I've yet to find a better observation of the GOP agenda: brilliant!

[ztn]

see whole article here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/05/03/11_kansas.html

During the Clinton years, Jeremy Tuck said he had been selling mobile homes in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and, at $45,000 a year, making good money. Last year, he was assembling mobile homes, earning $15,000 and living hand-to-mouth. But Bush has his vote this November ...

"You make more money in plain terms when Democrats are in office," Tuck said with a shrug, "but Republicans are stronger on the military, and that's why I'm voting for President Bush." - quoted in the Washington Post, 6/10/04

The acute ambivalence of people like Jeremy Tuck - economically insecure about their own immediate futures but also anxious about amorphous changes in social mores and the constantly-invoked threat of terrorism for the nation as a whole - was cleverly managed and manipulated to produce a victory for George W. Bush in the most crucial election since 1932.

Strikingly, the razor-edge reality of "living hand to mouth" for millions of America's Jeremy Tucks was trumped by the Republicans' far more symbolic appeals. The vague promise of restoring "traditional values," and the promotion of a broad but empty national purpose in the contrived and mis-directed "war against terror" in Iraq, seemed to over-ride the Democrats' seemingly more direct, if muffled, appeals to plain-terms economic issues.

It's as if the Republicans and their allies had successfully plugged directly into the most primitive, reptilian portions of Americans' brains and applied massive jolts to stimulate fear - of terrorism, of gay marriage, of the unfamiliar and unknown.

At the same time, Republican campaign strategists scrupulously tracked individual voters' "anger points" on issues like gays, guns, and abortion, and then skillfully stoked the level of rage.

snip

The glaring inequities pressing in on the everyday lives of working families and small businesspeople in Kansas (and elsewhere) magically vanish in the worldview popularized by the Religious Right. By calling on working people to rise up against the illusory power of the secular, all-powerful "liberal elite," the Republicans have managed to turn populism inside out. As Frank sees it, "For decades Americans have experienced a populist uprising that only benefits the people it is supposed to be targeting."

The economically-excluded have been enlisted in a "a crusade in which one's material interests are suspended in favor of vague cultural grievances that all-important and yet incapable of ever being assuaged." Kansas is an examplar of this displaced class rage.

[glitch]

1. There ain't no "as if" about it - it's exactly what they are doing

"It's as if the Republicans and their allies had successfully plugged directly into the most primitive, reptilian portions of Americans' brains and applied massive jolts to stimulate fear - of terrorism, of gay marriage, of the unfamiliar and unknown."

And the weak and fear-based Americans buy right into it. But I do not believe they are the majority.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. Exactly.

[zanne]

7. Republicans try to appeal to all three groups of conservatives....

Economic, social and religious. If they piss off one group, they've still got the other two. And if a Republican really disagress with one or two things Bush does, like social conservatives hate the idea of more liberal immigration policies, they'll still vote for him for other reasons, like gay marriage, anti-choice legislation or tax cuts for the rich. They've covered all their bases.

[Nikki Stone 1]

3. Will recommend.

Excellent example of how it works.

[GoBlue]

4. A friend of mine compared...

the election of 2004 with hordes of peasants storming the castle, pitchforks and torches in hand, screaming " Take More, Take More".

[mikehiggins]

5. Oh, Jesus! Hilarious and absolutely true. eom

[ztn]

6. that's excellent!

I love that analogy

[kentuck]

8. That about says it all...

Stick it to us. Starve us. Take our jobs. Take our Bill of Rights. We don't care so long as the terrorists don't attack us.

[gordianot]

9. I have seen this first hand time and again.

As illogical as it sounds they have taken these childish issues and fears and convinced otherwise intelligent humans to vote against their own interests, institutions their ancestors fought and died for, and accepted a man who has betrayed every oath he has taken.

I think we won but we have allowed our worst fears to subjugate our collective will.

These are called wedge issues and they have been carefully researched.

[Debs]

11. That may be true

It is not however demonstrated by this post by brother Jeremy. When he said "You make more money in plain terms when Democrats are in office but Republicans are stronger on the military, and that's why I'm voting for President Bush." He simply left off the part where he meant to say, well that and I am a demonstrable moron

[ztn]

14. LOL n/t

[fromBrooklyn]

12. Until the obverse tack is taken -

namely, intense study on how to dismantle the way wedge issues are sold to the people, we - those of us who think - are screwed.

I'll confess that I find 'them' people who respond to wedge issues, incomprehensible: I simply can not understand the thinking. I find it unsetteling in the extreme, not just because I don't understand, but because I don't begin to understand.

[gordianot]

13. Either dismantle their wedge issues or create our own.

A sensible attitude for Gun Control would have convinced many of the voters I spoke with.

[Shallah Kali]

10. Keep people in a panic so they will do anything to feel safe

So when they are watching, waiting for the sky to fall they miss the open pit in front of them, fall in and break their neck.

There will always be something to fear. There is no human way to be totally safe from everything that can possibly harm a person but if they keep people in a blind panic they won't stop and think. They will be like a frightened herd who stampeds off a clif because that is where the lead horse lead them. I have an anxiety/panic disorder so I know just how freaked out a human being can get and exactly how stupid one can act trying to avoid that which is feared.

[beyurslf]

15. As long as they got their guns and them gays can't marry.....