PrintFebruary 4, 2010
Desperate Times and Left-Wing Psy-Ops
Fresh off liberals getting thumped in Virginia, New Jersey, and most recently Massachusetts, the left are now in a full-fledged panic, and they're doing all they can to quickly blur the obvious teachable moment: that the GOP can win by boldly going way to the right of the Democrats.
The Daily Kos recently released an odd poll of Republican voters -- and now The Politico and other liberal organizations are trying to use the results to churn waters that are actually relatively calm.
The GOP had better not bite.
This is actually something that liberals inherently know and fear, and have since at least 1980. It explains their never-ending, disingenuous P.R. campaign to keep Republicans in mortal fear of upsetting moderates by doing something rash -- like reading the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, for instance.
Yes, these would be the very same independents who rejected the "honorable campaign" of John McCain by 21 points. These are also the very same independents who came roaring back to the fold for downtown Scottie Brown, forever known as "41."
The McCain message that we have "nothing to fear from an Obama presidency" was not exactly what we heard from Brown.
No. This was the Brown who taunted Obama for insulting his pickup truck and jabbed harshly at any and all liberals who want to give terrorists Miranda rights and ACLU lawyers. This was the same Brown who chided the entire Kennedy machine for turning its back on that great supply-side economist, John F. Kennedy.
Scott Brown might not quite occupy the Jesse Helms perch on the far right, but he did draw huge ideological distinctions between himself and the entire Democratic Party, and the result is that he now occupies Teddy Kennedy's well-worn seat.
Brown won moderates and independents by huge margins, the same way Reagan did in 1980 and the way Newt Gingrich did in 1994. He spoke passionately about what he believed and why -- and he attracted moderates. He did not pretend to be one of them. Brown exposed sharp differences between himself and all ideas liberal -- and the independents agreed with him.
You might say that Brown found the electoral middle -- and damned if they weren't on the right the whole time. They just needed someone to boldly proclaim what that means and to contrast it with the left. Many in the liberal media know this, and it scares the heck out of them. Moreover, Brown in his closing remarks on election night summed up what had just happened this way:
We are united by basic convictions that only need to be clearly stated to win a majority [emphasis mine] -- and if anyone doubts that...well, let them take a look at what happened here in Massachusetts. Because what happened here in Massachusetts can happen all over America.
And in case you forgot, those basic convictions include low taxes, a belief in the private sector, a strong national defense, and a very tough stance on terrorists. Oh yeah. And no Obamacare!
What Brown knows -- as well as the leftists at the Daily Kos -- is that if these convictions can win in Massachusetts, they really can win everywhere. But to win everywhere, they have to be tried everywhere.
And that's where the Daily Kos poll comes in. It was dreamed up, executed, and reported for the express purpose of scaring the GOP out of using campaigns stressing these very basic convictions. Seriously, would there be any benign reason why the Daily Kos would pay for a poll of Republican voters?
And the way they did it is really quite transparently infantile. They are using the preferred liberal method of creating straw men and changing the subject. Some of the questions were so childishly worded that even the Mensa Society could not look intelligent if they were polled in this manner. Consider:
Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win?Do you believe ACORN stole the 2008 election?Do you believe Barack Obama is a racist who hates white people?
These kind of questions make it impossible to register displeasure with Obama's terror policies, ACORN, or the impact of Jeremiah Wright on the president without sounding juvenile. Mommy, mommy -- Bawack stole the ewection and he wants the tewowists to win over the whities. Waaaaah.
I can only wonder if the erudite David Brooks will have the mental dexterity to see through this brilliantly diabolical plot. I rather doubt it.
Another less than subtle subtext was that all conservatives are bumpkins of faith consumed by the following:
Should public school students be taught that the book of Genesis ... ?Should women work outside the home?Are marriages equal partnerships ... ?
The idea was to hitch a scarlet letter of craziness and extremism to the Tea Party and conservative movements. Nobody at the Tea Parties made these an issue in their demonstrations. There were no posters proclaiming "bring the women home" or "keep 'em barefoot and pregnant."
This is a naked political psych warfare. We know that Robert Menendez -- the head of the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee -- has stated that he wants to drive a wedge between the GOP and the Tea Party. You can bet that this Daily Kos poll is the first wedge attempt. And The Politico -- a competitor of the Daily Kos who should be eager to point out that site's frivolity -- instead jumps right in and sums up the poll results this way:
The poll of 2,000 Republicans ... paints a picture of a base that's angry, disaffected and acutely hostile to President Barack Obama. 39% of Republicans polled think Obama should be impeached, 36% say he wasn't born in the United States and one in four say they aren't even sure he's a U.S. citizen. Another 63% labeled the president a "socialist."
The intended net result is to paint conservatives as infantile, religious zealots who are simply mad as hell and consumed with Obama's birthplace and a plethora of cultural issues. Why? To keep the GOP's party apparatus scared of and embarrassed over their own base voter.
The idea is to make it plain to the suits inside the Beltway that the party must not get too cozy with these crazies -- or they will never win another election. But consider their convoluted logic:
If Republicans want to leverage Scott Brown's Massachusetts victory into a November electoral avalanche, they'll need to keep their base riled up -- but not too riled up.The party's greatest challenge, operatives and elected officials in both parties say, is keeping the conservative base energized without overshooting the mainstream and driving away the moderate "Brown independents" they'll need to take back Congress.
Moderate Brown independents? You mean the ones who wanted lower taxes, less government, more business, and harsher treatment of terrorists? Those Brown independents sound a lot like Reagan, or even Palin -- i.e., conservatives -- to me. Yet the intellectual disconnect drones on:
"This shows a huge vulnerability for Republicans," says Jef Pollock, a veteran pollster and Democratic strategist working for Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa). Independents, who are particularly disinclined toward any kind of partisan rhetoric, are going to be turned off when they hear Republicans say stuff like this..." Pollock said.
And there you have it. Arlen Specter is the poster boy with all that is wrong with Republicans going moderate, and his brilliant strategist has just said that Brown's win -- plus this kooky poll -- shows a huge vulnerability for the GOP.
I say just the opposite. Brown's win shows that the right basic convictions need only to be clearly stated in order to win. State clearly that you believe in limited government and lower taxes. Be proud of the free-market system. Be proud of the military, and be ready to treat enemies of this nation as they should be treated. And be proud to stand in the way of Obamacare.
That is the message that the Republican Party must take from Massachusetts as well as New Jersey and Virginia. If the beltway strategists of the feckless Arlen Specter, as well as The Politico and The Daily Kos, want to believe that the GOP is all in a dither over the birther movement and keeping women at home, then let them have at it. They will pay the price in November of 2010.
But for the record -- I do believe Obama is a socialist. Because, well, he is. So call me crazy, but perhaps you should ask Van Jones or Jeremiah Wright if I am all that far off first.
