Republicans Have Mastered Post-Truth-Politics: Total, unremitting, hysterical oppositionalism

[kpete]

POLITICS
Policy in an age of post-truth politics 4

BY DAVID ROBERTS

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

For decades Republicans have single-mindedly pursued a few core goals: reducing taxes on the wealthy, dismantling the post-war social welfare state, and freeing corporations from regulatory restraints. Sometimes that has meant short-term compromises and half-measures, sometimes it's meant exploiting culture war resentments, sometimes it's meant a pose of moderation (compassionate conservatism). Very often -- almost always -- it's meant couching the agenda in other terms, since it is, if you poll it directly, wildly unpopular with the public. Americans want to tax the rich more, protect entitlement programs, and put tighter rules on corporations.

Republicans thus talk about "taxes" and "spending" and "regulation" in the abstract, since Americans oppose them in the abstract even as they support their specific manifestations. They talk about cutting the deficit even as they slash taxes on the rich and launching unfunded wars. They talk about free markets even as they subsidize fossil fuels. They talk about American exceptionalism even as they protect fossil fuel incumbents and fight research and infrastructure investments.

In short, Republicans have mastered post-truth politics. They've realized that their rhetoric doesn't have to bear any connection to their policy agenda. They can go through different slogans, different rationales, different fights, depending on the political landscape of the moment. They need not feel bound by previous slogans, rationales, or fights. They've realized that policy is policy and politics is politics and they can push for the former while waging the latter battle on its own terms. The two have become entirely unmoored.

So it's not that they "moved right" on some policy spectrum when Obama took office. They just adopted a new political strategy, namely total, unremitting, hysterical oppositionalism. Mitch McConnell accurately foresaw that it was the only thing that could revive the battered party after 2008, and it has paid off richly. Conservatives are becoming less reticent about voicing their real agenda, but the agenda itself never changed.

the rest:
http://www.grist.org/politics/2011-04-28-policy-in-an-age-of-post-truth-politics

[Richardo]

1. Pretty perceptive

K&R

[elleng]

2. Yes, this has been going on for a LONG time,

and their propaganda has successfully tied liberals/progs/Dems up in knots.

http://www.ushmm.org/propaganda/resources/

[hifiguy]

3. The Repukes have had the same agenda

since the Gilded Age - the Divine Right of Wealth and f*ck everybody else. Individual Republicans used to be responsible custodians of the public interest (Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower - I think Ike was the last one) but the current Repigs are direct descendants of those who plotted to overthrow FDR and install a fascist dictator. General Smedley Butler blew their cover back in the 1930s. Apparently there are no General Butlers today.

[supernova]

4. Have to agree

Their rhetoric has become to to oppose anything the Dems say. Has nothing to do with governing at all. So what that what they say in 2011 is the exact opposite of what they said in 1980 or even in 2010. Hate. It's the new black.

I'm reminded of a STNG episode. Data was in a paresi squares tournament against a guy who was supposed to be the best player in the Federation. Even Date couldn't beat him, Data lost in fact, and spent the better part of the episode doubting even his ability to do his job. Until he realized one thing. They guy's ambition to win was his weakness. Data finally figures out that he merely has to checkmate him, just keep him from winning.

Heh.

[sinkingfeeling]

5. Just like how they now claim last November was a mandate to slash spending, when they claimed it was

about job creation before the election.

[DirkGently]

6. Absolutely. And the teamsports political mentality of Americans prefers slogans to debate.

[janet118]

7. Kill the New Deal and anything else that helps the serfs . . .

This is corporate warfare - we are fighting an enemy that can shape-shift, lives forever and is unrelenting. The "Republicans" are its temporary tools.