In the service sector where employees have to interact with the general public, it has long been recognized that it is much easier to teach employees the skills they need to actually carry out their jobs than to teach them the kind of good attitude that will make a positive impact on customers. So “hire for attitude and teach the skills” has been a useful aphorism for them.
I was reminded of that when I read the news that the GOP is now coaching its congressional candidates on how to show more empathy to their suffering constituents, especially those whose unemployment benefits have been cut.
When coupled with their earlier attempts to teach them how to talk to women without coming across as crass, crude, clueless, and condescending, it struck me that the GOP problem is that they are recruiting candidates who are ideological automatons and trying to get them to learn human qualities. (The comic strip Doonesbury ran a series of six strips on the GOP’s attempt to learn how to talk to women, starting with this one on December 23, 2103.)
Why not take a leaf from the service sector and recruit regular human beings who have the normal range of emotions that humans have and then teach them ideology? You might have much better outcomes.
Short answer -- Regular human beings are incapable of believing in and carrying out GOP policies.
Case in point -- Just today Karl Rove says that the bridge scandal proves that Christie has the right qualities to be president.
Their ideology is incompatible with the normal range of human emotions, and in order to swallow it they have to suppress them.
This reminds me of a Far-Left-Side cartoon: “The Heart of Darkness”
http://farleftside.com/2010/7-30-2010.html
That is a tall order, Mano. The Republicans have a very small pool from which to draw.
Suppose teaching them the ideology destroys the qualities you hired them for?
I don’t know which is the greater revelation in this post. Is it the fact that Doonesbury is still running in the early 22nd century, or that in 2103 the Republican Party finally decided to at least try to treat women as people?