I'm perpetually appalled at the brazenly Orwellian nature of almost all of the White House / Republican initiatives on the forefront of the news today. The soon-to-be-defeated "Clear Skies" initative is a perfect example of what I mean.
And, with an eye towards the mainstream media, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the time may be right for Democrats to forge their own initiative and start dropping some heavy-duty "frame-work" on the Republicans.
We're all aware of how the term "Liberal" has, thanks to framesmithing by the likes of Frank Luntz, been rebranded to be a euphamism for "Elitist Effete Amoral Atheist Parasite Scum who May Be Gay and/or Jewish".
Well, I say we take the initiative, get off the defensive, and start unilaterally, uniformly, unvaryingly, and never-endingly referring to anyone associated with the GOP or the White House as a "Say-one-thing, Do-another Republican".
Rationale below the fold!
Here's why I think the time is right: I see a growing, albeit pretty meager, willingness out there in the mainstream media to acknowledge that the administration has overreached, that it is getting out-of-touch with voters -- including those who voted them into office -- and that some Republicans in office (particularly those in the Senate who are concerned with re-election) are nervous about supporting some of the flagship policy initiatives coming out of the white house.
Social Security privatization is the best example. The policy being pushed by the administration is stalling, and there's no way for the MSM to slice it other than to recognize that there's a unified front from Senate Democrats, and that a significant handful of Senate Republicans are balking. You can even see commentary along these lines on the likes of Fox. Sometimes.
From the MSM perspective, the situation is similar with the Clear Skies initiative: it just ain't going to make it, and there's no way to spin the story other than "certain adminstration policies lack the broad-based support they need among voters and, consequently, certain moderate Republicans are seemingly unwilling to go out on a limb to support them."
So - what does this have to do with my little name-calling, re-framing idea?
Well, I believe that to a certain extent the spin put out by the MSM represents a sort of weighted average of what Americans, taken as a whole, are ready to hear. The news networks are primarily interested in info-taining people in an manner that will boost (or at least maintain) their ratings and their advertising revenues. As a result, they generally seem to make a sensible (if cynical) effort to present stories that have been fashioned to create a minimum of cognitive dissonance amongst the maximum possible segment of people. The networks hope to maintain a tone where as few viewers as possible will switch the channel to another network that's more likely to be preaching to their individual choir. (To a certain extent, Fox News is an exception to this rule, in that they have fashioned themselves as a haven for viewers who feel they've been "alienated" by cognitive dissonance -- commonly referred to as "liberal bias" -- on the other networks.)
So, if the MSM is cracking open to the notion that the White House is pushing policies without broad support, and those policies aren't getting anywhere, then I believe that the public (including a percentage of 2004 Bush-voters) is likely also experiencing an increasing open-mindedness to the idea that administration policies may not reflect the needs of Average Joes.
So we are currently in a window where all the administration's most divisive flagship policies (Social Security, Clear Skies, ANWR drilling, Judicial Nominees, etc.) are coming up before the legislature. Which means it's fish-or-cut-bait time for the legislators. And some of these policies show weakness that nobody would have anticpated in November of last year.
Note that these policies are, in general, the ones which are the hardest to sell (because they're all fundamentally terrible ideas for most americans who aren't lucky enough to be oil-drilling-insurance-executive-millionaires) and, hence, these policies are the ones in most desperate need of Orwellian Luntz-ification, the now-familiar water-muddying tactics under which we've all been steamrollered so many times in the last four years.
Because of the tinge of skepticism that seems to be creeping into the collective consciousness of Americans, I think the time is perfect to start to sully the name of the Republican Party by consistently and unvaryingly referring to Republicans as "say-one-thing, do-another Republicans".
I mean this in the same way that they refer to "Hollywood Liberals" or "Liberal Elites" or "Massachussetts Liberals", etc.
So, when a Republican pushes any sort of distasteful policy initiative, the default response is "I think Americans are too swift to fall for another scam by a say-one-thing, do-another Republican." Or, "Mr. Moderator, my opponent is a typical say-one-thing, do-another Republican"
Or, suppose you're a guest on The O'Reilly Factor. He asks you, "Liberal Guest, how can you disagree with <crappy conservative policy with nice-sounding name>?" And you say, "Bill, this is just another example of the say-one-thing, do-another Republicans trying to put one over on the American public." No specifics. If pressed, point to Social Security privatization, or the Clear Skies initiative. Only proven failures, and never the topic at hand.
This is a game of all-purpose, dirty name-calling, and we need good dirty names to use. I think this name is good because:
- It has a "plain-spoken" ring to it
- It's not laced with irony, which is a liberal-elite construct
- It's difficult to deny without falling into the "I am not a crook" trap
- It may have a significant resonance with religious social conservatives & abortion foes who, I believe, are beginning to realize that they're being used by fiscal conservatives at election time
- It reflects badly on the party itself, rather than an amorphous group of people (e.g. "liberals" or "conservatives"). It's too easy for people to re-brand themselves (e.g. as "progressives"), and the conservative movement is too fragmented to permit effective defamation of the umbrella-label.
But, most importantly...
- IT'S TRUE!!
The last point is crucial, and it gives this frame / dirty name a real power: senior Republican strategists know for a fact that it's true, because they spent the better part of 20 years developing it as a strategy. Hence, from their perspective, the less said about the inherent duplicity in Republican, cluture-war-driven policymaking, the better. Push the dialogue onto that turf.
Call a spade a spade. Hold up the Luntz booklet as evidence. But don't bother with facts and figures, just call them a nasty name that has the ring of truth, and repeat it endlessly.
Repub: "What middle-class American families need most today is the total elimination of the capital gains tax, which is why I present the 'Helping America's Families Act"
Dem: "Whatever, you're just another say-one-thing, do-another Republican"
Repub:"Why won't you engage the issue and protect america's families from the homosexually-backed capital gains tax?"
Dem: "What American families really need is access to affordable healthcare -- And, protection from you say-one-thing, do-another Republicans and your destructive policies that do nothing but protect the richest americans from their social obligations and responsibilities."
Update [2005-3-11 18:11:41 by crushinator]:
I just read an excellent diary about fencing, which is essentially a smart, useful encapsulation of the "simplistic frame / dirty name" concept I'm pushing here. I love it.