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What We Can Learn from Conservatives About Winning in Politics

By Sara Robinson, TomPaine.com. Posted March 13, 2008.


The same strategies that allowed Conservatives to take control of the country can help us undo their damage. (Part one in a series.)

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Make no mistake: When the conservatives set out to take over America 30 years ago, they were working off of a well-thought-out plan.

The plan was put in place by a wide variety of thinkers -- but three of the main strategists were Howard Phillips, Richard Viguerie, and Paul Weyrich, each of whom wrote important books and papers laying out the goal of creating a conservative America, and showing specifically how the movement could make that happen.

The ideas in these plans went through various iterations through the decades; but their essential goals and intentions never changed much. And, as it turned out, they didn't have to: the plan worked so well and kept the conservative base so focused and engaged over the long term that it didn't need much more than an occasional refresher, or the odd subplan elaborating on how the main ideas should be applied in some specific domain.

Reading these plans now, as a progressive, it strikes me: We're now living in an America in which every institution is dominated by these guys. Every facet of our looming disaster was dictated by bankrupt conservative ideas; yet our very ability to visualize fresh alternatives has been constricted by the frames they deliberately laid around our language and discourse. Most of the country finds it hard to even contemplate or discuss our predicaments in anything but conservative terms. It's clear they've done more than merely mess up our country; they've also, quite intentionally, messed with our minds.

As it turns out, messing with our minds wasn't just one part of the plan; it was the essential goal of the entire plan of conquest. They used sociology, social psychology, linguistics, and a subtle understanding of human motivation to get into our heads and change the way we processed reality itself, in ways that made it impossible to question all the other things they were up to.

Ending conservative dominance will require us to undo the vast memetic and ontological damage they've wrought on two entire generations of Americans. We have no choice but to fight this fire with fire of our own. And the first thing we need to do is understand, very specifically, how they did it. Fortunately, this isn't hard: the basics are all laid out in their original written plans.

Last year, over at Talk2Action, Bruce Wilson dug up one of the most recent rewrites of Weyrich's version of the plan -- a 2001 manifesto published by the Free Congress Foundation, written by Eric Heubeck that concisely summarized and updated the essentials of the plan Weyrich had been promoting since the early 80s. Wilson rewrote the document -- mostly by replacing the word "conservative" with "progressive" and sprinkling in a few liberal philosophical points. The results are worth a careful reading, because in Heubeck and Weyrich's complaints and solutions, Wilson found a great deal of wisdom we can use about how to build a lasting progressive majority.

Over this and the next two posts, I'm going to revisit Weyrich and Heubeck's Free Congress manifesto, and lay out the specific lessons progressives can draw from the plans and strategies that drove 30 years of conservative movement-building. We'll get the map to the the battlefield they're really fighting on; and what it will take for progressives to engage them there and win. The same strategies that allowed them to take control of the country and change the shape of American history may, with some adaptations to our own liberal values, allow us to undo the damage as well.

The first post addresses the role ideas -- which ones they specifically chose to promote, and why -- played in the conservative renaissance, and should play in the coming progressive era as well. The second one will discuss the details of how these ideas are presented to the public. The last one discusses specific tactics that the conservatives used -- and we might consider emulating -- to embed their desired memes in the mass culture, ensuring their continued dominance of the discourse.

Many Tactics, One Goal: Promoting the Progressive Worldview

"The conservative movement is defensive, defeatist, depressed, and apologetic. It lacks self-confidence, virility, energy, intensity, vigor, aggressiveness, vitality, and a firm belief in the rightness of its cause ... This is because it has relied solely on activism and politicking, without reaching out to change the underlying assumptions of the culture ... The result of this misplaced focus is a society that does not recognize culturally conservative views, and is gradually coming to despise them ... imaginations are seldom captured by policy wonks on C-SPAN."

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Sara Robinson is a twenty-year veteran of Silicon Valley, and is launching a second career as a strategic foresight analyst. When she's not studying change theories and reactionary movements, you can find her singing the alto part over at Orcinus. She lives in Vancouver, BC with her husband and two teenagers.

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What we can learn from Conservatives about winning in politics..
Posted by: TJ-stars4peace on Mar 13, 2008 12:05 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Lie, lie, lie, and deny, deny, deny..

That's about it..

