Rules to live by

Many of us remember Ronald Regan saying that the 11th commandment was "Thou shall not talk ill of a fellow Republican." Newsweek recently wrote an article about Karl Rove's strategy of taking it to the strength of your opponent. You keeping hammering them on their strength to negate it and make it a weakness. Now its time for some progressive rules

Lightseeker over at dailykos wrote these and I want to expand on them.

Here they are:

1. We must stand for something, not JUST against the Repubs.

2. In communicating our message to the general public the 3 most important things to talk about are : values, values and values. The fourth most important things are factoids that rattle their cages.

3. Symbols of America are as important as words. From the Statue of Liberty to the Lincoln Memorial to the American Bald Eagle, what you show can be as important as what you say. Use symbols to help convey your agenda more powerfully. [ from the Repub playbook by Luntz ]

4. Democrats must not be afraid of the "G" word (God), indeed the real message of the Gospel is one of compassion and brotherhood not fear and division and that is what we stand for....

5. We must learn to effectively frame our message using our values.

6. We must work on establishing the Democratic brand by publishing it, repeating it , teaching it , and doing these things over and over.

7. We must challenge lazy and unfair media coverage with timely and effective responses and do so every time it happens.

8. We must stop answering questions that are framed badly and start answering bad questions with counter questions.

9. We must learn to engage in civil conversation and not let our message be sidetracked by Republican name calling and trash talk.

10. We must agree with people whenever we can , challenging not their fixed ideas, but their conclusions about them.

11. We must explain how the values we hold will positively impact the lives of the people in our community, directly and immediately.

12. We must tell stories. ......

Lately I am thinking of making this list a Baker's Dozen by adding: Connect your ideas to a master narrative, hopefully one that is shared by other Democrats!

To me what Progressive's and Democrats need to do is sync up our operations. We need to have a coordinated message. A master narrative is essential for the way the Republicans have been controlling the media over the last few years, and we need to start taking the fight to them.

The way you create a narrative is communication; you create email lists and phone databases of people who are best able to disseminate information. We get everyone who is going on tv, everyone who is blogging, and all opinion writers using the same language and this will help shift the media's focus and portray our issues better.

Remember its not cut and run, its redepolyment.
It's not welfare, it's community investment.
It's not banning gay marriage, its adding bigotry into the constitution.
Then again its more then that, its that Republicans are a failure and governing. Republicans forget about those less of then they are. And Republicans only care about people who act like them.