Right-Wingers Aren't Stupid — They're Just Betting That You're Ignorant

A lot of liberal commentary about the opposition to Obama’s stimulus plan goes something like this: ‘Gosh, could it really be the case that conservatives are so dogmatic that they’d sacrifice a shot at economic recovery to adhere to their ideological predilections?’

The obvious answer is yes, of course they would, because the smarter ones understand that if the administration succeeds it’ll spell big trouble for the anti-governmentalism — always part of the American creed — that Reagan rode to popularity in the 1980s. With America becoming more diverse, and less religious, what would they have left with which to rally the troops without it?

(In fact, my own view — call it a little conspiracy theory — is that no group of otherwise successful individuals could possibly be as inept as the members of the Bush administration were, and to some degree their mismanagement was a stage show designed to prove once and for all that government was, in fact, the problem.)

But that raises a question: is obstructing the Obama administration’s efforts to kick-start the economy political suicide? Will the GOP forever be branded as “Republican’ts”? I'm not so sure.

They’re banking on most Americans’ lack of economic literacy (the proof is deriding a stimulus bill as “big government spending,” which, of course, is precisely what it’s supposed to be).

Because while you and I may know that even if the stimulus package does precisely what it’s supposed to (it likely won’t — it’s probably too small), there will still be significant lag time before it has much impact on employment and the other indices that economic reporters use to measure our economic health, it’s also safe to say that we’re not the most patient people in the world. We like our gratification instant and our economic recovery quick, and that gives conservatives an opening.

That's compounded by how difficult it is to argue at some point in the future that had something not happened, the outcome would have been worse than it is. If the stimulus package limits the peak unemployment rate to 9 or 10 percent, when it otherwise would have been 11 or 12, how do you prove that in any definitive way (there's economic modeling, but that's as much an art as a science)?

So not only did conservative lawmakers -- Blue Dog Dems and Republicans alike -- lessen the chance of success by limiting the size of the stimulus package and skewing it towards more of the tax cuts that provide the absolute least bang for the buck, they also have time on their side.

But... there's a "but" -- they’re taking a big risk nonetheless. Because they’re not only dealing with a very articulate Explainer-in-Chief, but also with an administration that has proven to be adept at playing the modern game of politics-as-marketing. So, we’ll soon be seeing a lot of these:

(click for larger version)

The first is the generic recovery emblem that’ll be slapped onto all sorts of projects, and the second is the symbol for the “Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery” — say it ten times fast — which you’ll see on transit projects.

Shnazzy branding, no? (If you’re a design nerd, the story of their creation is here).

And that's important, because as I've written several times in the past, people hate the idea of “Big Government” only in the abstract — they love driveable roads and functional schools and all the rest when it’s concrete, when it’s part of their communities (which, by the way, can also be said for “earmarks,” but that’s for another post).