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This one just about sums it up
Posted by: vox persona on Mar 13, 2008 12:27 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." --John Kenneth Galbraith--

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Cool article
Posted by: g50 on Mar 13, 2008 12:53 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
But fundamentally political movements are only so important. I don't mean that in a cynical way. Ultimately what is best for the country is best regardless of which political movement is en vogue. At their best, political movements are vehicles through which the national interest generates enthusiasm and builds confidence in the project. Progressives must always look and look hard at what is best for America, the American notion of individual liberty as the best guarantee of civic vitality. And progressives must fully understand the implications of America's leadership role in global affairs. If progressives fail to do this, and expect the Obama presidency to be the time to go wild and starry eyed with all sorts of activist claims, the party will quickly find itself out of office. However, this is not to suggest that meaningful progressive accomplishments cannot be made. However they have to be made according to long established notions of the relationship between an individual, families, communities, states, regions, nation and nations. Here is one example.

The energy associated with the Republican party really encouraged investment, stock ownership, financial portfolios. This should not be derided - it is both an honest expression of American citizenship, savvy planning to be responsible for yourself, and also there was a lot of wind in the sail from the conservative politics so popular throughout the last three decades. Rather than thinking, we have to pull out troops tomorrow and pass gay marriages and immediately ratify universal health insurance, a far better model would be to consider individual action in a supportive political environment as the means to the end. Rather than government-centered, activist-catering solutions. What would this mean? Because progressives will, particularly if I am right that Obama will be a sensible president, because progressives will be the dominant political idea representing the American nation over the next thirty years, we must think now about what kind of environment we want to cultivate. We are already familiar with it.

So the contrast to investing, say, in stock ownership is the kind of thoughtful consumerism we mostly practice now. If X percentage of farms today are organic, let's say 10, we want in 30 years that number to be 25 or 30, so we emphasize the role in consumer choice. We encourage and design policies that help people of all ages set up farms and revitalize rural America. Or if we don't necessarily need to make toothbrushes in American factories as opposed to cheaper Chinese factories, we make wind turbines and solar panels for our houses, as another common example. We will want to encourage entrepreneurship, so we encourage people to do on the small scale what businesses like Starbucks do the large scale. The goal is not to displace all the coal, all the big chains, all the industrial agriculture. That is, practically speaking, impossible. The goal is to set trends, encourage individual participation, eschew government directives, and try for reasonable but also meaningful changes by the end of the line. Along the way, we will sometimes have topical issues that rise up and demand intervention, say arts in education or more funding for college education or study abroad or rapproachment with Iran. And sometimes we will find ourselves in the position where the political minded are behind the curve, and long held goals are accomplished by non-political actors getting it together individually or with grassroots organization.

The point is, the politics is the backdrop. We do not have to relentlessly fight every political battle as if those of us who aren't doing the talking for the cameras will live or die by the result. We only have to confidently assert our position, and be true to how we want to live.

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» RE: Cool article Posted by: greenthumb
Doing the Lord's work with the Devil's tools...
Posted by: thoughtcriminal on Mar 13, 2008 1:05 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
is always a risky position to take. If the goal is winning the Presidency, then the candidate decides that anything is worth that greater good, and thus stoops to Rovian smear tactics in an all-out effort to win.

You can't use deliberate manipulation of public opinion by psychologically trained elite PR technicians to get the message out. You can't rely on some outmoded "new leadership" model.

What we need to rely on instead is basic education in areas like history and science, so that our democratic country has a well-informed and intelligent citizenry casting votes. That will also require a media that doesn't serve ulterior interests (such as pharmaceuticals, fossil fuels, finance, resource extraction, etc.).

It's always good to use history to point out the massive disasters that the neoconservatives got us into: funding the Taliban's predecessors in Afghanistan in the 1980s, creating a legacy of hatred in Central America, creating giant and disastrous entanglements with Saudi Arabia and Israel...

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Terrorist
Posted by: HeKnew on Mar 13, 2008 1:30 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Now that fascists control everything.

Now that they have created the ability to shift and refocus the debate and redefine the rules of engagement so that we can never win.

Now that we're just one incident away from the suspension of the American way of life.

Now you want to talk about taking off the gloves.

It's too late. The fight's over. We lost.

