A Bigger Deal Than You Think - By Josh Marshall

[DonViejo]

As the Indiana debacle unfolds there is an unmistakeable and merited glee from supporters of LGBT rights as they watch the law's sponsors buffeted by waves of bad publicity and threatened boycotts. As I noted on Monday, Indiana is anything but the first state to pass anti-gay legislation. It's just that the state's Governor and Republican legislators seem to have stumbled onto one of those tipping point moments when the balance of public sentiment and action doesn't just shift but shifts dramatically, with the initial shift building on itself. I doubt very much that most of the companies and organizations that have announced boycotts or opposition in recent days thought they would be doing so before Salesforce's Marc Benioff made his announcement just five days ago. But for all this, I think the sheer scale of the debacle is still not quite visible. It's hidden in plain sight. But we're not quite seeing it.

It's not just that the laws defenders are denying it targets gays and lesbians. It's not just that they're claiming (mainly falsely it turns out) that other states and the federal government have similar laws. It's this: virtually everyone from the governor on down is claiming not only that the law wasn't intended to allow discrimination and that it does not have this effect but that they oppose discrimination in any form.

No one of any prominence has been willing to say that gays and lesbians don't deserve "special rights" (as the social conservative right likes to phrase it) or that godly business owners shouldn't be forced to participate in same sex weddings that violate their religious principles. (If you've missed this, catch up on the bakery rights movement.) If you listen to Gov Pence you half expect he's about to push through a full LGBT anti-discrimination bill just to make clear he loves him some gays and doesn't accept discrimination in any form.

Now, no, I don't expect that's the "fix" he was referring to today will amount to that. Indeed, social conservatives have always tried to find ways to argue that they don't support discrimination per se - just "special rights" etc. But these kinds of slippery, obfuscating arguments have major consequences. And these are far more total and unqualified than we almost ever see in these cases.

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-bigger-deal-than-you-think

[longship]

1. Josh nails it. R&K nt

[Baitball Blogger]

2. The power to stop them has finally reached a level where action is possible.

[world wide wally]

3. Isn't the "right to discriminate by church people" considered a "special right?

[hueymahl]

6. EXACTLY what I was thinking.

Hypocrisy has no bounds.

[KoKo]

4. Think he's onto something...and it may be more far reaching...

People are having enough of Republican Conservative Overeach....they are sick of their ranting and raving and telling people how they should live their lives and getting AWAY with it.

I'm hoping the "Backlash Comes" and it can't come soon enough. But, then....we've hoped this before. Still, there's always that "reach too far" that can be the tipping point historically.

[antigop]

5. well, you'd think the 1% has already "reached too far" -- but that's another topic. nt

[KoKo]

8. I think it might be a culmination of the 1% and the Raving Repubs & Fox News

finally reaching the "Tipping Point" for the average person who wasn't paying too much attention.

But, as I said in my reply...we've hoped this before and not much has come of it. That Josh sees perhaps a tipping point, also, is interesting even though he is focusing on GLBT rights in his post....it could reach farther and this is the first sign.

At some point even clueless people get worn down by the craziness, chaos of it all.

[antigop]

9. maybe this time... nt

[Cosmic Dancer]

7. And yet

we keep voting these thugs into office.

[KoKo]

10. The Gerrymandering of voting districts and "Citizens United' decision

has a lot to do with that, though. In NC the popular vote went for Dems in the Mid-Terms but the Repubs won. Our state is working on fixing this...but it's going to take awhile...lawsuites, etc.

[Cosmic Dancer]

11. You can't gerrymander the votes for Governor or Senate and these thugs control 30 states, the Senate

and house. I really think that speaks to who we are as a country.

[AlbertCat]

16. You can't gerrymander the votes for Governor or Senate

No.
But you can blanket an area with misleading and false ads and confuse people....while restricting voting.

[Cosmic Dancer]

17. Look repugs

have shown time and time again who they are and what they stand for. Let's not excuse those who vote for these morons, we are a 50/50 country, there is a lot of hate going around just go and read comments on right leaning web sites.

[AlbertCat]

18. have shown time and time again

If you're paying attention....

You shoulda seen the anti-Kay Hagan ads! They were all about Obama, that scary black man in the White House. You'd think Hagan was actually governing from an undisclosed location. You'd think SHE was the reason that awful Obamacare was gonna take away your doctor (they actually claimed she cast the deciding vote) You hear about it 5 or 6 times in a row during dinner. Voting against Hagan was voting against Obama (who wasn't running for anything and was gonna be in until his last term was up anyway).


And we are not 50/50.

We are more 1/3 loony Repugs, 1/3 mamby-pamby undecideds, and 1/3 shaky Dems. Many undecideds vote where they think everyone else is going to vote. Repugs muddy the waters so people are just confused and don't have time or want to sort out the situation. Repugs are supported by a conservative, crappy press.

Yes there is a lot of hate going around and who encourages it?

To dismiss the GOP media machine and its effects on the average person (who is not a GOP nut) is foolish.

[Cosmic Dancer]

19. What is foolish

is that we under estimate these pukes. They are backed by Adleson and Kochs, they fight for what they believe in (unlike dem pols) and they have a legion of Americans that follow. I agree that dems are shaky, we lack a backbone Warren seems to be the only dem with balls.

