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Now this gets me excited - Dem/Con Alliance?

I love when people's views of what is possible get blown out of the water. That's usually an indication that real progress is happening.

So how's this for something you'd never expect to see in a million years.... you've got Ralph Nader praising Ron Paul and saying that subsections of the Republican and Democractic parties will join up to form alliances to offset what each of their respective parties have become.

Think about that for a second. You've got far-right and far-left congressmen pairing up because despite their ideological divides, those divides are less than the divides they have with what their own parties have become. Now that's interesting. 

Nader explains this trend well in the video below...




I love that this theme is starting to emerge because as I've said in other posts, I think big gov versus small gov is irrelevant, what people want is effective government.

From a PR perspective, this is the kind of stuff I see becoming more prominent as we get closer to the 2012 election. You're actually going to have people fighting their own party in an attempt to win the presidency. You'll have Democrats saying that other Democrats aren't Democrats at all, and you'll have Republicans doing the same thing with Republicans.

I could be wrong, but I really think 2012 is going to be the most contentious election in US history with a real no-holds barred fight between Republicans, Democrats and this emerging third group of Dems and Republicans who are working together to overthrow the ruling powers in both parties.

What will be interesting from a messaging perspective is whether we'll have a watershed moment. Right now the venacular is controlled by Obama and Boehner - instead of 'rich' we now say 'job creators', instead of 'taxes' we now say 'revenue' - it's all a desperate attempt to control the conversation.

Even someone like Ron Paul has to pander using certain phrases - he never says 'raise taxes on corporations' (because that doesn't play to the Republican voter) but he does say 'end corporate welfare / corporatism' (which Republicans cheer for because they don't believe in anyone getting special treatment, the irony being that ending corporate welfare basically equals corporations paying more taxes, or put differently, being less of a tax burden on the tax payer via subsidies and the like).

The conversation as we head towards the 2012 election is going to be essential to watch. The winners are going to be those people who get the populous talking in their jargon.

The reason the notion of Democrats and Republicans working together AGAINST other Democrats and Republicans excites me is that it symbolizes the beginning of the end to hyper-partisanship. In business we call it co-opetition. You can compete with someone AND work with them at the same time. In fact, many people consider this the model of the future - it's a hybrid of pure capitalism (everyone is in it for themselves) and socialism (everyone is in it together). 

A world based on co-opetition is ideal for people in PR because then everything becomes about innovation and ideas and growth. Instead of talking points designed aroung tearing down the other side, they become about articulating a vision for the future and arguing why your ideas are the best.

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