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» RE: Terrorist Posted by: Gretchen360
» RE: Terrorist Posted by: Democritus
» RE: Terrorist Posted by: bcain
It wasn't really a fight, but it will take a long one to change this
Posted by: deang on Mar 13, 2008 3:50 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The above comment, "The fight's over. We lost" set me thinking. It was never really a fight. As the right-wing always does, they just declared war and set out to destroy, while those not part of their plan were just trying to improve society and figure out the truth of things, using government and activism where needed to do so. The right knew the truth was not on their side, so they set in motion a decades-long strategy to construct in society's mind a false truth, which now is unfortunately accepted as real. It wasn't really a fight. It was a devious, deliberately and consciously harmful, one-sided attack. According to his autobiography, writer John Ross left the US for Mexico during the 80s because he felt that the dystopic changes Reagan was implementing would be irreversible. I suspect Ross was right, but I hope he isn't and that the fascist hell that is now the US can be made a thing of the past.

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Discernment
Posted by: talkville on Mar 13, 2008 4:04 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The inculcated and cultivated FEAR of Marx and Marxism, ever since it arrived on this shore have come back to haunt this country. I do not mean that one is enjoined or 'indoctrinated' to accept these theories (they still have much to offer and such theories still have validity). It is always better to study and think about theories -- many have arisen in the last 400 years!) regardless of what their particular content must be. The USA simply denied and ignored and made Marxism a Devil.

Well, this article points to these considerations. What CAN we learn from the Right Wing's assault and, yes, take-over of the USA? Well, one aspect of these questions has to do with Tactics (The USA likes Games and the USA likes Strategies-- it's all a "Game"-- many times deadly serious! but still a "Game").

But anyone who is the least bit familiar with the theories and writings of such men as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Trotsky or Lenin (and many, many more) and can discern this 'rise' of the Right will not be that surprised with the question of HOW they did it. They merely used many of the same, precisely the same, tactics and organizational skills developed by the above-mentioned thinkers with one very important exception. They did this to the benefit of the Very Few instead of the Many of society. Marx himself would be the first one to point out that a tactic, as such, is just a tactic. It's purpose and the ends for which it is applied make all the difference. And, boy what a difference! They merely learned many tactics and organizational principles of the hard left and put them in the service of fundamentalist christianity and conservatism in all aspects of our social life.

Theorizing and thinking is always going on. Demonizing, censoring, denying and teaching the entire US populace to FEAR and believe some theories as so-called 'pure evil' has come back and left all of us ill-prepared to achieve any insight into the causes and sources of a tremendously inimical movement that has placed most of us in the position of near slavery, serfdom and utter powerlessness in the face of it. Even without having to 'believe' in Marxism as a system, there was and is much in that theorizing that is precisely now very useful in analyzing and thinking about our current predicaments. HOW one thinks about this or that has as much, if not more, to do with WHAT one thinks about.

The organization of right-wing networks of intellectual work ('think-tanks', Foundations, and such) as well as the very LOCAL organization of tightly knit and connected 'true-believers' and the entire program to take over this entire country are very eerily and uncanningly similar to the strategic thinking of that 19th century and early twentieth century "Left". What is different? It's orientation and purpose -- AGAINST rather than FOR the many. (Think of Horowitz, for example, really nothing more than a 'reformed smoker' who vehemently changed sides)

There's nothing wrong with dis-agreeing with theories, wherever they emerge from. It can be very costly to simply deny, ignore and FEAR them. That is why CENSORSHIP is such a crucial issue, especially today. So, back to a deceptively simple question posed by Mr Lenin: What is to be done? Indeed, What CAN be done? For one, think and consider very carefully fundamental pre-suppositions and prejudices. In ourselves and in others, with integrity, honestly, and openly. Most importantly, without FEAR but with courage.

A better, more just and dignified, equitable human world is at stake. Ecology and anthropology, among other endeavors demand it.

Figuring out how they did it is necessary; figuring out how to counter it is also.

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Unspeakably Naive
Posted by: ot on Mar 13, 2008 5:35 AM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
It is true that if "progressives" want to challenge the existing order that they need a coherent strategy and way of implementing it.

But this article would have the reader believe that this can be achieved by playing a word substitution game with conservative strategy documents.

It never seems to occur to the author whether the resulting language (map) matches the territory (world) it is supposed to represent. But can this really be any surprise coming from the same "progressive" mentality that has spawned the notion of political correctness? Certainly not, for the implicit premise of political correctness is that one can somehow change the essence of a thing by virtue of changing the label used to represent it.

Conservatives are not dominant because they have duped the American people and sold them a linguistic snow job. Conservatives are dominant because, however flawed in some areas, the basis of their ideology most closely matches human nature. And it is human nature where the rubber meets the road.

