretical and the academic, GOP hopefuls would do well to listen to the real world concerns of blue collar people, especially Hispanic and blacks. Learn what worries them and what motivates them. Go to their events and to their homes. Stop talking around them and over them, and learn how to communicate with them.
This does not imply simple condescension or the gratuitous use of street lingo (Ã la Hillary, whose otherworldly phoniness helped sink her equally huge ambition). Hear them, acknowledge the validity of their concerns, and then explain the practical benefits of free markets, personal responsibility and limited government using examples from their own lives and experience - in their jobs, their small businesses, and for the benefit of their families.
And then, remind them of all the empty promises Democrats have made them over the years, and what they have actually delivered.
I fully agree. I come from a family involved with construction. The idea of a carpenter being only worthy of looking down upon, is ridiculous. The idea of the truck driver or backhoe operator being only worthy of looking down upon, is ridiculous.
First comes the respect, then later the deeper discussion. I believe Donald Trump got this from day one.
Little story: Before and after military service, during college, I worked in the oil business. My job duties involved time in both the field and the office. We got dirty.
Typically the field guys joke about the preppy new engineers. But a new engineer that gets dirty too, wins friends.
One particularly good engineer, invented and made a couple of new tools adapted for certain local applications. The field guys saw this, and he became sort of a hero.
"That guy is how all engineers ought to be--a bit dirty from doing actual work in the field."
Those demarcation lines are there. College grads versus non-college grads. Officers versus enlisted. Field sites versus office workers. Upper management versus lower ranking workers.
The GOP has a big opportunity to make the democrats rue the day Obama first said "cling to guns and Bibles," and Hillary said "deplorables."
Republicans SHOULD BE all in for all of the hard jobs in our society, and all in for the dignity of a job versus the indignity of living off the hard work of others.
Bill Clinton claimed credit for "ending welfare as we now it," by instituting "work for welfare."
