The GOP needs better strategists.
From TPM:
Republican strategist Nicolle Wallace said Sunday that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is good for the Republican Party because, as one of many attributes, Rubio “knows who Tupac is.”
“He’s everything we need and more,” Wallace, a former aide to President George W. Bush and an adviser on Sen. John McCain’s 2008 campaign, said on ABC’s “This Week.” “He’s modern. He knows who Tupac is. He is on social media. “
Y’all, Tupac died in the 90s. If knowing a pop culture reference from the decade before last is enough to be perceived as Cool and With-It by Today’s Young People, then I’m going to go bust a funky fresh “Melrose Place” reference on the early 20-somethings who work downstairs and bask in their admiration. Maybe they’ll invite me to a rave!
Oh, and y’know who’s also on social media? Noted hipster John McCain. If you’re not on social media at this point in American public life, you need to retire from politics entirely and settle down comfortably to listen to your Victrola.
I really hope the Republicans have smarter people than this working for them. I really hope someone somewhere isn’t just trying to figure out which up-and-comers are the best packaging for their same old ideas. Mitt Romney could have laid down a track with Mumford & Sons and done a cameo on “Pretty Little Liars” and would still have lost because voters didn’t like what he was selling. Please tell me that there’s some member of the GOP who’s taking a l0ok at the actual policies they’re touting and trying to figure how to move them back toward the American mainstream.
It’s vaguely reassuring that some headway seems to be being made on immigration reform, and that they’re not just saying the name “Rubio” over and over and over like some kind of mantra. After getting creamed with Hispanics, it appears perhaps a lesson was learned. Maybe next they’ll try to make inroads with women by asking a few what they think the next time contraception comes up? It’s an idea.
Or they could just play “Hand in My Pocket” really loud at their next convention and hope for the best.
Another reason the GOP can count on Rubio to bring the Hispanic vote AND the young, cool kid vote: he knows the Lambada.
Silly doctor. Repackaging, hyperbole, manipulation of voter registration eligibility, scandalmongering, and sloganeering are better and more effective than reforms to the policy platform. We’re talking politics here! And much easier and less scary too. Policy reform is for Democrats!
He has a Myspace page!
Anyways, much of the problem with previous candidates could be that one could reasonably say “he don’t even know who Tupac is.”
To go all the way back to 1983 (I think it was), The Beach Boys were scheduled for a concert at the White House by a mid-level staffer and James Watt cancelled the concert because (and I’m cutting and pasting this from the wikipedia) “Watt said that “rock bands” that had performed on the Mall on Independence Day during 1981 and 1982 had encouraged drug use and alcoholism and had attracted “the wrong element”, who would rob people and families attending any similar events in the future.”
They scheduled Wayne Newton instead.
This is one of those things where pop culture can *EASILY* become a proxy for policy (certainly social policy).
Insofar as it makes for a good proxy, this is actually a good sign! They’re moving from more than 20 years behind the times to around 17ish.
The Republican candidate in 2020 can mention Bieber and we can all make sidelong glances and ask each other how, seriously, he didn’t know that Bieber died in 2018 of heroin and why didn’t he clear these comments with a staffer first.
I’ve been waiting for a long time to vote for a candidate who listens to Sepultura.
i would vote for a candidate who promised their campaign theme song would be “raining blood” – they’d be the most fundamentally/existentially horrifying honest candidate for higher office. a breath of fresh, ash-filled, tear-streaked, rent-garment air.
I listen to Ministry.
If you have a hotrod, you didn’t build that?
I remember that! He cancelled the only Republican rock band in the world. (OK, Ted Nugent.)
Alice Cooper, too, I think.
Our Connor was right in the League when he wrote that there is something about conservatism that makes it fundamentally impossible for them to talk about pop culture seriously. Look at what happened when Rich Lowrey and K-Lo got untight about Beyonce’s performance at the super-bowl.
In some ways, I prefer old fuddy conservatism to anything else. At least K-Lo is upfront and honest about how she is scared of modernity and wants to turn back the clock. This is less
galling than spending a night partying to hedonistic excess and preaching the opposite the next day.
I tend to agree. Remember how cringeworthy the whole Michael Steele thing was after Obama was elected? That having him head up the RNC would allow the kids to think of the GOP as “street?” I still get embarrassed for everyone just thinking about that.
That would be such a fantastic subtitle for a book.
“The Michael Steele Era: Embarrassing for Everyone.”