"Progressive" notions of human nature are deeply flawed. They reflect ideals not realities. That is why "progressive" policies are virtually impossible to implement, for the implicit premises in these policies are that humans are by default altruistic and organized around cooperative leaderless networks. Recognition of these flaws on a visceral level is what sickened the American people before the advent of the Reagan era. Conservatives did not hijack American values. They were simply ready with a vision, language and strategy that reflected how Americans really felt about the failed "Progressive" policies of the 1970s.

Lastly, "Progressives" also fail to realize that if they achieve a substitution of conservative values with their own brand of how things should be, they will only substitute one flawed map with another.

Solutions will only come about with a merger of valid concerns, such as the environment, with a realistic view of human nature. Thus "progressives" should focus on specific issues, such as the environment, not on an all encompassing takeover of the American psyche. Real success will only come about when the language used to represent ideas can actually be implemented in a constructive fashion beneficial to all. Only when "progressives" can put together a chain of these successes will their credibility emerge. Otherwise, they will continue to be dismissed as a laughing stock of misguided idealists.

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» RE: Unspeakably Naive Posted by: Democritus
» RE: Unspeakably Naive Posted by: Cybershaman
Conservative?
Posted by: run4bear on Mar 13, 2008 5:35 AM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
If you would replace the word conservative with Republican in your article, I would just about agree with it. There is nothing wrong with conservatives, just many of the people who espouse to be one. Ron Paul, a TRUE conservative is none of the above.

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The corporate media was HEAVILY in favor of RAYGUN, Bush I and II, and now Mccain.
Posted by: maxpayne on Mar 13, 2008 6:32 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Until we can actually get a more progressive friendly media, the cons will keep winning. Second, the progressives and liberals very badly need to counter the rightwing thinktanks and institutions in all 50 states.

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Otto
Posted by: otto on Mar 13, 2008 6:39 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The inherent greed of the conservative position is especially useable for them because they've been more successful at getting money and power; they ARE "the corporate mentality" and control. How do you deal with their control of the mass media?

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I learnt how to be a piece of shit
Posted by: Doggycuny on Mar 13, 2008 7:05 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Conservative Americans have taught me how to be a lying piece of shit. And I have found this skill quite useful when dealing with Americans. Coming from Europe we are used to being more civil and honest, but these qualities will get you nowhere in America.

As the conservative racists have shown, if you want to become a politician in America you have to lie, extort money from wherever you can, say you talk to God, have sex with people of the same gender as yourself, and make racist comments about anyone who isn't white.

These qualities will have your fellow Americans feeling a special kindship towards you and they will be able to relate with you.

Then, to strengthen your support base with the psycho, bloodthirsty, Christian Americans, just say God told you to kill all Muslims and people with strange names, and that after we bomb those evil people God will reward you with a never ending supply of cheeseburgers and soft, beef flavored baby food.

Also make sure to promise that you will torture people with funny names (beacuse we don't understand people with funny names, therefore we must torture them). And you must also use the media to brainwash your nation (don't worry, that won't be too difficult).

Good luck.

PS. If all this fails just replace with the blueprint for facsism, used by Mussolini, Hitler and Bush.

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the ring of power corrupts
Posted by: AuntSally on Mar 13, 2008 7:23 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
'tis folly to use the weapon of the enemy against him. It must be cast into the fire...

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Froggy comments
Posted by: Red Clover on Mar 13, 2008 8:01 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Lots of excited frogs in the comment list wheelbarrow.

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Media & Literacy
Posted by: ClassAct on Mar 13, 2008 8:40 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
• The need to visualize fresh alternatives.
Part of the overt failure of conservative “logic” is that it seizes upon every lapse of liberal-progressive initiatives as an opportunity to restore long-discredited, traditional alternatives, whose failures long before created the liberal-progressive efforts in the first place. That progressives are so illiterate that they are deceived by the sheep’s clothing has consistently been a significant part of the problem since the 1960s, the first decade of cultural turmoil in the era of media saturation.
The pursuit of the appearance of “freshness” is part of the delusion of conception – the framing – foisted on the public through the media, always in need of something new, as a substitute for genuine literacy. Few liberals are even aware that their objections to conservative arguments were already given two centuries ago against Edmund Burke’s “Reflexions on the Revolution in France” by Thomas Paine in “The Rights of Man.”

