Republican pollster Frank Luntz has come up with a list of five myths about Republicans. He’s really talking about voters, not elected officials. Let’s take a look at the list:
1. Conservatives care most about the size of government.
2. Conservatives want to deport all illegal immigrants.
3. They worship Wall Street.
4. Conservatives want to slash Social Security and Medicare.
5. Conservatives don’t care about [economic] inequality.
Luntz specializes in finding the right way of asking a question in order to get a positive response. He tests out different phrases to see which ones people respond to the best. So, what he’s demonstrating is less what the base of the GOP thinks than the most effective way of getting them to respond the way Luntz wants them to respond. But I still don’t think Luntz is wrong in the bigger picture. He has identified five things that are generally, in a statistical sense, not true about Republican voters.
What he has thereby done is paint an exact portrait of how a Democrat should run in conservative areas of the country. Populism, populism, populism.
Conservatives don’t have an obsession with the size of government. They don’t like the big cats in the financial sector who finance the party. They don’t want people messing with Social Security and Medicare. And they do care, a lot, about economic inequality. The problem is that the Republican Party is completely the opposite. President Bush tried to privatize Social Security and his tax cuts were like nitroglycerin for economic inequality. Paul Ryan’s budget plan would turn Medicare into a voucher program. Conservatives want to know why so few bankers have been held accountable for the housing collapse and financial crisis. Republicans talk about repealing the Wall Street reforms enacted by the Democrats and signed by the president. And, on immigration, while conservatives are realistic about deportation, Mitt Romney wants to make life so miserable for Latinos that they will leave the country voluntarily.
The GOP’s platform isn’t really all that popular among mainstream conservatives. But the mainstream doesn’t drive the party. The mouth-breathers drive the party. And that’s why there is a giant opening for the Democrats to come right in and steal their lunch.
What he has thereby done is to paint an exact portrait of how a Democrat should run in conservative areas of the country. Populism, populism, populism.
How long have I been signed up here? I’ve been telling you this ever since then. Luntz is just stating the bloody, bleeding obvious.
Except, he is not making my argument at all. He’s trying to meld the Ryan plan with what conservatives want.
Yes, but he’s also admitting the GOP would be screwed if the Democrats stopped being beholden to corporate interests and actually helped making the lives of the 99% better.
Like lions and tigers, or more like Rayfield Wright and Andres Galarraga?
So, conservative republican voters don’t like Republican policy on:
And yet they still overwhelmingly vote Republican?
So what makes them hate Democrats even more?
It seems to me that (statistically) conservative Republican voters have a lot of rational reasons not to vote Republican and some emotional reasons for not voting Democrat. The heart usually rules the head in such matters.
However if Democrats could reconnect with conservative Republican voters at an emotional level – Obama leads an exemplary family life, he is Strong on Security, he has given tax breaks to middle class families and small businesses, and he wants to provide better opportunities for my kids than I had – then they could could undermine a Republican constituency RMoney is probably taking for granted.
RMoney is far more obviously a member of a privileged elite than Obama. He has great problems empathising/connecting to middle class, women, minorities and many who consider themselves to be regular guys. Democrats need to win this battle at an emotional level – not merely in terms of the objective superiority of their policies and track record. They need to convert people in much the same sense that religious sects seek to convert people – for life – not just for one moment at the ballot box. This involves addressing emotional needs for security and belonging that RMoney simply can’t address.
Most of this won’t appeal to classic democratic voting liberals. They simply aren’t the target market for the kind of campaign needed to destroy Rmoney. Some will whinge. Some will get off their asses and assist in the conversion effort.
my experience over the past two years is mixed. I have met a few tea partiers who are raving loonies and believe all sorts of shit. Not to be mean, but they are typically poorly educated.
OTOH, a number of my conservative friends -one’s a navy vet, another runs an IT company, another’s a cop- do not like what has happened to the Republican party and regularly vote Democratic. One is a huge Blue Dog fan -as a former fiscally conservative/socially liberal republican, that’s his tribe. there are a lot of moderate republicans who are simply not part of the shrinking gop base. I’ll bet there are a lot who won’t vote for Obama, but a lot who won’t vote at all.
I guess I’ve just met the loonies because all the Republicans I know call themselves conservative and DO like all the things Luntz says they don’t. My God, one I work with is so nits about Mexicans he wants an armed wall with automatic machine guns on the border and Sheriff
Apraiothat crazy sheiff in Arizona’s concentration camps everywhere for illegals caught within the country. When I said sarcastically,”Sure and you could put up big signs with ‘Labor Liberates’ in Spanish and maybe gas the ones too old and sick to work.” He frowned at the Labor Liberates like he didn’t understand the reference but perked up at the gas suggestion and said,”Sure! Why not!”. I’m NOT exaggerating this. There are truly frightening crazy people out there. God! I feel so old and sick and sick at heart for what has happened to my country.Yeah, its pretty damn depressing sometimes. I bought into all that Age Of Aquarius stuff when I was young and today it seems like it was all Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Gotta say, though, the sex, drugs and rock n roll were great. Wouldn’t have missed those times for anything. Now I’ve just had a thought I should really be more Zen about the whole mess. After all, it is what it is – isn’t it?.
I understand. Who doesn’t want to believe in progress? As it turned out, the Age of Pisces isn’t going out without a fight.
We in the reality based community keep beating our heads against the walls thinking that if we just point out one more set of facts it will tip the low information voter over into a believer of facts.
But Luntz continues to tap into the GOP believer mentality to give them permission to replace facts with opinions. His ability to ring a fact dry of any taste and then offer up an opinion that’s covered in sprinkles wins every time.
His underlying winning tickle is always to pull the condescending daddy string, that a fact told by a Dem is just a spin.
All this and it will be interesting to see how Murdoch’s upset in the UK will impact Fox’s behavior. Not that they will tone anything down, but I’m betting that Murdoch will jump the shark and we’ll see Fox here really go nuts.