Choosing a winning campaign slogan can be a tough process, especially for republicans. GOP candidates are in the difficult position of needing to cater to their base, while at the same time trying to woo in voters from outside the party. As we approach the 2016 election season, candidates are busy working with their campaign advisers and party leaders, to come up slogans that tell voters who they are and what they’re about.
Of course, not every proposed campaign slogan is chosen. Throughout the course of American history there have been some truly terrible campaign slogans, which probably should have been nixed, but weren’t. With real slogans like “
Ma Ma, Ma Ma, Where’s My Pa,” “
Cox and Cocktails,” and McCain, Palin’s notorious “Drill Baby Drill,” we can only imagine how bad the nixed slogans might actually be.
Here are the top ten Republican campaign slogans that might have gotten nixed, and the candidates who might have proposed them.
1. Putting Uppity Women And Minorities Back In Their Place.
This one was likely proposed by 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump. When the establishment shot it down in the name of “political correctness,” Trump probably argued that the party should just say what it means, instead of pussy-footing around the “real issues.”
2. Uncle Sam I Am.
While Ted Cruz will go down in history as the only Senator to have read Dr. Seuss on the House floor, while holding the entire nation hostage to his hysterics, his campaign advisers likely would have nixed this one.
3. Crafting The Truth.
A line from Ben Carson’s book
What I Believe, A Collection Of My Syndicated Columns,
reads:
“We cannot rely on those in the media and those in politics to tell us the truth. We need to go beyond them and rely on ourselves to craft a truly free America that works for all of us. This means we must become informed voters and use our votes effectively to choose the kind of leadership that represents the will of the people.”
While they were unable to keep him from putting the string of meaningless words into a book, it’s likely his campaign advisers steered him away from this slogan.
4. Everyone has the right to lie..f.
This should be the campaign slogan of Carly Fiorina. Fiorina recently won all sorts of national recognition for telling the biggest lie during the second GOP debate. Fiorina’s statements about watching a live baby die on the table during the 12 hour “secret” Planned Parenthood videos released by the scam company Center for Medical Progress were utterly false. But false statements are nothing new for the right to lie-fers. The organizations backing her, including the
Susan B. Anthony’s List, actually
fought all the way to the Supreme Court to protect their right to make shit up.
5. Jeb! Bush!
Bush’s campaign advisers likely nixed this one right from the start. After all, the country hasn’t forgotten the 2008 economic crash, nor the Iraq war, nor the trillions of dollars in national debt accrued by the last person with the name Bush in the White House. The campaign slogan Bush is actually using is just Jeb!
I guess they’re hoping no-one will realize it’s Jeb! Bush!
6. Piyush!
Certainly proposed by someone other than
Piyush Bobby Jindal himself, this campaign slogan was likely shot down with an immediate “Shh.” Although Jindal’s birth name is Piyush, he changed it to Bobby. He swears it wasn’t because he wanted to distance himself from his Indian heritage, though. Jindal has reportedly called people before his campaign events to tell them to “
dress in Western clothes,” not in traditional Indian attire. He advises people to lose their own cultures and just “
be American.” And last year there was a huge uproar when Jindal
unveiled his portrait as Louisiana governor, which depicted him with white skin. So no, Piyush just wouldn’t work for Bobby.
7. We Don’t Need A New Idea.
During the 2013 Conservative Political Action Caucus (CPAC) Marco Rubio
told the audience “”We don’t need a new idea. There is an idea. The idea is called America, and it still works.” We can only imagine how many right-wing heads exploded when Rubio, once billed by the GOP as the “Republican Savior” told the CPAC audience that America is working fine and we don’t really need any new ideas. There’s a Democrat in the White House, for God’s sake. You can’t say that.
This slogan was nixed in favor of Rubio’s current slogan, “A New American Century.” The premise behind the slogan? “We need a new policy agenda designed specifically for the 21st Century.”
8. People For An Uneducated America.
9. Never Forget Dumond.
While this might have been a campaign slogan for right-wing nut Mike Huckabee a decade ago, it would have been quickly swept under the rug soon after former Governor Huckabee helped to arrange
serial rapist Wayne Dumond’s release from prison.
Dumond was convicted of raping 17-year-old Ashley Stevens, a distant cousin of former president Bill Clinton. Right-wing fanatics threw their support behind Dumond, who had been convicted of a string of other violent crimes, prior to raping Stevens. They
turned Dumond into a persecuted hero, leveling every false accusation they could think of against then president Clinton.
It’s no secret that Huckabee would now like voters to forget that his blind hatred for Bill Clinton, combined with his dismal failure to fact-check right-wing conspiracy theories, drove him to
personally orchestrate the release of Wayne Dumond. Upon getting out of prison, Dumond went to Missouri, where raped and murdered two young women, one who was pregnant with her first child. Considering how often Huckabee accuses others of being “baby-killers,” he certainly doesn’t want the public to remember Sara Andrasek, or the unborn child who died with her.
10. Four More Wars!
It’s likely this would have been John McCain’s 2008 campaign slogan, had his advisers not nixed it. They may also have shot down the idea of a “Bomb-Bomb-Bomb-Iran” theme song. That wouldn’t have stopped McCain’s bosom buddy,
Lindsey Graham, from trying to resurrect the idea for his 2016 presidential campaign.
For
McCain, Graham and conservative nut Joe Leiberman, if you aren’t bombing someone, you’re just not doing foreign policy right. Graham’s super PAC tweaked the slogan to make it somewhat more palatable to mainstream America. Still the promise of more wars and more violence is only slightly more subtle in the chosen slogan, “Security is Strength.”
No doubt there were many other proposed campaign slogans for these and other 2016 Republican presidential candidates, which didn’t make the final cut. Scott Walker might have proposed “Killing ISIS Like Unions” or “A Koch and A Smile,” but neither of those would have gotten him any farther than his real campaign slogan did, which is nowhere.
Rick Perry likely wanted to use the slogan “Convicted,” but considering the criminal charges against him, it probably wouldn’t have helped his failed candidacy even a little.
Regardless of the chosen slogan, it’s hard to imagine any of these right-wing nuts actually gaining enough votes to win the White House.
