While snowflakes both left and right whine about "big" money in politics, billionaire Rep. David Trone, D-Md., just spent $62 million — of his own money — to lose the primary election for U.S. senator from Maryland to Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks despite his outspending her 9-1.
(As for me? I’m an enthusiastic supporter of the Republican candidate, former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan.)
Journalist Jane Mayer, author of "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right," call your office. Time for your next exposé.
The real "secret weapons" in politics are narrative and declaration. Not "dark" money.
I recently revealed here how Donald Trump displays unique mastery of the strongest modes of persuasion: narrative and declaration. Let's dig deeper to equip our archconservative allies with these political weapons to rid us of those pesky "progressives" infesting our politics.
Progressives? Avert your eyes.
The Bad Guys (They) have recognized the power of narrative since time immemorial. Time for us conservatives, the Good Guys (Us), to steal their playbook.
Bad Guys? The godfather of totalitarianism, Plato, put words politically condemning poetry into Socrates' mouth.
As Karl Popper, the colleague of celebrated liberals Friedrich Hayek and George Soros, taught us, beware Plato, who in Book 10 of "The Republic" argues for the deportation of poets:
"Let us, then, conclude our return to the topic of poetry and our apology, and affirm that we really had good grounds then for dismissing her [poetry] from our city, since such was her character. For reason constrained us. And let us further say to her, lest she condemn us for harshness and rusticity, that there is from of old a quarrel between philosophy and poetry. For such expressions as 'the yelping hound barking at her master and mighty in the idle babble ... of fools,' and '‘the mob that masters those who are too wise for their own good,' ... and the subtle thinkers who reason that after all they are poor, and countless others are tokens of this ancient enmity."
Far more recently, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, in a letter to the Marquiss of Montrose in 1703, observed that "if a man were permitted to make all the ballads he need not care who should make the laws of a nation, and we find that most of the ancient legislators thought that they could not well reform the manners of any city without the help of a lyric, and sometimes of a dramatic poet."
In passing, take note that Fletcher's astute observation was later appropriated and distorted by progressive Democrat Sen. Robert L. Owen, one of the sponsors of the Federal Reserve Act. Owen falsely claimed that Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the progenitor of the Rothschild financial dynasty, said, "Give me control of a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws."
That fabricated quote continues to float around, a derelict upon the stormy seas of the internet, to this very day. Don't fall for it.
Even more recently, the Brothers Grimm taught by way of fairy tales, another narrative genre.
The Smithsonian reports:
"Throughout their lifetime ... the Brothers Grimm ... collected and compiled hundreds of oral stories ... and transformed them into enduring written tales, including Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel. Their story collection ... conveyed simple moral lessons that resonate universally, making them accessible to all."
The left grasps the power of narrative. As I wrote at Newsmax earlier this year:
"My old archenemy Patrick Reinsborough, with Doyle Canning, laid it out in what I called at Forbes "the most important political book of our era: 'Re:Imagining Change: How to use story-based strategy to win campaigns, build movements, and change the world...."
"This book lays out, chapter and verse, the culture, strategy and tactics by which the left continues to achieve policy victory after policy victory notwithstanding political defeats. It is the hidden-in-plain-sight secret blueprint to the left's most powerful 'secret weapon.' It is a blueprint the progressive movement has been following ... often with great success, for decades: the innocuous-sounding 'story-based strategy.'
"The good news? The culture, strategy and tactics they use ... would be as powerful in the hands of the right as they are in the hands of the left, at least if the right ups its game and powerfully stands for justice for all as well as liberty. (We certainly ought to be doing that.)
"How powerful are these tools? They are the very tools which Donald Trump ... used to propel himself to the presidency. Yet Trump, not exactly a man of the right, stands virtually alone in the GOP in so doing."
What is to be done?
Time for conservatives to learn and deploy the secret weapons of narrative and declaration to achieve plenary political victory over the left.
How? Per poet Dylan Thomas: "A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe."
Ralph Benko, co-author of "The Capitalist Manifesto" and chairman and co-founder of the 200,000+ follower "The Capitalist League," is the founder of The Prosperity Caucus and is an original Kemp-era member of the Supply-Side revolution that propelled the Dow from 814 to its current heights and world GDP from $11T to $104T. Read Ralph Benko's reports — More Here.
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