AS USUAL, LAKOFF SAYS IT BEST
"The Santorum Strategy is not just about Santorum. It is about pounding the most radical conservative ideas into the public mind by constant repetition during the Republican presidential campaign, whether by Santorum himself, by Gingrich or Ron Paul, by an intimidated Romney, or by the Republican House majority. The Republican presidential campaign is about a lot more than the campaign for the presidency. It is about guaranteeing a radical conservative future for America. I am old enough to remember how liberals (me included) made fun of Ronald Reagan as a not-too-bright mediocre actor who could not possibly be elected president. I remember liberals making fun of George W.Bush as so ignorant and ill-spoken that Americans couldn't possibly take him seriously. Both turned out to be clever politicians who changed America much for the worse. And among the things they and their fellow conservatives managed to do was change public discourse, and with it, change how a great many Americans thought. The Republican presidential campaign has to be seen in this light."
Read the article, and consider it a call to arms for progressive-thinking Americans as well as for many conservatives who don't want religion mixing with politics.
Read the article, and consider it a call to arms for progressive-thinking Americans as well as for many conservatives who don't want religion mixing with politics.
4 Comments:
Powerful stuff. If somebody like Santorum was somehow elected president I could totally see us having some kind of civil war in this country.
A warning that we all need to heed. As Lakoff says, getting the rightwing tirades about birth control, socialism, abortion, war with Iran, etc. out there in public is changing the public conversation.
It's also creating a good cop bad cop scenario. If Santorum says something extremely outrageous, and then Romney says a slightly watered down version of the same thing, it'll sound "moderate" by comparison and more people will accept it.
I've been griping about the prolonged GOP primary season for this very reason. It's all talking-points dumps all the time, with Fox, CNN and C-SPAN providing plenty of time.
It's not just the candidates' campaign stump speeches. Every time they make a victory or concession speech, they spend two minutes thanking their supporters and 20 minutes pounding home their talking points. The mentioned networks are oh, so generous covering it.
And President Obama? Well, he might get a full, one-minute sound bite on CNN, but only on Fox if he says something the network's stooges can twist into some red-meat morsels for Fox's worse-than-low-information viewers. C-SPAN would probably cover the president's whole talk but might not air it until the wee hours of the morning, so all 25 people still up and watching C-SPAN can see it.
I think it might be nice if Romney could just wrap this up right away. He would not be harping on all this crap that the religious right (which is neither) is talking about pretty much nonstop, so there wouldn't be nearly as much such B.S. in the news.
On the flip side of that, it would give Romney more time to harp on the economy and lie through his teeth about it (and never mind we are witnessing what looks like an unspectacular but steady economic recovery).
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