For years, it seems, the general progressive / liberal community has puzzled over how to convey to the subset of working poor and middle class Americans who consistently vote Republican against their own best interests. Despite a decade’s worth of GOP-applied policies being fully implemented and shown to have failed in spectacular fashion, complex and logic-based arguments still fail to counteract the heavy propaganda of right-wing radio and the outright lies and history-revising of Fox News. The refusal of corporate media sources to discern fact from fiction or call out lies and distortions spewed forth from GOP mouthpieces over their airways only adds to the dilemma.
In this situation, perhaps the only solution is to reduce the argument to Homer Simpson language, something that will fit on a T-shirt or a bumper sticker. Consider this: we’re all familiar with report cards and letter grades. In Los Angeles, restaurants and take-out establishments are required to display letter grades of their sanitary standards – “A” is excellent, “C” is iffy (I’ve never seen a “D” grade). We’re also all familiar with the GOP’s framing itself as the “business party” among other memes. When it comes to businesses in general, I’d argue our most common interaction is buying goods and services from stores and vendors, and subsequently, receiving either good or bad customer service from said business.
SO, combine and boil down these concepts and you have a meme that the against-their-interests voters can understand:
“The GOP – ‘A’ in Sales, ‘F’ in Customer Service.”
Once the meme is used to break past their knee-jerk dismissive defenses, perhaps the constructive argument / conversation involving those complex and logic (and history) based points can ensue. If not, it’s still a concise campaign battle cry.
