Your Political Guru

Right now the Mayor of Oklahoma City is seeking to pass a $750,000,000 civic improvement package called MAP’s 3.  It is to be financed by continuation of a one cent sales tax.  Oklahoma law says that before taxes increase, the people have to approve it.

As a citizen in Oklahoma City I’m opposed to the whole thing – even though Oklahoma City is not being hit as hard by the recession as other parts of the country, we are still being hit.  It seems unfair for the average Oklahoma family to pay nearly $1000 for some projects that benefit a few.  But the let’s put the relative merits of this program aside.

The media is creating the appearance that the only opponents to the MAP’s 3 referendum are the union bosses.  You see, the biggest opponents to MAP’s 3 are the police and firefighters unions.  (Which is strange – unions rarely oppose tax increases). It looks like a squabble between unions and management.  And that creates a problem for non-union opponents of the tax.

In any squabble between union bosses and elected officials – I want the union to lose.  I don’t want to send the message to other elected officials that in order to win they better get the union bosses on their side.

If you do a rain dance, and it rains – you might start believing that your dance caused rain.  If the union is opposed to an issue, and it fails, politicians will probably believe the unions had something to do with it.  Which means when unions start pushing for more tax money for their projects then elected officials will be concerned about their reelection prospects.

Human beings (and politicians) like to link cause and effect.  We take a pill, we get better.  Ergo, the medicine made us better.  Well that may not be the case.  The placebo effect is very powerful.  We believe that drugs will cure our ills, so if someone in a white lab coat says take this you will get better, sometimes people do eventhough all they got was a sugar pill.

The perception of cause and effect is a powerful tactic.

In the case of the Oklahoma City tax referendum, I am working to create public opposition to the tax increase from Ron Paul supporters.  If the tax increase dies then there is some debate as to why it failed.  Was it the Ron Paul people or the unions?  Who knows? Maybe people were smart enough to see through the Mayor’s snake oil and realized the MAP’s program was a bad idea.

The point is, in this case, working behind the scenes would be disastrous for conservatives.  We needed to get public credit for opposing this.  This means we must waste time doing media activities.  Not because it works, but because it determines who is going to be perceived as the cause of the defeat.

Points to Consider:

There is a political placebo effect.  A great deal of the time the people taking credit for some action actually did very little to make it happen.

Something’s just happen.  I predict that there will be a hurricane someday.  And I also predict that Al Gore will blame man-made global warming as its cause.  If you disagree with Mr. Gore, you had better be ready to pre-empt him.

Be ready to use the law of cause and effect to your advantage.  When one of your political enemies loses in the election, be sure that your issue gets the credit for his/her defeat.