George Lakoff version.
We are going to kill the economy and raise your taxes to boot. The worse the economy gets the more we will raise taxes.
Posted on 07/19/2005 10:07:38 PM PDT by JBGUSA
The Framing Wars
By MATT BAI Published: July 17, 2005 After last November's defeat, Democrats were like aviation investigators sifting through twisted metal in a cornfield, struggling to posit theories about the disaster all around them.
*snip*
*snip*
Democrats thought they knew the answer. Even before the election, a new political word had begun to take hold of the party, beginning on the West Coast and spreading like a virus all the way to the inner offices of the Capitol. That word was ''framing.''
Republicans, of course, were the ones who had always excelled at framing controversial issues, having invented and popularized loaded phrases like ''tax relief'' and ''partial-birth abortion''... But now Democrats said that they had learned to fight back. ''
*snip*
The father of framing is a man named George Lakoff, and his spectacular ascent over the last eight months in many ways tells the story of where Democrats have been since the election.
*snip*
When he, like many liberals, became exasperated over the drift of the Kerry campaign last summer -- ''I went to bed angry every night,'' he told me -- Lakoff decided to bang out a short book about politics and language, based on theories he had already published with academic presses, that could serve as a kind of handbook for Democratic activists.
That book, ''Don't Think of an Elephant!'' is now in its eighth printing, having sold nearly 200,000 copies, first through liberal word of mouth and the blogosphere and then through reviews and the lecture circuit.
*snip*
But they never managed to tie them all into a single, unifying image that voters could associate with the president. As a result, none of them stuck. Bush was attacked. Kerry was framed.
*snip*
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
---The ideology of Republican revolution was cooked up decades ago in right-wing think tanks. By copying that model, John Podesta aims to find an idea big enough to save the Democratic Party---
Gay marriage, more gun control, higher taxes, benefits for illegal aliens, an anti-American foreign policy, the erasure of Christianity from public life, legislation from the bench, forest and wildlife management from the bench, and more petty regulations than you can possibly imagine. The Dims have plenty of "ideas".
WATCH OUT REPUBLICANS!
NOAM CHOMSKY'S EQUALLY TENDENTIOUS, BUT SLIGHTLY LESS DELUSIONAL, CLONE IS CALLING YOU OUT!
(Prolonged eye roll.)
Don't think so.
It sounds similar to that infamous French creation, Deconstructionism, which informed us that there's no such thing as right or wrong, only power relationships. Similarly, "framing" tells us that there's no such thing as "truth" or "lies"--the only thing that matters is how an argument is framed.
But the Left has been attempting this--disastrously--for a long time, with MSM help. Certainly the whole National Guard story was framed perfectly: Rich wastrel unfairly gets into cushy unit while poor boys die in Vietnam. Similarly, the Rove story frames nicely too: In his zeal to attack the brave critics of the evil Iraq War, Rove exposed a dedicated CIA agent and broke the law. There you go.
Both are simple, easy-to-understand narratives that frame good against evil perfectly. The only problem is...they weren't true. Frame or no frame, the MSM had to give up on the National Guard story when their relentless belief in an obvious forgery made them look increasingly absurd. The Rove story will follow the same pattern.
You can be the best polisher in the world but, as Mom used to say, you can't shine s**t.
Great observation! Rush long ago pointed out that it was Democrats who were always the masters at framing a debate and consequently winning it as Republicans fell for their bait: hook, line, and sinker. As you say, we're finally learning to do it as well.
I am concerned that better delivery might hurt us, particularly since Bush can't run again. Look what happened in 1992 with Clinton v. GWHB.
Sounds like Pierre Elliot Trudeau's Canada is their laboratory. Heaven forefend!!!
Bravo! Excellent scripture.
I don't know. This filthy book somehow got assigned in a Media and Identity class(yeah, I know, this garbage is required here under the rubric of 'integrated studies,' which is a nice little framing of the underlying method of 'indoctrination' via weaving together disparate concepts as humanities and some social science leftists are prone to do.)
There were no offerings AT ALL from the right, not even in teh anthologies. I dropped the class, I refused to be indoctrinated(and I'm too busy and involved elsewhere to be the paladin.)
There's a section of the book that discusses people who used his techniques in real life. One woman refers to AOL chats where she told pro-lifers, "If you don't believe in abortion it's your choice not to have one, but you don't HAVE to have one." She claims she won some debates with people, but I can't imagine her opponents were over the age of about..8.
I read some of the rest of the book. It's utter bunk and relies on twisting the language to an extent that the issue is no longer 'framing'(interesting that Chomsky was a mentor of his--what a surprise--it is in fact Chomsky that has corrupted language to further his ends, not his ideological opponents) but manipulation and fabrication.
Words DO mean things. By obscuring the true meaning under layers of emotionally-charged words or constructed phrases, you are merely a masterful deceiver.
Going from tax cut to tax relief is hardly what made tax cuts a winner with the American people.
Let them have their academic debate. "Framing" seems to have no substance at all. The PR term is "positioning." Democrats blow it because they aren't believable and they aren't aligned with core values. As long as they are "positioned" with losing concepts...well we can gloat!
You can put a gold frame on a painting of a pig in mud and you still have a pig in mud.
A painful lesson that Hillary Clinton-quite obviously-has yet to fully grasp.
Well put FRiend!
And in all honesty, what are their values?
For Burkean conservatives and libertarians there are distinct moral and legal principles and hundreds of years of inquiry and development that led to our laws and our approach to liberty.
Not only does the left hold values that are antithetical to what MADE America, but there really is no guiding vision except more socialism.
Have you ever had delineate inviolable boundaries between public and private sector? Have they ever said "this much taxation is too high?" Is any regulation really the LAST WORD of regulatory intevention in that industry or in the economy? Except when it comes to discrimination, they've decided that certain forms are acceptable and group identity is something they've embraced. As you know, when a group identity and package of rights becomes more highly valued than individual rights, there really is no STOP POINT for the steady erosion of individual rights and sovereignty(despite the pro-choice lobby claims to standing for liberty. Those ads ring hollow when you know most of them do not favor choice in anything except killing unborn.)
Other than being consistently deconstructionist and appeasing the very worst elements in society and in the world, what ideological territory(as a party and in PR) have they staked out and made theirs?
Sorry, however Zell Miller's stance compelled me to edit. ; )
I can.
It's a mental disorder with a symptom that shows itself in this form in early diagnosis: "I don't care how inconsiderate I have been, I just want to be able to think about myself and continue to do so at any cost!"
It's a hell of a lowball hand to draw one card to.
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