[calimary]

12. This is a pretty doggone brilliant analysis of memes and framings and language tactics.

NOTE what Josh Marshall has pinpointed:

No one of any prominence has been willing to say that gays and lesbians don't deserve "special rights" (as the social conservative right likes to phrase it) or that godly business owners shouldn't be forced to participate in same sex weddings that violate their religious principles. (If you've missed this, catch up on the bakery rights movement.) If you listen to Gov. Pence, you half expect he's about to push through a full LGBT anti-discrimination bill just to make clear he loves him some gays and doesn't accept discrimination in any form.

Now, no, I don't expect that the "fix" he was referring to today will amount to that. Indeed, social conservatives have always tried to find ways to argue that they don't support discrimination per se - just "special rights" etc. But these kinds of slippery, obfuscating arguments have major consequences. And these are far more total and unqualified than we almost ever see in these cases.

And this:

...every restatement of this argument - even if it's largely bogus - drives home the argument that any form of discrimination against gays and lesbians is literally indefensible, even allowing people with socially conservative social values to discriminate because of "religious liberty." Even claiming anyone thinks that is apparently now an affront. In other words, even the tactical wordplay and verbal jujitsu amounts to conceding a major strategic defeat.

Now, I'm not naive enough to think that anyone has changed their stripes. But the defense of the Indiana law has gone a fair way to establishing a new standard - from the social conservative right itself: that any law, not just one that is expressly discriminatory but one that creates a loophole for private discrimination, is not worthy of defense.

"Tactical wordplay and verbal jujitsu"!!!! PERFECT! That's EXACTLY what it is! BEAUTIFULLY put!


And notice the OTHER weasel-y, slick schtick, the "tactical wordplay and verbal jujitsu" they're parroting now - "It's the fault of the PERCEPTION. It's YOU guys perceiving this wrongly. YOU are distorting this. We're not the offending party here, it's YOU, getting it wrong, reading it wrong, understanding it wrong. it's the PERCEPTION of this wuuuunnnnnnnnnnderful wuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnderful innocent misunderstood poor little law here. NOTHING is wrong with this wuuuunnnnnnnderful little law! It's merely the way it's being PERCEIVED!!! Victim! Victim! We're being persecuted! AGAIN!!! Sound the ALARM!!!! VICTIM ALERT!!!! VICTIM ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Same passive-aggressive bullshit as the statement - "mistakes were made." Yeah... somebody else out there, some mystery person or persons made a mistake somewhere. But not us! We're clean. We had nothing to do with it. If I just use these verbal tweezers, then my hands are still clean. It's the TWEEZERS that are at fault here!

WATCH THEIR WORDING. WATCH their "tactical wordplay and verbal jujitsu"! Be on guard for it. Be prepared. Know the signs and signals. Know the sneak-speak they're attempting. They do this shit ALL THE TIME!!! Watch what they say and how they say it. It's in the presentation - the deliberate, studied, very carefully-crafted wordplay, phraseology, focus-group-tested, frank-luntz-massaged word wars they wage. It's schtick. Feigning innocence and victimhood and persecution (NOBODY has a bigger persecution complex than these latter-day so-called "Christians." You'd think we were feeding them to the lions in the Coliseum in the morning!) It really is sneak-speak. I think that's what I'm gonna start calling it. It's their Sneak-Speak messaging tactic. They're trying to sneak something past you.

They're trying to sneak something past you. Make something sound so very much more harmless than YOU AND YOUR FUCKED UP PERCEPTION are trying to turn it into. It's YOU, on the uptake end of this, who's at fault. CERTAINLY not sweet innocent loving non-discriminating THEM! Their hearts are PURE!

My ass.

They're trying to sneak something past you. They're VERY DELIBERATELY trying to sneak something past you. As the conniving sneaky-ass weasels they are. Their lips tell you one thing. Their ACTIONS tell you quite another. Actually - in this case, their lips are telling you two very conflicting things. Maybe several things at the same time, considering how far they go and hard they work to muddy the waters and confuse those of us who are onto them. Best thing to do is suspect the worst, seems to me. EXPECT ulterior motives. Particularly if they start bleating like little sheep about how unfortunate this is and how preyed-upon they feel and how their good-hearted, noble (remember, GOD is on THEIR side) and SOOOOOOOO misunderstood motivations are pure as the not-driven-on snow. You'll usually wind up being correct in your assessment.

BANK ON IT. They're trying to sneak something past you.

[yodermon]

14. excellent analysis on an excellent piece, calimary n/t

[closeupready]

13. Most IN officials are lawyers who know that endorsing discrimination is dicey, lawsuit-wise.

So when they are asked to comment, they want to make clear (for purposes of pre-emptively striking plaintiff arguments in discrimination lawsuits) that discrimination was never intended, is not endorsed, and will not be endorsed, when the plain fact is that discrimination is PRECISELY what the law is intended to endorse.

In other words, by in fact endorsing discrimination against gay people with this law, Indiana is laying fertile groundwork for ambitious plaintiff lawyers who seek aggrieved parties who have been wronged on equal protection grounds.

[nichomachus]

15. You screw with Salesforce at your own peril

They are monstrous. In fact, their user conference in San Francisco last year drew 135,000 people. That's a lot of freaking people.

This year, because their attendees overwhelmed the hotel space in SF, they chartered a cruise ship to dock in SF and serve as an adjunct hotel.

This is not a rinky-dink outfit.