Important: The Santorum Strategy. The big picture article by

[wiggs]

George Lakoff.

So many important, quotable passages. A few:

No matter who gets the Republican nomination for president, the Santorum Strategy will have succeeded unless Democrats dramatically change their communication strategy as soon as possible. Even if President Obama is re-elected, he will have very little power if the Republicans keep the House, and a great deal less if they take the Senate. And if they keep and take more state houses and local offices around the country, there will be less and less possibility of a liberal future....The Republican presidential campaign is not just about the presidential race. It is about using conservative language to strengthen conservative values in the brains of voters -- in campaigns at all levels from Congress to school boards. Part of the Republican strategy is to get liberals to argue against them, repeating conservative language.

And

The president had polled the provisions, and each had strong public support: No preconditions, no caps, no loss of coverage if you get sick, ability to keep your college-age child on your policy, and so on. These are policy details, and they matter. The conservatives never argued against any of them. Instead, they re-framed; they made a moral case against "Obamacare." Their moral principles were freedom and life, and they had language to go with them. Freedom: "government takeover." Life: "death panels." Republicans at all levels repeated them over and over, and convinced millions of people who were for the policy provisions of the Obama plan to be against the plan as a whole.

And

When this idealized family model is projected onto various governing institutions, we get conservative versions of them: conservative religion with a strict father God; a view of the market as Decider with no external authority over the market from government, unions, or the courts; and strictness in other institutions, like education, prisons, businesses, sports teams, romantic relationships, and the world community. Control over reproduction ought to be in the hands of male authorities.

For conservatives, democracy is about liberty, individual responsibility and self-reliance -- the freedom to seek one's own self-interest with minimal or no commitment to the interests of others. This implies a minimal public and a maximal private.

We can now see why the Santorum Strategy is so concerned with family values. Strict father family values are the model for radical conservative values. Conservative populism -- in which poor conservatives vote against their financial interests -- depends on those poor conservatives having strict father family values, defining themselves in terms of those values, and voting on the basis of those values, thus selecting strict fathers as their political leaders.

See much more at

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/santorum-strategy_b_1338708.html

[Robeysays]

1. anyone who hasn't read lakoff's book "don't think of an elephant."

should totally read it. single handily allowed me to convince and change minds of at least 4 -5 people to vote for the Dems in '08.

[wiggs]

2. Dems bring a knife to a gun fight

Last paragraphs of the article.

Democrats tend to be literalists, assuming that the presidential campaign is only about the presidential campaign and that birth control is only about birth control. In 2010, they thought that health policy was only about health policy, even as conservatives were metaphorically making it about freedom ("government takeover&quot and life ("death panels&quot .

It is vital that Democrats not make that mistake again.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. The Dem strategists really, really need to listen to this guy.

[wiggs]

4. k. nt

[Quantess]

5. Interesting...

[wiggs]

6. I think the article explains a lot about why this GOP primary is being run the way it is and

why the big GOP names aren't in it...and why, as Rachel has explained last week, the country's politics keeps getting pulled further and further to the right despite the dems holding the better position on the various issues.

They are operating a long game...not focused on a particular presidential race but relentlessly pursuing a change in ideology for the county.

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