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Old News?
Posted by: zeitgeist1979 on Mar 13, 2008 8:45 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This has already been talked at length in such ground-breaking books as "Don't Think of An Elephant" (visit www.rockridgeinstitute.org), "The Left Hand of God" (visit www.spiritualprogressives.org), and "Crashing the Gate" (visit www.dailykos.com).

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Speaking of obsessing over theoretical details
Posted by: secretchief on Mar 13, 2008 8:59 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I love this article because I have long thought that we needed to understand what the conservatives had done and more or less replicate it.

However, I am sad to see that the author uses words like ontology and epistemology in ways that make me think she does not knkow what they mean. Ontology is the study of the nature of being, it is a part of metaphysics. And epistemology is the study of how humans can acquire solid knowledge.

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Underestimating Opposition
Posted by: ClassAct on Mar 13, 2008 9:37 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
P.S.
It also occurs to me that underestimating the opposition is reflexive in today’s public discourse since the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK were undoubtedly bi-partisan conservative conspiracies protected and defended by agencies of the US government under the aegis of the Badge. Few leftists wear badges to which privileges of access and authority are automatically given.

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That isn't winning
Posted by: ScottP on Mar 13, 2008 10:59 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
If one defines winning as getting control of the system, then the author shows a way to win. However, my definition of winning would be to change to a system which by its nature promotes greater freedom, justice, and happiness.

The author looks for ways for "progressive leaders" to accomplish goals. However, that process itself would leave in place the conditions to be hijacked again. As long as people look for leaders they will be hoodwinked, robbed, and miserable. Unity of thought leads to inferior solutions to problems, for it fails to get contributions from the commons. In addition, the author fails to recognize that different ways of thinking are not just different, many are truly inferior. For example, using the military to reduce terror will simply never work because it is a fundamentally unsound approach, as much as using a hammer to drive a screw.

People need to spend the time to understand what tools work for what purposes, and when that happens ideas like conservative vs. liberal and right vs. left can be recognized as childish simplifications with little utility, except for those who want to divide and conquer.

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Patriotism is the Last Reguge of a Scoundrel
Posted by: sofla100 on Mar 13, 2008 11:22 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This article is good as far as it goes, but some other things could be said about the reasons for the appeal of conservative thinking and approaches:

1. Have your media and politicians create a sense of perpetual emergency and engage in ceaseless appeals to national pride and patriotism. This alone says a lot. This is what the "war on terror" is all about, isn't it? This "war on terror," with its color coded system, must be "maintained" and perpetuated or how to you justify spending $3 billion a week on the war in Iraq? How do you justify wiretapping whomever and whoever you want without warrants? How do you justify Guantanamo and violating international law? How do you get away with tax cuts for the rich and driving the USA into a deficit that is wrecking her economy and sending oil prices soaring? And, most importantly, how do you ever sell such atrocious behavior to the American people?

2. The appeal to conservative values is a very useful way to divert attention from the real needs of your countrymen, such as the need for universal health care, education and jobs. Conservative values point to those who are not "making it in America," as being offenders, not victims. After all, they are just "too lazy to work hard and are choosing their fate." For the middle class who are losing their homes, they should have "read the fine print on the mortgage contracts they signed." And, besides, if you simply "work hard and play by the rules," then "anybody in America can be rich." Of course, the reality is far different. Hardly anybody ever crosses economic boundaries in America nowadays. The rich (top 1% that owns half of the wealth in the USA) control the political and business systems, and they need the middle class to believe nonsense so they can gouge them even more on usury credit cards and bank loans.

3. Hitler came to power on the collapse of the Weimar Republic of Germany. Germans still alive today from that era will tell you that "never did you see or will you ever again see such pride as we had in Germany!" Hitler used relentless appeals to conservative German values, to patriotism and national pride to cement his power. Civil rights were gradually stripped as the third Reich rose up (stripped for "national security") and Jews were scapegoated (today in America it's the Arabs/Muslims that are scapegoated). Cannot we see parallels to modern day America? Interestingly also, Hitler retained great popularity with the German people up until the war. With the country being reduced to ashes in war, his power of course started to diminish. We therefore need to recognize tha t such is the power and the danger of unadulterated adherence to "conservative values," and how they can be manipulated by madmen.

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Here's what we can learn....
Posted by: CatDad on Mar 13, 2008 12:51 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
That no one person political candidate can be a savior...It's going to be a long process of building a media infrastructure and "think tanks," a process the conservatives started in 1972...

