I see this in The New York Times today:
Concern in G.O.P. Over State Focus on Social Issues
… this year, with the nation heading into the heart of a presidential race and voters consumed by the country’s economic woes, much of the debate in statehouses has centered on social issues.
Tennessee enacted a law this month intended to protect teachers who question the theory of evolution. Arizona moved to ban nearly all abortions after 20 weeks, and Mississippi imposed regulations that could close the state’s only abortion clinic. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin signed a law allowing the state’s public schools to teach about abstinence instead of contraception.
The recent flurry of socially conservative legislation, on issues ranging from expanding gun rights to placing new restrictions on abortion, comes as Republicans at the national level are eager to refocus attention on economic issues.
Some Republican strategists and officials … fear that the attention these divisive social issues are receiving at the state level could harm the party’s chances in November, when its hopes of winning back the White House will most likely rest with independent voters in a handful of swing states.
One seasoned strategist called the problem potentially huge….
But do Republicans have any reason to worry? In 2010, a lot of us were rooting for the Democrats to nationalize the election by wrapping the words and deeds of extremely crazy Republicans around the necks of somewhat-less-crazy candidates from their party. And I recall that this strategy was considered and rejected by Democratic strategists. How’d that work out for the Dems?
But I’m guessing that the Democrats haven’t learned their lesson. I’m guessing that they won’t try to link every vulnerable Republican candidate, from Romney on down, to the GOP’s worst extremists. And, in a way, I understand: it’s a lot harder for Democrats to do this than it is for Republicans.
Republicans have a radio/TV/Internet noise machine that works round the clock finding people to demonize — and linking every one of them to all Democrats. Everyone from Rosie O’Donnell to Frances Fox Piven, everyone from Common to Saul Alinsky, is a demonization target, and then every one of them is linked to your local Democratic officeholder or office-seeker. And so your Fox-loving neighbor thinks there really isn’t an inch of ideological daylight between your Democratic congressman and some New Black Panther uttering empty threats on a local radio show no one listens to except right-wingers. Your low-info swing-voting neighbor may believe this, too. In any case, the evil-party narrative is already in place.
Democrats haven’t even begun the process of arguing that the entire right, or even a substantial part of it, is scary and extreme and beyond the pale, and there’s no reason to believe that Democrats will ever do this. They may be prepared to portray Romney as a right-wing extremist, and that may be an effective strategy, but they’ll never portray the entire GOP (accurately) as rotten to the core.
Or maybe I’m wrong. I hope I am. Otherwise, Romney may be defeated but fail to drag the party down with him, because the defeat will be of him personally, not of his entire extreme, twisted party.
(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)
Republicans have a radio/TV/Internet noise machine that works round the clock finding people to demonize — and linking every one of them to all Democrats. Everyone from Rosie O’Donnell to Frances Fox Piven, everyone from Common to Saul Alinsky, is a demonization target, and then every one of them is linked to your local Democratic officeholder or office-seeker.
Maybe Boo can add his opinion but this is true. There is the primary here in PA to take on Casey. Despite Casey being a pawn for Ratso(the Pope) all the ads for the GOPer candidates mention the ultra-liberal Obama/Casey agenda. Every single one of them. It’s nuts. Yet that never happens on our side. So no, I am not holding out hope. And there is a reason why. Corporations like it when the left is demonized. They don’t like it when the Democrats beholden to them for campaign cash bash them.
If the Dems ever did that, what would you and I have left to do?
that was snark, but the war on women is a variant of what you’re advocating. It’s only problem is that it is narrowly focused. But its focus could be a virtue if it maintains the current gender gap.
I feel your pain because it’s mine, too. Repeatedly. Every 2 years. I think part of the problem is that Dems just aren’t comfortable demonizing the opponent. Many of us still cling to the antique faith that politics is for the honest winnowing and sifting of ideas, not ripping out the enemy’s throat.
So what happens when the enemy really is demonic, and the powers that be on both sides are as joined to each other more by their social status than their party identification?
I think the way around the institutional logjam is to make this a state-by-state issue and not expect much from the national party. Local/state candidates need to take as much national money as they can and use it to tie Reps candidates to the whole evil network these people work for. Of course when they do, fastidious liberals will react to the “overreach” the same way they distance themselves from the likes of Michael Moore, Kucinich, Grayson, Stark, and so on.
If we’re serious about changing the conversation we need to get all the national Dem money we can and add it to all the support we can get from outfits like MoveOn, ActBlue, etc, and convert it to smart, punchy propaganda that exposes every Republican candidate as part of the reactionary revolution agenda of the GOP, an agent bent on bringing Mississippi tolerance and Wall Street decency to all of America. Like they used to say back when we were sort of an electoral democracy, it’s entirely up to us.
Social Darwinism
Trickle down economics
War on Women
1%
Sounds like a good start to me.
Social Darwinism
Trickle down economics
War on Women
1%
Sounds like a good start to me.
Democrats haven’t even begun the process of arguing that the entire right, or even a substantial part of it, is scary and extreme and beyond the pale…
They haven’t? What about this?
But of course they aren’t going to follow the same strategy as the Republicans. One reason for this is that it doesn’t take any particular efforts to make Republicans look hate-filled lying idiots. You just point the camera at them.
Conversely, you have to work really hard to believe that Barack Obama as a combination of Osama bin Laden, Hitler, and Chairman Mao. Obviously a wingnut would disagree, but I contend that Fox viewers and such need to ingest an enormous amount of propaganda to keep the cognitive dissonance at bay. And the further the paranoid fantasies drift from reality, the harder it’s going to get.