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Dear Auntie Pinko,
I'm a little blue dot in a big red state and I keep hearing the Republicans trying to scare people with the idea of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. I have spent the last few days asking the GOPers around me why that scares them and all I hear are generic Republican Talking Points. No one can give any specifics.
I don't know much about Rep. Pelosi, but what I see I like. Can you help me develop some talking points for why Nancy is better than Denny?
Madonna
Dacula, GA
Dear Madonna,
There are two approaches you can take: One approach is to get the folks who are buying the generic talking points to be specific about what bothers them. I haven’t heard any of the talking points, so I can’t help you on a point by point deconstruction, but I can guess the general drift.
1. Representative Pelosi will prevent the House from passing legislation sought by extreme religious conservatives. If they don’t seem too far gone in religious zealotry, you can respond by saying “And how will not preventing gay people from getting married affect you, personally? Is that more important that solving America’s debt crisis, restoring ethics to the House of Representatives, and preventing Mr. Rumsfeld & Co. from further messing up the Iraq War?” If they’re dyed-in-the-wool zealots, on the other hand, you’re probably better off saving your breath.
2. Representative Pelosi will help the House of Representatives raise my taxes! You can start by directing these people to Representative Pelosi’s House of Representatives website, where her efforts to reduce taxes for middle class people are covered in detail. You can agree that Representative Pelosi might repeal Mr. Bush’s tax giveaway to rich people, but ask “Why will that affect you? Are you rich?”
3. Representative Pelosi will be weak on national security and put Americans at greater risk for terrorist attack, etc. Again, directing people to her website to examine her voting record and policy statements on national security will be helpful, but you can also ask: “Do you really feel safer after five years of watching Mr. Bush’s administration act like the Three Stooges on ‘Homeland Security,’ with their duct tape alerts and their color-coded worry scale? At least Representative Pelosi will do something to ensure that our ports are secure and incoming cargo containers are inspected!”
4. Representative Pelosi will restore “liberal big government” and tax-and-spend the budget into oblivion. This is an easy one. Gently point out that it is Republicans who have been responsible for the biggest increases in the size of government, and massive government spending increases. Under Democrats like Mr. Clinton, the size of government tends to stay the same or go down slightly. Mr. Bush and the current Republican-dominated Congress are responsible for the biggest expansion in government employment and expenditures in many decades!
5. Representative Pelosi will let immigration go on unchecked, with all the scary stuff associated with that. Well, the worst Representative Pelosi is likely to do is nothing at all on immigration matters, and how will that be worse than what we’ve seen from the current Republican leadership? Immigration is a complex issue, and Democrats usually do better with those complicated things than Republicans.
I don’t know what other hobgoblinesque straw men are being advanced to make people afraid of Representative Pelosi becoming Speaker of the House, but if you keep track, Madonna, you can handle them by doing a little digging on the Internet, starting with Representative Pelosi’s website. There are also many, many websites that are set up to track Representatives’ voting records on specific issues. A little research, and you can take those straw men apart. And of course, you can always fall back on: “And this will be worse than what we’ve got now, how?”
That’s one approach.
The other approach is to ignore the scary straw men, and get people to talk about the stuff that affects their day-to-day life, the things that really worry them. Job security. Will they be able to pay the rent/mortgage if it goes up? Do they have adequate health care coverage? College tuition. Do they have a loved one in Iraq, or scheduled for deployment? Gas prices. Retirement. These bread-and-butter issues are the Democrats’ strongest areas. Point out that, historically, it has been Democrats like Representative Pelosi who have voted for minimum wage increases, for higher automobile fuel efficiency standards, better health care options for middle class people, etc. Democrats will oppose Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Bush’s war of choice and do their best to bring our troops home safely and soon.
Once you get people to look at the things that have a direct, tangible impact on their lives now, it becomes pretty easy to make a case for Democratic leadership. Representative Pelosi is a strong Democrat, but she has also demonstrated that she can put aside partisanship when needed. She has done a good job as Minority Leader in organizing committee memberships and getting her colleagues to work productively together — no easy task with Democrats, who are a pretty independent bunch of cats to herd. A Congress with Speaker Pelosi might not be as conservative as your Republican friends would like, but it won’t be a do-nothing disaster like the current crowd!
Finally, don’t worry too much about the most zealous Republican partisans. They will never support a Democrat, anyway, so why stress yourself trying to convince them? Make the best case you can, and move on. You never know, perhaps something you say that they dismiss while talking to you will come back to them later, and they’ll say, “hmmmm…..” Keep doing your best to work for Democratic victory, Madonna, and thanks for asking Auntie Pinko!
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