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When it comes to economic issues...
Posted by: roy f on Mar 13, 2008 2:16 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
When it comes to economic issues, liberals will not win by doing the same as conservatives, but the opposite. Conservatism's main goal is to take from ordinary people and give to the super-rich. They cannot win elections by being truthful about that, since virtually all voters are ordinary people. Therefore they win by lying and confusing. Liberals will only win by being as clear and out in the open about what they are doing as possible. Their message on the economy should be, "If elected, and you make less than 300K a year (or something like that), we will give YOU more money!"

For instance, conservatives give tiny token tax cuts to ordinary people and talk endlessly about lowering taxes to make ordinary people think they'll wind up with more money, but of course they take away much more in other, subtle ways, so that ordinary people end up with less.

Liberals should stop offering a complex array of complex government programs to solve every problem, which only make it easier for conservatives to confuse people, and actually hide from too many voters the fact that liberals are trying to help them. There is only 1 problem behind all the economic problems they try to solve, and that is concentration of wealth, so that is the only problem that needs solving, with a single program. They should replace all those programs with a single simple program to help ordinary people by redistributing wealth downward. They should make our tax system highly progressive and as simple as possible. The possible specifics might be: For every dollar people get, from whatever source, above 50K a year, they pay 50 cents in income tax. So someone making 100K a year would pay 25K, and someone making 200K would pay 75K. For every dollar they get below 50K a year, they get 50 cents. So someone making zero would get 25K. (That 50K mid-point would be indexed to inflation. And only adults would get money, so as not to encourage people to have more children for the money.)

Even when liberals choose to help with entitlement programs instead of tax cuts, they should have only the rich pay the taxes for those programs, never ever the same people supposedly being helped. First, how does it help people to take money away and then give the same money back? And second, taxes lose votes, so as few voters as possible should have to pay those taxes.

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Foolesball
Posted by: Sum Won on Mar 14, 2008 2:42 AM   
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Review the last game films. Study their plays. Pick up on their signals. Learn the underlying strategy they use and understand the mindset of their coach. Use their best game plan to your advantage. Then maybe the Left can beat the Right. It's still us against them. It's still which side are you on. It's still about winners and losers. It's still foolesball and whoever wins the superstuper bowl doesn't matter as nothing really changes.

Progressives have to move beyond playing games. The populace needs to see that not only are we prepared to work but that we are willing to roll up our sleeves get in the trenches and lend a hand. Then we will gain their respect and if our efforts are sincere their trust. Together we will recognize how our political systems have failed us and together we will form a consensus to build a new one. Instead of Right and Left the choice will become open or closed. Progressives will naturally gravitate to the open and will become dependent on truth, transparency and inclusiveness to achieve the goals that advance civilization. Those advocating a closed system will be recognized for what they really are. Monopolistic, greedy and unwilling to assume fault or responsibility for those that suffer as a consequence of their desire to dominate and exploit.

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The first rule in battle is understand your enemy
Posted by: Joe on Mar 14, 2008 4:42 PM   
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based on these comment i see continued failure in democrats future.

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oxheadone
Posted by: oxheadone on Mar 14, 2008 11:53 PM   
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It is very hard to counter appeals to greed and bigotry. The triumph of the radical reactionaries (real conservatives like Rockefeller were killed off after Godlwater)reflects a basic weakness in the American public. How else would one explain the success of Nixon's 'southern strategy'? The republican party is the patriotic party; they won the civil war. In modern times, democrats were only elected when the republicans split or acted so badly (Hoover, Nixon) that the public (slightly) revolted. Liberalism today is a mixture of views, all basically concerned with decent behavior by the haves to to have-nots, that (except for some extreme leftist ideas) do not have the gut appeal of greed and the new christianity of hate. Perhaps the coming depression will help get the democrats in power so that they can save capitalism from itself as Roosevelt did.

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They own it
Posted by: Gorgonzola on Mar 16, 2008 8:21 AM   
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Conservatives have no brilliantly conceived strategy that allows them to get their message accross. They get their message out because all major media outlets are owned by corporations who have a genetic attachment to the idea that taxes should be paid by the working slobs rather than the moneyed aristocrats and their corporation cash cows. Even C-Span has evolved into a parade of propagandists from regressive advocasy groups like the Heritage Foundation. They succeed because they own the main stream media and most of the minor stream media. Its easy when you own it all.

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