Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Does the Nuge's opinion have an effect on persuadable voters?

Ted Nugent, exhibiting the same lyrical skills that helped him write songs like "Wang Dang Sweet Poontang," spoke at the National Rifle Association's annual convention this weekend.  According to a report from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Mr. Nugent was trying to get NRA members to vote against President Obama.  Given the setting, I assume this is roughly as difficult as shooting fish in a barrel.


In any event, Mr. Nugent's remarks included the following bon mots:

1.“If you can’t galvanize and promote and recruit people to vote for Mitt Romney, we’re dead.”   I think the "we" in the sentence is the NRA but it might mean America in general. 

2. “If Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”  It is unclear whether Mr. Nugent's predicted death/imprisonment will be orchestrated by President Obama or if Mr. Nugent intends to commit a crime that will likely lead to his death/imprisonment.

3.  "If you can't go home and get everybody in your lives to clean house in this vile, evil America hated administration, I don't even know what you're made out of."  I also don't know what NRA members are made out of.  I assume the same stuff as non-NRA members but I have not seen any peer-reviewed studies confirming this assumption.

4.  “We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November: Any questions?”  This seems like a poor choice of words for the National Rifle Association convention.  Rifles are notoriously bad for chopping.  They are very good for shooting. 

5.  Mr. Nugent says that President Obama's administration is “wiping its ass with the Constitution.”  I believe this is a figure of speech.  If not, it is easily the most under-reported story of the 21st Century.

Mr. Nugent is trying to convince folks not to re-elect President Obama.  As I mentioned above, I doubt there are many, if any, members of the NRA that are inclined to vote for President Obama's re-election.  Is "The Nuge" simply preaching to the choir?  That seems likely, as a lot of conventions seem like they exist for that purpose.  On the other hand, maybe Mr. Nugent is trying to convince non-NRA members to vote against re-electing President Obama.  Are there people who will find Mr. Nugent's speech persuasive?  Put another way, is there a group of people either undecided or pro-Obama that will decide to vote against President Obama based on Mr. Nugent's views of the political scene?  I doubt there are any people like that.  If there people like that, I hope to meet them. They might be a lot of fun to be around.

1 comment:

  1. As a moderately persuadable voter, put me in the "not persuaded" camp. But I still think I'm somewhat fun to be around.

    ReplyDelete

Comments on posts older than 30 days are moderated because almost all of those comments are spam.