It’s tough being a conservative politician right now. You can’t really run on the conservative record of fiscal restraint, and (formerly hot-button) social issues only work with a shrinking number of Americans. So what’s the safe thing to run on? One possibility that we are seeing more of is to be against anything that the “liberals” are for. Even if being against it doesn’t make sense, and even if you used to be for it.
For example, last year Ezra Klein wondered about the GOP’s sudden and baffling affection for “Drill Baby Drill“. The McCain campaign pushed the “Drill Baby Drill” rhetoric, even though he had previously been opposed to offshore drilling, and despite the fact that it wouldn’t actually solve our energy problems. Why? Klein notes that “Drilling may not work to solve our oil prices or bring down costs, but liberals really hate drilling, and that’s enough.”
Atrios noticed the same thing:
It’s long been the case that what really gets the Republican base excited is anything that pisses off liberals. There are genuine policy differences, of course, but to get an audience of Republicans on their feet and cheering you need to mention something, no matter how pointless, which pisses off liberals. It’s the glue that keeps them together.
Over at Redstate, conservative bloggers were encouraging readers to protest the recent “Earth Hour” by using lots of extra energy, who responded with assorted descriptions of switching on the TV but not watching it, excessive baking, and turning on every light switch in the house:
I turned our closet lights on too. My husband laughed at me and said no one would see them. I said I didn’t care, I felt good because I KNEW they were on.
What in the world would possess people to spend their own money wasting energy? Because it pisses off liberals!
LMAO about the fact that I cancelled out about 3 Greenies sitting in the dark!
August Pollak points out that this explains a lot. It is why “Joe the Plumber” exists. He actually hurt the Republican party, but they loved him anyway because he pissed off liberals. Same thing for Ann Coulter, who makes millions of dollars simply because she pisses off liberals. They couldn’t care less that she’s a complete whack job. Indeed, one of the biggest selling points of Hummers is that owning one will piss off liberals. Isn’t that worth all the extra money?
18 Comments
Interesting. Do these people really think that those of us who count ourselves as progressive liberals waste our time thinking about these things. Do they really think anyone pays any attention to Coulter except to make fun of her. And turning on the lights during Earth Hour because it is supposed to make me mad? I can’t say I have the energy getting pissed at some dummy wasting their own money by turning on every light in their house. I was busy having a romantic evening with my husband during Earth Hour. I’ll choose sex over unproductive hostility any day. Perhaps they should do the same.
I’m not a huge fan of Republicans or their inconsistency of principle, but it seems like Democrats were following the exact same strategy just previous to Obama being elected. I also regularly see the left delighting in things that will ‘piss off the right’. This may be more an observation of human nature than anything party-specific.
Yeah, pissing off liberals in that sense isn’t going to do much. While yes, turning on more lights isn’t going to do much, it will more piss off the hippies that say we should all be flower children and go batshit insane with the sex and drugs.
Coulter is just plain funny, not infuriating.
Liberals do this too, FWIW. It’s the old in-group out-group mode of identity formation. “we may not know what we are, but we sure and the hell aren’t them.” Oh, and this psychological ploy works. Has been working for thousands of years.
Ok, that’s two commenters who claim that liberals do this too. Perhaps, but to the same degree as conservatives? Can you provide any examples of things liberals are against ONLY because conservatives are for them? Don’t just make an empty claim — I need examples, people!
And if Michael Moore or Al Franken are the closest things that liberals have to Joe the Plumber or Ann Coulter, then there is no comparison.
How about The Flying Spaghetti Monster? Thats a phenomenon that exists purely to tick off the religious right. Social conservatives believe in teaching religion in schools? Fine, teach a religion that absolutely NO ONE believes in. Activism solely for the sake of being an a-hole.
…don’t get me wrong, I’m siding with the liberals on this one, but just to play devil’s advocate, there’s an example.
Are liberals against teaching creationism / intelligent design only because conservatives are for it? I doubt it. The FSM is satire to protest the Kansas decision to require teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster
Satire may indeed piss some people off, but that is not its ONLY (or even main) purpose.
I do admit, you did come up with an example, and a much better one than I expected (even if it is flawed).
“How about The Flying Spaghetti Monster? Thats a phenomenon that exists purely to tick off the religious right.”
No it doesn’t. It’s there to point out how silly creationism is.
Do some use it to piss off others? Sure. But it was created to tackle creationism.
Nevertheless, I don’t like the implication that might be here: that us liberals are somehow better because we don’t bait conservatives.
Just because we don’t use one potentially unethical rhetorical technique doesn’t mean we don’t use others or that we are ethically better for not using it. We might not be condemnable for this one rhetorical trope: that doesn’t mean we aren’t condemnable for others.
Also, just because we also don’t use a demonstratively effective rhetorical technique could just mean we are being impractical / excessively idealistic in our approach to our rhetorical choices.
Mind you, I’m staunchly progressive / liberal, and I think there is a distant relationship between our rhetorical choices and our ethical / political stances. But I recognize that the chain of reasoning and evidence is unproven.
(Oh, Iron Knee. Welcome back from vacation. I finally built my own blog and included a pointer to this one. I hope all the other bloggers do the same: I missed your blog when you were gone!)
I did not see the implication that Thought Dancer sees in the original posting. I suppose that one could see the entire blog as implying that liberal/progressives are “better” than conservatives. I have a different interpretation.
The posting and the blog illuminate and poke fun at moral, ethical, and rhetorical inconsistencies among conservatives. Or at least those who are put out there, or put themselves out, as leaders or standard bearers of political conservatism. I’m sure there are plenty of good and funny blogs that point out the same inconsistencies among liberals/progressives and they should.
Starluna. Sorry, I should have been more specific. I was seeing it as a possibility in this set of comments only.
