It seems that Republicans have figured out that they are appealing to a shrinking base. So do they, you know, decide to actually support policies that appeal to people who aren’t older white men?
Of course not. Instead, they try to look hip by launching a social media PR campaign. Unfortunately, they don’t really understand social media.
They released a “Republicans Are People Too” campaign, complete with videos trying to go viral and a Twitter hashtag #IAmARepublican. But not only did the internet largely take over their hashtag, the innertubes added their own hashtag #RepublicansArePeopleToo full of sarcastic parodies of the GOP campaign.
Like these tweets:
#iamarepublican because I believe in personal responsibility. Which is why I blame Obama, liberals, blacks, and feminists for everything.
#IAmARepublican because I just gave birth to a new baby corporation and he already has the right to vote.
#IamARepublican because I want to put the “white” back in White House. And if you think that makes me a racist, then you’re the REAL racist.
#IAmARepublican because I value a guy who moves his money to avoid taxes more than a guy who moves his family to pick our fruit.
If that wasn’t bad enough, people immediately did image searches and found that every single person the video presented as “Republicans” who they claim are black, hispanic, asian, who recycle, who read the NY Times, etc. etc. are stock photos. Yes, that’s right, they didn’t even bother to find real Republicans, they just went to Getty Images and bought themselves some minorities for their video.
In fact, they are so lazy that the image captioned “Republicans read the New York Times in Public” is not only a stock photo, the newspaper isn’t even the NY Times.
I think the main problem is that they don’t understand that while traditional media is unidirectional, social media is bidirectional — the target of your PR campaign can (and does) respond and in this case they appear to have taken over with a snark campaign of their own.
Sometimes I worry that the incompetency of the Republicans is the only thing that saves us from them.
3 Comments
If the GOP can’t even manage good propaganda, how can anyone have hopes that they could manage the government in a efficient manor? They seem capable only of producing large sums of money but incapable of actually spending it wisely. This in itself to me is good evidence that the GOP is “not ready for prime time” when it comes to being in charge of congress.
They’re not meant to manage the government. They’re meant to shrink it and drown it in a bath tub.
Sounds similar to the new movie, “Meet The Mormons.” Yes, seriously.