GOP: Real men don’t think things through

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Know-Nothing Politics

PAUL KRUGMAN

Know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple answers to every problem — has become the core of Republican policy.

So the G.O.P. has found its issue for the 2008 election. For the next three months the party plans to keep chanting: “Drill here! Drill now! Drill here! Drill now! Four legs good, two legs bad!” O.K., I added that last part.

And the debate on energy policy has helped me find the words for something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Republicans, once hailed as the “party of ideas,” have become the party of stupid.

Now, I don’t mean that G.O.P. politicians are, on average, any dumber than their Democratic counterparts. And I certainly don’t mean to question the often frightening smarts of Republican political operatives.

What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”

In the case of oil, this takes the form of pretending that more drilling would produce fast relief at the gas pump. In fact, earlier this week Republicans in Congress actually claimed credit for the recent fall in oil prices: “The market is responding to the fact that we are here talking,” said Representative John Shadegg.

What about the experts at the Department of Energy who say that it would take years before offshore drilling would yield any oil at all, and that even then the effect on prices at the pump would be “insignificant”? Presumably they’re just a bunch of wimps, probably Democrats. And the Democrats, as Representative Michele Bachmann assures us, “want Americans to move to the urban core, live in tenements, take light rail to their government jobs.”

Is this political pitch too dumb to succeed? Don’t count on it.

Remember how the Iraq war was sold. The stuff about aluminum tubes and mushroom clouds was just window dressing. The main political argument was, “They attacked us, and we’re going to strike back” — and anyone who tried to point out that Saddam and Osama weren’t the same person was an effete snob who hated America, and probably looked French.

Let’s also not forget that for years President Bush was the center of a cult of personality that lionized him as a real-world Forrest Gump, a simple man who prevails through his gut instincts and moral superiority. “Mr. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man,” declared Peggy Noonan, writing in The Wall Street Journal in 2004. “He’s not an intellectual. Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world.”

It wasn’t until Hurricane Katrina — when the heckuva job done by the man of whom Ms. Noonan said, “if there’s a fire on the block, he’ll run out and help” revealed the true costs of obliviousness — that the cult began to fade.

What’s more, the politics of stupidity didn’t just appeal to the poorly informed. Bear in mind that members of the political and media elites were more pro-war than the public at large in the fall of 2002, even though the flimsiness of the case for invading Iraq should have been even more obvious to those paying close attention to the issue than it was to the average voter.

Why were the elite so hawkish? Well, I heard a number of people express privately the argument that some influential commentators made publicly — that the war was a good idea, not because Iraq posed a real threat, but because beating up someone in the Middle East, never mind who, would show Muslims that we mean business. In other words, even alleged wise men bought into the idea of macho posturing as policy.

All this is in the past. But the state of the energy debate shows that Republicans, despite Mr. Bush’s plunge into record unpopularity and their defeat in 2006, still think that know-nothing politics works. And they may be right.

Sad to say, the current drill-and-burn campaign is getting some political traction. According to one recent poll, 69 percent of Americans now favor expanded offshore drilling — and 51 percent of them believe that removing restrictions on drilling would reduce gas prices within a year.

The headway Republicans are making on this issue won’t prevent Democrats from expanding their majority in Congress, but it might limit their gains — and could conceivably swing the presidential election, where the polls show a much closer race.

In any case, remember this the next time someone calls for an end to partisanship, for working together to solve the country’s problems. It’s not going to happen — not as long as one of America’s two great parties believes that when it comes to politics, stupidity is the best policy.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I'll have to dig out the title - but there was an interesting book out recently about how political speech has become devalued over the last 8 years or so. All this stuff about "Elitism" (a bizarre criticism only applied to liberal academics) and patronisms like "folks" (i.e. our "National Security folks").

Found it. Here you go:

The Age of American Unreason

[IAMX 3,055]

I'll have to dig out the title - but there was an interesting book out recently about how political speech has become devalued over the last 8 years or so. All this stuff about "Elitism" (a bizarre criticism only applied to liberal academics) and patronisms like "folks" (i.e. our "National Security folks").

Found it. Here you go:

The Age of American Unreason

I wouldn't say it's about elitism, or even elitism/academics. What clearly has appealed to conservatives is aphorisms or buzzwords:

"Support the troops"

"Freedom isn't free"

"Legislating from the bench"

"Sanctity of marriage"

"Off/on the table"

"Let the market decide"

"Mission accomplished"

"Spreading freedom"

"Spreading Democracy"

"Flip flop"

Simplistic-minded buzzwords that are passed around they cling to like porn videos. What it does is put someone in an easy position of not having to question their own values and that maybe taking an ideological approach to things might not always work.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I'll have to dig out the title - but there was an interesting book out recently about how political speech has become devalued over the last 8 years or so. All this stuff about "Elitism" (a bizarre criticism only applied to liberal academics) and patronisms like "folks" (i.e. our "National Security folks").

