James Carville's Advice to the President...Panic!

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Originally Posted by rosebud

Well, that was exactly the point. You were going on about how the left wing narrative requires a villain du jour, and I was merely pointing out that the right wing is NOTORIOUS for drumming up cash and support by creating villains, which change over the years. You do know who Frank Luntz is, right? He is a marketing expert for the right. He knows that "universal health care" doesn't make people as jumpy as "government takeover." He knows that "job creators" sounds much better than "the wealthiest people in the country." C'mon. I've been at this for a long time, I know spin, both left and right and when you strip it down you come down to policy and ethics. So, stop with the knee jerk spin already.

So, Code Pink is very yesterday. So is Hillary Clinton. Who are today's left wing villains according to the right? Soros is still popular. Obama of course ranges from the antichrist to a Nazi to unAmerican to bad for business, or all of the above according to some folks. To liberals, he is a centrist who has tried and tried to accommodate the Republican party. That's our pov.

Of course Sarah Palin has bigger name recognition than Rachel Maddow. What's your point?

You don't think the "opposition" hands us plenty of material? Are you kidding again? Michele Bachman? Rick Perry? Rush Limbaugh? 10 doozies a day each.

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I think there is a significant difference. The Left needs to constantly update their list of things we need to cede more power to government to protect us from: corporations, banks, the carbon atom, competition, people (rich or otherwise) who don’t want to surrender their “fair share”, bad decisions, bad luck, people who like guns, fatty foods, et. al. After all, they can’t very well come out and say, “We need to establish an elite with enough coercive power to protect you from yourselves”.

Conservatives have a much simpler problem in this regard. Their perceived enemy is overweening government. Granted, this sometimes gets taken to foolish extremes, but by and large you can’t go far wrong keeping government on a short leash.

Sarah Palin can dangle 10,000 participles, Rick Perry can raise his eyes sanctimoniously to Heaven every quarter hour, but how can that compare to the delectable cluelessness of AttackWatch.com? Or a presidential candidate standing in a faux Greek temple assuring us that this was the time the seas would recede and the planet would begin to heal? Or the acceptance of a Nobel Peace Prize on spec? Or the tingle running up Chris Matthews' leg? Or "we have to pass the bill to know what's in it"? Or a president using the State of the Union Address to scold the Supreme Court for enforcing the First Amendment? "Kinetic Military Action"? - can't wait to see that campaign ribbon.

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Originally Posted by LDAHL

I think there is a significant difference. ....
Conservatives have a much simpler problem in this regard. Their perceived enemy is overweening government. Granted, this sometimes gets taken to foolish extremes, but by and large you can’t go far wrong keeping government on a short leash.

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I'm sure that from your seat you do perceive a "significant differnce". From other seats, however, one can see of some of the Right's favorite boogeymen of the last decade: Gays, Arabs, and Mexicans. None of these boogeymen spring from government overreach. In fact, one could argue that they come from a much more reptilian place.

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Originally Posted by LDAHL

Perhaps not, but I think there’s a pretty common interest out there to protect oneself against an administration that feels justified in mandating health insurance premiums and viewing any income you can keep for your own use as a “tax expenditure”.

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Tax expenditures were called Tax Expenditures long before Obama took office. That isn't something Obama made up.

If Congress ran Cash for Clunkers through the tax code it would still be Cash for Clunkers. And if they made it permanent and called it the "Let Americans Keep More of Their Own Money Act" it would rightly be excoriated.

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Originally Posted by Mangano's Gold

I'm sure that from your seat you do perceive a "significant differnce". From other seats, however, one can see of some of the Right's favorite boogeymen of the last decade: Gays, Arabs, and Mexicans. None of these boogeymen spring from government overreach. In fact, one could argue that they come from a much more reptilian place.

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Perhaps some don't draw a distinction between a person and a condition. Where you see Gays, Arabs and Mexicans, others may simply see a small minority attempting to influence the majority, a sub-sect of a religion that has declared war on us, and a large group of people who have bypassed our legal immigration requirements.
Framing the discussion around entire demographics may make for good drama, but it's dishonest and slimey.

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Originally Posted by alan

Perhaps some don't draw a distinction between a person and a condition. Where you see Gays, Arabs and Mexicans, others may simply see a small minority attempting to influence the majority, a sub-sect of a religion that has declared war on us, and a large group of people who have bypassed our legal immigration requirements.
Framing the discussion around entire demographics may make for good drama, but it's dishonest and slimey.

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Hey, they are Republican boogeymen not mine. And you know it.

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Originally Posted by Mangano's Gold

Hey, they are Republican boogeymen not mine. And you know it.

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No, I don't know that. And neither do you.

Electoral politics can be a dirty game. Partisans on each side think the other is worse. Some are even in total denial.

One man's boogeyman is another's legitimate concern.

>>Or "we have to pass the bill to know what's in it"?<<

Ah yes, the Patriot Act: the abomination that pretty much shredded the Bill of Rights...(I think the Third Amendment is intact).

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Originally Posted by Mangano's Gold

I'm sure that from your seat you do perceive a "significant differnce". From other seats, however, one can see of some of the Right's favorite boogeymen of the last decade: Gays, Arabs, and Mexicans. None of these boogeymen spring from government overreach. In fact, one could argue that they come from a much more reptilian place.

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Your post reminded me of something I read shortly before the 2010 election:

“It is a measure of the corruption of liberal thought and the collapse of its self-confidence that, finding itself so widely repudiated, it resorts reflexively to the cheapest race-baiting (in a colorful variety of forms). Indeed, how can one reason with a nation of pitchfork-wielding mobs brimming with "antipathy toward people who aren't like them" -- blacks, Hispanics, gays and Muslims -- a nation that is, as Michelle Obama once put it succinctly, "just downright mean"?

The Democrats are going to get beaten badly in November. Not just because the economy is ailing. And not just because Obama over-read his mandate in governing too far left. But because a comeuppance is due the arrogant elites whose undisguised contempt for the great unwashed prevents them from conceding a modicum of serious thought to those who dare oppose them.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/26/AR2010082605233.html

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Originally Posted by JaneV2.0

>>Or "we have to pass the bill to know what's in it"?<<

Ah yes, the Patriot Act: the abomination that pretty much shredded the Bill of Rights...(I think the Third Amendment is intact).

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Thank goodness President Obama came along to put a stop to all that nonsense.