The blog overall is nicely free of setting any group up as necessarily “better”: it just points to the ludicrousness it finds and let’s us make our own judgments.
Congratulations on the new blog, Thought Dancer. I actually agree with you on the point that it is a big mistake to think of oneself as superior. I think one of the negative results of the last nine years of conservatives v. liberal warfare is that many liberals decided that in order to fight the conservatives, they had to adopt the tactics of the conservatives (even the nastiest ones). To me, this is really another example of allowing the conservatives to frame the debate. Besides, those tactics might have worked in the short run, but they don’t seem to have worked very well in the long run.
I’m very pleased that Obama seems to be taking the high road in this regard, refusing to take out revenge on the GOP, even if they deserve it, and even though many liberals want it to happen. Although I have to admit that part of me really wants to see some of those war criminals rot in jail.
I’ll throw out one other mistake sites make (including liberal ones), which I see all the time when I’m researching stories for this blog. Lots of sites will take incidents out of context in order to make them sound much worse. Probably because conflict sells. I can’t tell you how many times I see a juicy headline backed up by quotes that sound really bad. But when I take the time to find the source material, often the whole thing is has been blown out of proportion. I think there is plenty of conflict already without creating new tempests in teapots, and by doing this the media actually hurts themselves in the long run, because people become blase about conflict, plus they lose trust in the media.
*nods* to Iron Knee. So true, all of it. I’ve been thinking about both the rhetoric Obama’s been using and how it contrasts with the rhetoric practiced during the last two election cycles.
As I develop details, it will hit my blog. What I’m working on right now is the use of repetition. Obama’s rhetorical repetitions reminds me of MLK (not surprisingly): they seem to function as a means of affirmation.
I need to find good examples, but the repetition in the last campaign (politicians and media alike) seemed far more focused on deadening the audience’s critical thinking.
I’m still working that out, as I said. Especially because it seems counter-intuitive that repetition can affirm / engage the mind in one rhetor’s speeches and can turn off the mind in the speeches / communication acts by others.
Not sure how this will turn out, or that it will. But, yes. I see what you’re getting at about Obama taking the high road. I’m just trying to figure out the details of how he’s doing it.
And thanks on the congrats. I’m very wet behind the ears: simple html work is requiring me to learn how to do it. 🙂
I think you are comparing apples and oranges Iron Knee. The Flying Spg Monster is one example. So is gay marriage. I know people who are pro-gay marriage precisely and exactly because it pisses off the Religious Right, not because they give a damn about gays. Just because the issue in the abstract is genuine to some people don’t mean that every person who adopts that position does so for sincere reasons.
The examples you pointed out in the OP were a bunch of nit wits but the whole Earth Hour thing comes across to me as being pushed by a bunch of nit wits. Why is their “lets leave the lights on in the closet” not taken as spoofing or sarcasm while the Flying Spaghetti Monster is?
I quite agree with you that there is no liberal position, as an abstract position, that is taken solely to piss off the right. But name me one position, as an abstract position, that the right that is taken solely to piss off the left? Not global warming skepticism: Plenty of people sincerely are skeptic of the claims made by global warming zealots, the dufus reaction of a minority aside.
Daniel, saying “let’s leave the lights on in the closet” is spoofing (and perhaps even sarcasm). But actually leaving the lights on in the closet is is not spoofing or sarcasm. Maybe we should call it “nitwiting”.
The whole point of this post was that there are some issues that the right has adopted ONLY because they piss off the liberals, and for no other reason. In fact, sometimes they have changed their position on an issue just to piss off the liberals. While some liberals may adopt an otherwise reasonable position in order to piss off conservatives, that is not the same thing at all.
I’m not sure why you ask me to “name … one position … that the right has taken solely to piss off the left”. How about “Drill baby drill”? McCain was originally against drilling, but changed his position during the election in order to piss off liberals (or, equivalently, to energize his base by pissing off liberals).
Thought Dancer – thanks for the clarification. I suppose when presented with examples of extreme idiocy, it can be easy to fall into the superiority trap. Good luck with the blog. Rhetoric’s a fun subject.
Daniel – I think its important to distinguish between moral positions and empirical ones. An individual’s position on gay marriage is a moral one. People who support or oppose gay marriage generally base their positions in moral/ethical/religious terms. Because these involve differences in values, than discussion around moral positions comes down to the question of what value system is eventually adopted by society. I personally would not accept the justification “it pisses off my conservative uncle” as a reasonable basis for a moral position.
The justification for any position on gay marriage is quite different than the justification for skepticism on climate change. True climate change skeptics make their arguments in empirical terms because it is a question of science. There can be a moral dimension to climate change, but that is not the basis for skepticism in its existence. If the justification for a position is empirical, than sincerity has nothing to do with it. It is only a question of who has better data, better theories, better models. It appears that the skeptics have not provided sufficient or sufficiently strong data to fully justify their skepticism. And they are hugely guilty of cherry picking and taking studies out of context. Much like the intelligent design proponents.
The “drill baby drill” and Earth Hour protesters, however, are not taking an empirical position on climate change. They are not skeptics. They appear to be taking a principled position as part of a ritual that identifies them as having adopted a specific political and social approach to the world, usually one that starts with the claim, “don’t tell me what to do.” The people who turned on their closet lights during Earth Hour are not taking an empirical or moral position. It is social identity formation at best. Or simple stupidity at worst.
It’s like an echo chamber in here. Drill baby drill was solely an effort to piss off liberals? I recall the liberals chomping at the bit to close off most remaining drilling locations, while gas was $4 a gallon. So much for rational thought. Are we not allowed to look at the long term anymore?
gandhi: We need to remember that MLK was a student of Gandhi. Obama also fashions his reactions to life on MKL and Gandhi. Ah, if we all could. ebdoug