{"id":271,"date":"2006-03-30T15:22:06","date_gmt":"2006-03-30T22:22:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=271"},"modified":"2006-03-30T15:22:06","modified_gmt":"2006-03-30T22:22:06","slug":"brand-w","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2006\/03\/30\/brand-w\/","title":{"rendered":"Brand &#8220;W&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name=\"004185\"><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com\/archives\/2006\/03\/post_6.html\"> I don&#8217;t see that Republicans driving a wedge between themselves and the President is a good election strategy. [&#8230;] The President is seen universally as the face of the Republican Party. We are now brand W. Republicans.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>A politician looks out for Number One at all times, but as a wide cast, it&#8217;s difficult to say that the pollster isn&#8217;t right.  Congress is not functioning, it has been a rubber stamp, a party&#8217;s fortunes almost always depend on the Head Honcho, and individuals might be able to get breathing space from Head Honcho &#8212; as a group, they cannot.<\/p>\n<p>There have been times.  Brand Harding was cleared out in a real hurry in favour of Brand Coolidge, at a remarkably breath-taking pace.  But Brand Hoover flaoted over the party for a decade, and there was nothing &#8212; nothing at all &#8212; the party could do in 1934 or 1936.  On the Democrats&#8217; side, Brand Cleveland was whisked away in favour of Brand Bryan &#8212; and if someone points out that Bryan lost, I can point out that Cleveland would have lost by a landslide.<\/p>\n<p>But Brand Nixon &#8230; that couldn&#8217;t be plunged in 1974.  So what are you supposed to do?<\/p>\n<p>Brand Bush was shown to be doomed in 2005.  The New Jersey Gubernatorial winner won with an ad that had the question &#8220;[Opponent] is George Bush&#8217;s choice.  Is he YOURS?&#8221;, ominous music in the background.  All the Republicans are George Bush&#8217;s choice&#8230; by definition.  How the heck are you supposed to navigate away from THAT?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t see that Republicans driving a wedge between themselves and the President is a good election strategy. [&#8230;] The President is seen universally as the face of the Republican Party. We are now brand W. Republicans. A politician looks out for Number One at all times, but as a wide cast, it&#8217;s difficult to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}