Lakoff: The GOP Presidential Campaign Is About Guaranteeing a Radical Conservative Future for US

[kpete]

Why the GOP Campaign for the Presidency Is About Guaranteeing a Radical Conservative Future for America
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.
By George Lakoff

..............

The Republican presidential campaign is about a lot more than the campaign for the presidency. It is about guaranteeing a radical conservative future for America

The Santorum Strategy is not just about Santorum. It is about pounding the most radical conservative ideas into the public mind by constant repetition during the Republican presidential campaign.

All moral logic in politics, whether progressive or conservative, is based on metaphorical thought processes, applying family moral values to political moral values. Republicans understand this and Santorum carries it out masterfully for the benefit of all conservative Republican office seekers at all levels, today and in the future.

The Santorum Strategy does not end with this election. It is part of a permanent campaign that has been going on since the Gingrich revolution of 1994, and will continue into the indefinite future.

..................

It is vital that Democrats not make that mistake again.


http://www.alternet.org/election2012/154516/why_the_gop_campaign_for_the_presidency_is_about_guaranteeing_a_radical_conservative_future_for_america/?page=4
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/14/1074038/-Lakoff-The-GOP-Presidential-Campaign-Is-About-Guaranteeing-a-Radical-Conservative-Future-for-US

[randr]

1. The reality of this current campaign

is that Santorum and ilk are pounding their radical conservative ideology to a populace that is realizing how bat shit crazy they are.
The "moral logic in politics" is shifting to the principles and real family values Democrats espouse.

[yurbud]

4. the difficulty is that top Dems too often fail to call it batshit crazy

instead they say, ''let's try a little less blood letting and faith healing and let a doctor examine the patient TOO.''

That was at least understandable when conservative ideas were ascendant, but after the Bush administration flew that airplane into the side of a mountain, Obama and corporate Dems insisted on using some of the wreckage and designers to rescue the victims of the crash.

Put another way, conservatism is a vampire that keeps getting caught in the open at sunrise, but just as it starts to smoke and sizzle, conservative Democrats pull it into the shade before it bursts into flames and vanishes, allowing it to recover and suck our blood another day.

[randr]

5. How true

The Democrat leaders need to stake the Republicans out in the sun and brand them as the bat shit crazy vampires they are at every chance.

[yurbud]

6. I have some slight sympathy for them when it comes to MSM:

If they do say something bold and outside of the accepted Beltway narrative, it will usually simply be ignored.

Case in point: I wondered why no one asked the right questions before the Iraq War, and found a handful who actually did and at length.

But do you think I could find one mention of those comments in the mainstream press?

Often even the PROGRESSIVE media missed it because we don't have enough progressive first hand reporting--we depend on wire services and the big papers to give us the stories to comment on and contextualize.

I wonder how many times for example Republicans have said Social Security is going bankrupt, Democrats have explained why it isn't, and the press has either not said the Democrat was right and the Republican wrong, or simply not provided enough or any of the Democrats comments to correct the Republican.

Admittedly, not all Democrats are doing that, but I imagine the number is slightly larger than our usual roster of progressive heroes.

[snagglepuss]

2. I've been thinking about very thing as it relates to Creationism.

I had been thinking that some foundation concerned with science should start an advertising campaign explaining to people how the Theory of Evolution has been beneficial to humanity eg health research. Such a campaign wouldn't change the mind of deluded fundies but it would mitigate their influence among the wider public.

[yurbud]

7. so many things like this progressives fail to do...

like ads on what unions have done for us in the last 150 years to counteract union bashing, or even what FDR and other New Deal Democrats did for America that Republicans want to unravel.

[LongTomH]

3. K&R

This is a must read! It needs to be reposted to as many places as possible.