Ed Rutledge for Lieutenant Governor

By Ed Rutledge

Libertarian Candidate for Lieutenant Governor

10/28/10

Imagine a product with two venerable brands, brands which, over decades, have built strong customer loyalty. Now imagine both of these brands, for whatever reason, gradually cutting back on the quality of their products. But imagine that this decline in product quality is relatively slow, with both of the brands declining in quality at roughly the same rate.

With this in mind, you likely can imagine that, as product quality declines, both of these brands are forced to dedicate more and more resources to marketing, towards convincing customers to buy from their brand and not the other brand. But despite all of the advertising hype, the fact remains that customers continue to buy less and less as the quality of both brands continues to slip.

Now imagine a new brand coming onto the scene, a brand which uses its resources to produce the highest quality product, leaving scant resources for promotion. Do you think that the other two brands will improve their quality to compete against this upstart? Of course not. They will they use their marketing resources to do all they can to squeeze out this new and very real competition.

But as the customer, which product would you want to buy? The low quality product from one of the two well-known but tarnished brands, or the high quality product from the new and relatively unknown brand? The product with lots of expensive advertising, or the product that you know to be better?

Of course, the product in this case is Politicians. We have two large Politician producing brands that lost their bearings long ago. They no longer offer voters a decent product, but instead rely on brand name awareness and marketing campaigns to make the sale. And the new brand is the Libertarian Party. The Libertarians may not have the marketing budget of their opposition, but they do have the ideas, the principles, and the integrity that the other brands have come to lack.

If at this point, as a life-long customer of one of the two old brands, you are shaking your head in denial, then ask yourself – are you happy with the recent performance of your brand? Are you happy with the choices that your brand has been offering you? Do you see the quality of your brand getting better over time? Do you believe that your brand has made your life better?

It is time to step back and really consider what the major brands have been offering us. It is time to admit that the two venerable brands are just shells of what they once were. It is time to see that the major brands are more focused on marketing well than on governing well. It is time to re-think our source of Politicians. It is time to give the Libertarians a look.

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