A new L.A. Times poll takes an interesting temperature reading of Cal Republicans’ feelings about the president.
Offered a choice of five terms – ”pride,” “hope,” “disappointment,” “anxiety,” and “anger,” only 21% of Republicans in the state chose the maximal answer, “anger.” 22% expressed anxiety, 31% expressed disappointment.
(Among California voters generally, 60% offered one of the positive descriptors, “hope” or “pride.”)
Message, as it seems to me:
In the country’s biggest state, and one of its most economically hard-pressed, the Fox/talk radio project of trying to generate intense anti-Obama feelings is failing. There’s enough background of goodwill toward the president even among Republicans that opposition expresses itself as doubt, not rage. You’d think that it would be smarter politics to work on the emotions people actually have: that the man’s plans aren’t working, not that his motives are malign.
7 responses so far
1 sinz54 // Nov 8, 2009 at 10:08 am
David Frum:
It might be smarter politics,
but that’s not how political oppositions typically work.
In 1980-81, Coretta Scott King charged that Reagan was going to unleash the KKK to lynch blacks. Liberals charged that Reagan was a dangerous Strangelovian lunatic who would unleash global thermonuclear war.
Throughout American history, political oppositions have painted the incumbent as the embodiment of pure Satanic evil. That’s been the case since the founding of the Republic.
The trick is to keep two sets of books: Energize the rank and file so that they’re ready to kick that Satanist/pervert/traitor/dictator/lunatic/wimp out of the White House; while cooler heads plot strategy and Electoral Votes. Never let the passions among the rank and file boil over, as they did with the Left in the 1960s.
IOW, you have to be able to ride that tiger. Richard Viguerie did it. Tip O’Neill did it. Karl Rove did it.
It’s the harnessing of pure, raw, naked passion to cold-blooded strategy and tactics that has made American politics so fascinating.
2 Reason60 // Nov 8, 2009 at 1:52 pm
“In 1980-81, Coretta Scott King charged that Reagan was going to unleash the KKK to lynch blacks. Liberals charged that Reagan was a dangerous Strangelovian lunatic who would unleash global thermonuclear war.”
You are correct; As I have pointed out elsewhere, that sort of unhinged fury and maudlin victimology is what caused me, and millions like me, to scorn the liberals- not for their abstract principles or plocies, but their group personality. They continued all throughout Reagan’s term to use the silliness of street theater, wild hyperbole, and outright lies.
As a snarky blogger might say today- “So how’d that work out for them?”
3 Oldskool // Nov 8, 2009 at 8:11 pm
It almost seems like it’s out of the hands of Republicans and in the hands of the monster they created: manufactured group outrage as a tactic. You see it so often it no longer needs to be prompted. On the fringe, it’s become the default reaction to everything and to everyone else it’s become another reason to roll their eyes and shake their heads.
4 Toddtheconservative // Nov 9, 2009 at 5:41 am
They should have included “truth” in their poll. Read this powerful piece I found—
http://americaspeaksink.com/2009/11/the-press-coverage-at-ft-hood-sickening/
5 LJS // Nov 9, 2009 at 8:22 am
Oldskool
“It almost seems like it’s out of the hands of Republicans and in the hands of the monster they created: manufactured group outrage as a tactic. You see it so often it no longer needs to be prompted. On the fringe, it’s become the default reaction to everything and to everyone else it’s become another reason to roll their eyes and shake their heads.”
They only have the stage for now, if moderates have a steady, consistent, honest message & don’t play their games the party will begin a slow momentum that will last. As I think this forum generally represents.
Have the faith! They may have the loud and even pretty face for now, but the extreme voices will need to keep becoming more extreme eventually becoming ridiculous and the pretty faces will age, and the empty head will be revealed to the masses.
6 sinz54 // Nov 9, 2009 at 9:16 am
reason60:
Here’s how it worked out:
In 1984, that doctrinaire liberal base, infected with pacifism and welfare statism, nominated a doctrinaire liberal, Walter Mondale. He lost in a landslide against Reagan.
In 1988, that same liberal base came up with another doctrinaire liberal, Michael Dukakis. he lost big against George Herbert Walker Bush.
These big failures gave the moderates in the newly formed Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) political ammunition to assert that the Dem Party should choose a different, more moderate, course.
Basically, the liberal base had to nominate their favorite sons and LOSE big, for the base to be discredited like that.
I believe the same wake-up calls are needed by the GOP. So the GOP base loves Huckabee and Palin (according to a recent Gallup poll)? OK, fine. Let them nominate Huckabee or Palin in 2012. Unless Obama has totally screwed up (in which case it doesn’t matter whom the GOP nominates, they will win), Huckabee or Palin will go down to defeat. Then the center-rightists can assert that the GOP should choose someone else next time who is not so beloved of the hard-right base.
I don’t see how the GOP base can lose its influence, until it has lost big-time at the polls.
7 Churl // Nov 9, 2009 at 11:20 am
We are expected to take this poll dancing seriously?
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