This has been a terrible week for conservatives. Since the financial crisis began, McCain's support has been plummeting in the polls. The most recent data also suggests that the election might result in a Democratic landslide for Obama and also in the congressional races, potentially giving Democrats a filibuster-proof Senate.
Perhaps just as bad for the long-term future of the Republican Party the McCain-Palin campaign has adopted a new vicious tone. This hearkens back to previous campaigns, when we have seen Republicans embrace a strategy rooted in Cold War conservative attacks by Republicans on Democrats for their alleged ties to communists.
This is in stark contrast to one of the most successful Republican campaigners in recent history- Ronald Reagan. He believed that to succeed, conservatives also need to sell a positive vision for America or they would suffer the fate of Barry Goldwater in 1964. The central conservative message, according to Reagan, had to revolve around what conservative policies could do to make America a better and stronger place. Reagan's rhetoric was framed in optimistic and positive terms.
While many Americans strongly disagreed with what Reagan said and he could be as tough as any politician, his insistence on counterbalancing his message with a positive outlook was essential to his victories. Jimmy Carter's pollster Patrick Caddell had noted early on how difficult it would be to turn Reagan into another Goldwater, given that his demeanor and language made him appealing to main street America. In contrast to Carter's pessimism in 1980, Reagan said that "the American people, the most generous on earth, who created the highest standard of living, are not going to accept the notion that we can only make a better world for others by moving backwards ourselves." Reagan's 1984 re-election campaign featured an ad, "Morning in America," which provided an optimistic description of the American economy and local communities.
During the past week of the current campaign, desperate to reverse the falling polls, the Republicans have decided to take the low road and have rejected Reagan's formula for conservative success. Governor Palin has been giving speech after speech focusing on Barack Obama's relationship to a former member of the Weather Underground, Bill Ayers, to suggest that Obama has unexplained relations with "terrorists." Yesterday, McCain for the first time brought up the issue and today released an ad on the subject. "When convenient he worked with terrorist Bill Ayers. When discovered, he lied," according to the television spot.
Recent postings on YouTube have captured extremely aggressive words coming from the people lined up to see McCain and Palin. Palin said nothing at one event when someone in the crowd, revved up by talks about terrorism, screamed out "Kill Him!"
The damage that Republicans are inflicting to the conservative movement could be severe, even if this causes some bounce at the polls for the GOP, which thus far it has not. Reagan understood that no party could build a strong coalition simply through hatred. If the current sounds and sights define how Americans think about the GOP, McCain could succeed in undoing what Reagan had accomplished for the party back in 1980.
Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He is the co-editor of "Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s" (Harvard University Press) and is completing a book on the history of national security politics since World War II that will be published by Basic Books.
"I'm sure there's a HUGE base of willing ears." Nope, that's the first fact you can't grasp. Liberals don't need to be told what to think. So we don't need our "liberal buttons" to be pressed. Rethugs always need to be reminded what they hate. It's like the Constitution thing: show a rethug the Bill of Rights and they'll call it a commie plot. So they need constant reminder of the phrases and words in the document that can be twisted to meet their hate du jure.
The reason liberals listen or watch Olbermann and Maddow is to get more stories that the corporate media and "johnnie-one-notes" like Dobbs and O'Reilly never touch. I don't listen Olbermann and Maddow to know what to think, but what to think about.
After listening to all the news, not just what corporate media has approved, I don't constant repetition of "official" liberal positions the way you need all the rethug official positions pounded into that cesspool of a brain of yours.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
The John McCain Hate America '08 Tour
1. My grandpa reached retirement age in 1982 and somehow thanks, to Reagan, his retirement or Social security was slashed. He had to cut grass in the neighborhood and shovel driveways in the winter to make enough money to survive. I don't know why or what happened, I was only 9 and all I know is he was pissed at Reagan.
2. My grandmother had to work well past her 70s because HER retirement was also affected. She used to curse Reagan and slice government cheese all the time. That cheese was pretty good.
3. In the late 70s, my mom and dad were in a beautiful 3 bedroom house. By 1986, I looked out the window at the ghetto for the first time and saw crack heads. We got poorer and poorer every year. I remember more Reagan curses. And more cheese in brown boxes.
4. I had nuclear anxiety VERY badly as a child. I get nervous just hearing the word "nuclear". That's all I have to say about that.
(I don't know WTF happened when Reagan was pres. I was 17 in 1990 and I didn't care. I know that my family cursed Reagan...and his "omics")
I hope everybody else in the 80s was having a good morning because mine sucked.
Reagan's "southern strategy" was rascist to the core - plainly demonstrated by his choice of Philadelphia Mississippi for a speech.
Remember that place? It's where the white and black civil rights workers were murdered.
He set the winning strategy of race and class divisiveness that the Republicans have used ever since. They love him because it works for them.
Interesting that the Democrats do not stoop that low, isn't it?
Reagan !
Reagan was a better liar.
Pro-Obama articles and interviews dominate every publication, news show, and TV show. Counts have been done, and the media, with the exception of talk radio, FOX News, and blogs, are all in the tank for Obama.
So McCain has no choice but to do the attacks on Obama himself. There are volumes of information on Obama, with Ayers, Rev. Wright, Rashid Khalidi, Tony Rezko, Louis Farrakhan, ACORN, Obama votes against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, and Obama's own books, detailing his far left politics views.
But the media could care less. I bet everyone in the country know's the name of Palin's five kids, but doesn't know anything about Obama's record.
Unless they are criminal charges, and the GOP is on trial, like Palin's mentor Stevens
seeing as mccain has cut off most media access to himself and sarah palin, they probably shouldn't be reporting on mccain's activities at all.
1. Government is the problem (except when the rich need bailouts).
2. Trickle down aka voodoo economics works.
3. Practically saying greed is good.
4. I can break the law until I get caught.
5. Deficits doesn't matter.
6. Aids only affects gays.
and on and on................
http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=194