Values Voters Vex Validity, Verity & Verisimilitude !

Attention Values Voters !

With the very best of intentions, you are often highly detrimental to your own causes. I don't like to say it. I wish it weren't true. But, it is true.

You don't have to read to the bottom to find my punch line. Here it is:

Your arguments will not convince

the voters in the middle

who determine the outcome of elections.

That doesn't mean you're wrong. Your arguments just won't convince the good folks in the middle; they just won't. If you want to win, you must find/embrace another point of view from which to espouse your convictions. That's it. That's all. Tell your tale from a different perspective.

Gatherings like the recent "Voters Value Summit 2009" are "feel good" events for attendees. They are profit-making events for promoters and participants. Everybody gets a chance to preach to the choir and everybody feels great.

None of this helps.

From the outside, it's scary.

That's right; it's frightening to see gatherings of people who are so sure they are right and where the speakers are so clearly tailoring their messages to tell people what they want to hear. It's scares me. It scares the conscientious, well-meaning people in the middle who will decide whether your side wins or loses. They begin to worry that the vats of drugged kool-aid are just behind the curtain. This behavior will not win the middle-ground.

George Will noted in 2006 how "this phrase {values voters} diminishes our understanding of politics. It also is arrogant on the part of social conservatives and insulting to everyone else because it implies that only social conservatives vote to advance their values and everyone else votes to . . . well, it is unclear what they supposedly think they are doing with their ballots.">link<

I'm not giving the answer to this conundrum away for free, as I did the Nancy Reagan campaign yesterday. Someone will have to pay for this one. However, permit me to summarize:

• You look like a bunch of rubes being swindled by itinerant preachers. You should know better. You should get smarter, fast.
• The "leaders" who pander to you should become better and get smarter fast, too.
• Ask yourselves if you think Bob Dole can beat Barack Obama in 2012? Neither can Mitt Romney; no matter how handsome and rich and smart he is, he can't win with his current point of view. Can't you see that something, someone, more is needed?