People don't get the "war on Christmas" rhetoric and why it's being spewed

[Walt Starr]

It's clearly an attempt to play to the whacko base of the Republican Party. It's not meant to affect Joe Average one whit, in fact, Joe could give a flying fuck about it.

If you haven't noticed, everything this past year has been blatant plays to the base. They'll go moderate next summer in preparation for the elections with a few wedge issues thrown in to tighten up the races.

[billybob537]

1. When you're down to 38%

All that's left are the Kool-aide drinkers. If they start losing them they have no-one.

[Arkansas Granny]

2. They are just trying to get the base excited about something.

The President is unpopular, his war is unpopular. They haven't done anything (and won't do anything) about that constitutional amendment that they were promoting against gay marriage. They don't really want to ban abortion and therefore eliminate a valuable tool to use to bash liberals. So they use this "war on Christmas" to keep the fundies happy with something to hate. It seems to me that most of that group isn't happy unless they have something to hate.

[lukasahero]

3. I don't know Walt,

I would have agreed with you as I think this is generally the situation with almost all things Republican however my non-fundie, generally Democratic father brought this up as a Thanksgiving Day conversation. My absolutely Democratic (albeit painfully underinformed) sister and brother-in-law agreed that "this is getting out of hand". We won't speak of my Bill O'Lielly-watching mother's response...

It may be the reason they're doing it but it IS getting into the head of Joe Average.

[msmcghee]

4. Let's see, what's the worst possible . .

.. thing you could say about liberals that would make any reasonable (though uninformed) person hate and despise us?

Oh, I know - we hate Christmas and the baby Jesus. We want to wreck and destroy the celebration where good Christian familes come together for joy and peace - and grind it into the dirt with our ACLU lawsuits.

Perfect. And if you have a ready-made media empire ready to turn that into a Crusade - why not use it for all it's worth. They'll be voters next year who will go into the voting booth saying they would have voted Dem because they don't like all this Iraq war stuff - but going after Christmas was the last straw - and they'll never vote for a Dem again in their life.

You think this wasn't focus-grouped and planned like any marketing campaign? Think again.

The Dem's of course, sit dumbfounded wondering what happened. What happened was there are people out there who's job it is to destroy liberals and our values. They go to work every morning to work on this and they get paid well for their results. They plan the attacks - they make the media buys and set up the talk-show sequences - and we wonder what the fuck happened.

Kerry is an anti-American coward and a liar about his purple hearts? Democrats love abortions? Liberals hate Christmas?

By the time we mount a weak defense - they're well into the next stage of attack. I have no doubt that there is a carefully researched fresh set of hateful liberal memes that will be released to work their way into the American consciousness up through November of next year.

The problem is - liberals still have the quaint idea that democracy is an open process that requires respect and compromise. Liberals don't get into politics to attack others but to work with others to make government work better. There are no Dems getting paid to make up outrageous attacks on Republicans or conservative values.

The Repukes have successfully re-defined politics in America. It is now a war that will be won by the side that fights the dirtiest. They have won what they wanted. The rest is just whining about what could have been. It's over - until the RW gets tired of hating us - or gets bored with kicking our teeth in.