Found it. Here you go:

The Age of American Unreason

I wouldn't say it's about elitism, or even elitism/academics. What clearly has appealed to conservatives is aphorisms or buzzwords:

"Support the troops"

"Freedom isn't free"

"Legislating from the bench"

"Sanctity of marriage"

"Off/on the table"

"Let the market decide"

"Mission accomplished"

"Spreading freedom"

"Spreading Democracy"

"Flip flop"

Simplistic-minded buzzwords that are passed around they cling to like porn videos. What it does is put someone in an easy position of not having to question their own values and that maybe taking an ideological approach to things might not always work.

Well said. There's actually some thought though that went into the reasoning behind that - marketing research has proven that most people react emotionally to words or particular words or phrases. It's actually brilliant on one hand, but it has dumbed down political discourse to 'feelings' over rationale.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I'll have to dig out the title - but there was an interesting book out recently about how political speech has become devalued over the last 8 years or so. All this stuff about "Elitism" (a bizarre criticism only applied to liberal academics) and patronisms like "folks" (i.e. our "National Security folks").

Found it. Here you go:

The Age of American Unreason

I wouldn't say it's about elitism, or even elitism/academics. What clearly has appealed to conservatives is aphorisms or buzzwords:

"Support the troops"

"Freedom isn't free"

"Legislating from the bench"

"Sanctity of marriage"

"Off/on the table"

"Let the market decide"

"Mission accomplished"

"Spreading freedom"

"Spreading Democracy"

"Flip flop"

Simplistic-minded buzzwords that are passed around they cling to like porn videos. What it does is put someone in an easy position of not having to question their own values and that maybe taking an ideological approach to things might not always work.

Interestingly all of these specific examples you mention came about within the last 8 years - the book though seems to go back further than that to 1980 (i.e. the Reagan campaign) or so and would seem to be one of the less tasteful legacies from that era.

Soundbite culture certainly is pretty pervasive and I think it does help people to think in polarised terms (explains a lot of these threads perhaps - "if you don't agree with... you must be..." type of thinking). As mentioned in the other thread this is certainly apparent in some of the support for Barack Obama with the whole "time for a change" thing - and it is amazing how often you hear it repeated, on here and by people in the media, often without reference to policies.

I'm often amazed by people who are interviewed on the street and can come up with no other reason to support someone than that so and so "looks presidential". Clearly voting is a personal thing - but basing a vote on apparently sentimental reasons seems a waste (not to mention rather childish).

[Peikko 1,575]

I'll have to dig out the title - but there was an interesting book out recently about how political speech has become devalued over the last 8 years or so. All this stuff about "Elitism" (a bizarre criticism only applied to liberal academics) and patronisms like "folks" (i.e. our "National Security folks").

Found it. Here you go:

The Age of American Unreason

I wouldn't say it's about elitism, or even elitism/academics. What clearly has appealed to conservatives is aphorisms or buzzwords:

"Support the troops"

"Freedom isn't free"

"Legislating from the bench"

"Sanctity of marriage"

"Off/on the table"

"Let the market decide"

"Mission accomplished"

"Spreading freedom"

"Spreading Democracy"

"Flip flop"

Simplistic-minded buzzwords that are passed around they cling to like porn videos. What it does is put someone in an easy position of not having to question their own values and that maybe taking an ideological approach to things might not always work.

Well said. There's actually some thought though that went into the reasoning behind that - marketing research has proven that most people react emotionally to words or particular words or phrases. It's actually brilliant on one hand, but it has dumbed down political discourse to 'feelings' over rationale.

Quite. Intellectual reasoning is considered 'emotional' and jingoism is portrayed as logic without the emotion. Oh, the irony!

I still say that 'change we can believe in' is one of the crappiest slogans out there though.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I'll have to dig out the title - but there was an interesting book out recently about how political speech has become devalued over the last 8 years or so. All this stuff about "Elitism" (a bizarre criticism only applied to liberal academics) and patronisms like "folks" (i.e. our "National Security folks").

Found it. Here you go:

The Age of American Unreason

I wouldn't say it's about elitism, or even elitism/academics. What clearly has appealed to conservatives is aphorisms or buzzwords:

"Support the troops"

"Freedom isn't free"

"Legislating from the bench"

"Sanctity of marriage"

"Off/on the table"

"Let the market decide"

"Mission accomplished"

"Spreading freedom"

"Spreading Democracy"

"Flip flop"

Simplistic-minded buzzwords that are passed around they cling to like porn videos. What it does is put someone in an easy position of not having to question their own values and that maybe taking an ideological approach to things might not always work.

Well said. There's actually some thought though that went into the reasoning behind that - marketing research has proven that most people react emotionally to words or particular words or phrases. It's actually brilliant on one hand, but it has dumbed down political discourse to 'feelings' over rationale.

Quite. Intellectual reasoning is considered 'emotional' and jingoism is portrayed as logic without the emotion. Oh, the irony!

I still say that 'change we can believe in' is one of the crappiest slogans out there though.

if they called it what it is - "Its not Bush" would probably have had the same effect

Still "Compassionate Conservatism" was a real clanger - was he really suggesting that liberals and other conservatives are inhuman androids or something!?