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The week's question
In March 2025, in the thread "Re: OT, out", Umm asked the members: "Do you think it is because America is made up of magical soil that makes businesses based in America magically profitable?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
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Author: albaby1 ✶❂🐝 GOLD
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Number: of 86289 
Subject: Re: Puffery and Lies
Date: 07/12/24 3:34 PM
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Sorry. On this on you’re wrong. One of the things you *can* do with advertising is reinforce something that is true, or that people think is *probably* true.

Right. But that's the problem. It isn't true, and it isn't something that people are going to think is probably true.

Trump doesn't do think tanks or policy documents. He's not "binder guy." He doesn't do 12-point proposals. He's not a Heritage Foundation guy.

Heck, he's not even a "team" guy. Democrats have spent the last eight years describing how Donald Trump has destroyed the GOP. He's converted it away from being a party of ideas into an authoritarian cult of personality that serves one man and one man only, and not a governing philosophy any more. That the GOP has been replaced with the Party of Trump.

Now you want to argue that Trump's assembled an overarching policy document in close collaboration with a conservative think tank? Now you want to run against that policy document instead of Trump himself? Good luck with that.

The reason you "tie" a candidate to something else is if you think you can convince voters that the "something else" is the real threat, so you run against that instead. So instead of some bog-standard GOP House candidate, you run against Newt Gingrich or the Koch Brothers or Paul Ryan's budget - something bigger than them, something more important than them, so that you scare the voter with the Big Bad.

But Trump's the Big Bad. Trump killed Roe v. Wade - why are you putting a policy document like Project 2025 between him and the thing people dislike? Trump hates NATO - why not say that, rather than waste time trying to first teach voters what Project 2025 says about NATO and then tie that to Trump? It's not going to work, and you waste your resources trying to build negatives up about two things (Project 2025 and Trump) rather than just one thing (Trump).
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This community has written 86,214 posts about US Policy. The article-length ones it recommended most:
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