I Said I Would Hurl. I Hurled.

According to the Internet, Governor Bobby Jindal said: ""We had a number of Republicans damage the brand this year..."
Jindal takes on Obama, challenges Republicans to redefine party

I said I would hurl if I heard another Republican talk about the party as a "brand". I hurled.

Here's what I think happened. Back in 2007, the GOP coalesced around its corporate worship meme. It became almost indistinguishable from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. This meant corporate cash buying political support that helped increase corporate cash in a weird cycle of profit distillation that only a fool would say was the desired outcome of a capitalist economic engine.

That wasn't the problem.


The problem was that in addition to corporate cash, the GOP absorbed the corporate mindset. Republicanism became a business, and Republican politics became a marketing effort. That's why so many of my conservative compadres these days are more loyal to brands than principles. That's why they think of the GOP as a "brand" that just needs better shelf placement and maybe some new slogans.

That's not the real problem.

The real problem is that the product is tainted, and the Republicans won't believe it, because they forgot the first rule of propaganda: don't believe your own bullshit. Jindal himself is a classic example of the problem. He tells the party  it has to quit being stupid, yet he's one of the people who's dragging down the party's collective IQ.

Jindal, like so many others in the GOP today, is a fundamentalist parading as a conservative. While big business has set the financial agenda for the GOP, the fundamentalists have set their own agenda. And that agenda is not conservative. It's not even a very smart agenda, since it opposes abortion and birth control at the same time. It's the agenda that says we should water down education in this country just as we're hitting the future. It's an agenda for a weaker America.

It's not a branding problem, my conservative compadres. It's the product. American conservatism should be about the continued security and prosperity of the nation. Neither big business nor fundamentalist Christianity share that goal. Big business wants to make money. Fundamentalism wants to spread its opinions. Add in a lot of elected politicians of weak character and you get today's Republican party. It says the conservative words, but it doesn't follow a conservative agenda. It's strung out between corporate and religious fanaticism, and all the rebranding in the world won't solve that problem.