What was Obama thinking? The Democrats are the party of ideas. The GOP is the party of propaganda. [View All]

[Karmadillo]

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/011767.php
by eriposte

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Here's Sen. Obama's statement cited by Markos:

I think it’s fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10-15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.

This statement clearly implies two things. One is that unlike the Democratic party, the GOP has allegedly been the party of ideas. This is completely wrong - whether or not Sen. Obama was referring to "good" or "bad" ideas. In fact, what the Republicans are much more famous for is message discipline and propaganda - which tends to limit the number of ideas they propagate. In contrast, there were plenty of ideas from Democrats - much more so than from the Republicans. If anything, Democrats have failed time and again because they have had far more ideas amongst themselves - ranging from the very liberal to the somewhat conservative - that they have often failed to unify around a single set of ideas the way Republicans have. Don't just take my word for it. That is, in fact, one of the messages in Crashing The Gate. I'd like to point Markos to pages 173 and 174 in his own book:

Ask ten people what the Republican Party stands for and you'll get roughly the same ten answers: <...> Now ask ten people what the Democratic Party stands for, and you're likely to get ten different answers...

...As it turned out, this hasn't been a book about policies or new ideas or message, even though those are critically important in taking back our country. We like to believe the ideas that will lead the Democratic Party to a new governing majority already exist, but they need to be articulated clearly.

Markos unfortunately confused message discipline with ideas. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The Democrats have been the party of ideas, the Republicans have been the party of propaganda. That has not changed much in a long long time.

There's another way in which both Markos and Sen. Obama are wrong.

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