Also, I agree with NewDealer. I’d have a kind of perverse respect for someone who said “Look, everyone. I haven’t liked a pop act since The Osmonds. I don’t know who Lady Gaga is, other than I find her off-putting. If you want someone painfully hip, vote for Conan. If you want someone who doesn’t pretend to be cool but will run the country well, vote for me.”
Perverse respect is a good way of putting it.
And the odd thing is that I am not always super-current on pop culture either especially music.
I don’t watch much TV beyond Doctor Who but I at least know somewhat of what is going on.
I’m more… oddly cultured than anything.
Which is a fine way of saying, if you’ve heard of it, I haven’t.
“I don’t watch much TV beyond Doctor Who but I at least know somewhat of what is going on.”
Maybe now you do, but will you when you’re in your 50s? Maybe yes in your case.
But I’m 39 and I already find myself ignorant of a lot of pop-culture references that late teens early 20-somethings seem to know. (I can’t really give examples because, well, I don’t know them).
I marvel at the supermarket check-out aisle, which seems to feature an ever-increasing number of publications devoted to following the exploits of apparent celebrities of whom I have never heard.
In this case, I am wholly at peace with my ignorance. (And you’re a hair older than me, Pierre, but it seems we’re pretty much in the same boat.)
Pierre,
My fifties are 18 years away. Maybe by then I will have settled into domestic bliss and weekly date nights of TV and a bottle of wine with my wife. The reality is that the Internet let’s me keep sort of up with pop-culture. I don’t watch Girls but the fine people at slate and other sites I read do. But you are right that there is a lot of stuff that still escapes me but that is because there is a lot stuff.
Russell,
I sort of know who many of those people are but they exist in one big “famous for being famous” pile to me.
When he was running for president in 1996, Bob Dole was talked into doing a campaign stop at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, to ty to appeal to the younger demographic. A reporter asked him in he preferred the Beatles or the Stones, to which he replied “Which would get me more votes?”
That’s exactly what Russell suggests, and he said it with deadpan sarcasm and implicitly called the reporter a moron. What more could you ask?
Bob Dole would have been such an awesome human being if he’d never cared about being president.
I don’t mind telling you I voted for the man.
I voted for Dole in ’96, too. (I was in my last stages of identifying as a “conservative”….and I didn’t like Clinton much at the time.)
I was thinking more along the lines of the GOP touting Paul Ryan’s love for Rage Against the Machine.
It is a pretty interesting question about whether one’s outward appearance and culture should match one’s politics. I am still a bit perplexed by the Wrestler with the alternative piercings who got the Romney tattoo.
I’ve heard in interviews with him lately and he’s sort of alright now that he’s no longer RNC chair.
The bigger thing was the tokenism. ‘Hey! We have a black guy, too. Hey! We have a woman, too!’, the last referring to Palin.
The thing is… it’s not just ANY black guy or ANY woman that gives you cred. But they never figured that out.
Likewise, you get no credit for the fist Latino top cabinet officer if he’s the intellectual equivalent of a baby seal. (Except among particularly stupid and race-obsessed pundits.)
Speaking of James Watt, when asked about one of his advisory panels, he explained that it had, and this is a quote here, “I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent.”
As it turns out, this did not demonstrate his diversity bona fides.
I remember Bloom County making a joke along those lines, which I didn’t get at the time.
It has to be a real black guy or a real woman. I.e., not a Republican.
A fantastic way of letting us all know how woefully out of touch somebody is involves describing a person with the following: “He knows who Tupac is.”
Wasn’t “who is Tupac” one of the questions in he primary debates last year?
It came up during the correspondent’s dinner, where Obama asked Trump to stop fixating on the birth certificate and find Tupac and Biggie Smalls.
It came up during one of the debates, where Mitt insisted that he’s not just the candidate of out-of-touch millionaires, he’s also the candiate of Joe Twopack.
Wait a minute! “I know Tupac” is the first line in all of my OKCupid messages.
This is why I have such a hard time getting responses! Back to the drawing board?
Do you think “I know who Snoop Dog is” will get a better response?
Beware the Elevators. They’re haunted.
But does Rubio know K-Pop? If he can’t do the Gangnam Style dance, he isn’t getting my kids’ vote.
If someone would ask Rubio on camera if he’s heard of Flatbush Zombies it’d make all this crap worth it.
Governments come and go, but my people stay eternal.
Y’all, Tupac died in the 90s.
So is covering for conspiracies your hobby? Vaccines don’t cause autism, Tupac has been dead for 16 years…What’s next? Are you going to tell us the moon landing was real?
Honestly, though, I consider not being up-to-date on rappers a qualification for the office.