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GOP's 'anger' strategy has Dems defensive
modbee ^ | 2-8-06

Posted on 02/08/2006 12:15:49 PM PST by LouAvul

NEW YORK - The Republican national chairman created a furor this week when he suggested Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is too "angry" to win the White House in 2008. And to hear Republicans tell it, Clinton is just one of many Democrats with an anger management problem.

snip

In recent months, GOP operatives and officeholders have cast the Democrats as the anger party, long on emotion and short on ideas. Analysts say the strategy has been effective, trivializing Democrats' differences with the GOP as temperamental rather than substantive.

"Angry people are not nice people. They are people to stay away from. They explode now and then," said George Lakoff, a linguistics professor at the University of California at Berkeley. His book "Don't Think of an Elephant" has become something of a Bible for Democrats trying to improve their communication with voters.

Political history is dotted with failed presidential candidates perceived by the voters as too angry - think of Howard Dean's famous scream in 2004, or Bob Dole admonishing George H.W. Bush in 1988 to "stop lying about my record." Both parties' most revered figures in recent years, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, projected optimism and hope.

The latest example of the anger strategy came Sunday, when Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman said on ABC that Clinton "seems to have a lot of anger." He cited comments she made in Harlem on Martin Luther King Day in which she likened the Republican-led House to a "plantation" and called the Bush administration "one of the worst" in history.

snip

Some Democrats, in fact, complained that Clinton doesn't get angry enough. Some also denounced Mehlman as mean-spirited, and smelled more than a whiff of sexism in his remarks.

"It's the stereotype of the crone - angry, nasty, but powerful," Lakoff said.

(Excerpt) Read more at modbee.com ...


TOPICS: Front Page News; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: angrydems; hillary2008; mehlman; rnc
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To: Cicero
And it still doesn't trivialize anything. We know what we stand for, and we know what they stand for. If we keep pointing it out, they'll just get angrier, and we can point that out, too.

What fun!!!
41 posted on 02/08/2006 1:06:57 PM PST by chesley (Liberals...what's not to loathe?)
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To: siunevada

If they just said what they mean and mean what they said, they would communicate with the voters, alright.

Come to think of it, based on the last three elections, the voters seem to have had no trouble understanding them.


42 posted on 02/08/2006 1:12:46 PM PST by chesley (Liberals...what's not to loathe?)
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To: gakrak
I can't figure out why she doesn't have ulcers the size of grapefruits. It's 'cause she doesn't keep it all locked up inside her.
43 posted on 02/08/2006 1:14:20 PM PST by chesley (Liberals...what's not to loathe?)
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To: LouAvul
In recent months, GOP operatives and officeholders have cast the Democrats as the anger party, long on emotion and short on ideas

Now I wonder where they got that idea?



44 posted on 02/08/2006 1:17:16 PM PST by Alex Murphy (Colossians 4:5)
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To: adorno

Maybe after she loses in 2008, she can finally divorce Billy and live for a few years before she answers to God for the harm she has wrought on this country.


45 posted on 02/08/2006 1:17:23 PM PST by chesley (Liberals...what's not to loathe?)
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To: LouAvul

At least they don't show up at public funerals and spout off...Wait a minute...


46 posted on 02/08/2006 1:30:44 PM PST by <1/1,000,000th%
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To: LouAvul

The beast is easily the most shrill "fish wife" in the Senate.


47 posted on 02/08/2006 1:31:20 PM PST by ncountylee (Dead terrorists smell like victory)
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To: LouAvul
Image Hosted by ImageShack.us
48 posted on 02/08/2006 2:07:48 PM PST by charrisGOP ("Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things." --Henry Ward Beecher)
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To: chesley
the voters seem to have had no trouble understanding them.

All the ranting, raving, moaning and whining certainly communicated something to me. I think we're due for more of the same this year.

49 posted on 02/08/2006 2:08:05 PM PST by siunevada (If we learn nothing from history, what's the point of having one? - Peggy Hill)
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To: charrisGOP

And that could be our next prez? Have mercy!


50 posted on 02/08/2006 2:25:01 PM PST by LouAvul
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To: penelopesire
Remember when the Democrats portrayed Republicans as "a bunch of angry white men"?
51 posted on 02/08/2006 2:27:55 PM PST by FreedomCalls (It's the "Statue of Liberty," not the "Statue of Security.")
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To: FreedomCalls

lol....39,000 hits for 'angry white men'....all from leftist websites. That 'evil' Rove. He shouldn't mess with the dems pathological projection disorder this way. It's cruel.....lol


52 posted on 02/08/2006 2:42:44 PM PST by penelopesire
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To: dead

Thanks dead. I needed a laugh. Did you post this on DU yet?


53 posted on 02/08/2006 2:49:44 PM PST by tarzantheapeman (JF'nK and Teddy -- Over the edge and still sinking into oblivion)
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To: charrisGOP

Man that's a nasty mug shot.


54 posted on 02/08/2006 3:01:48 PM PST by ALWAYSWELDING
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To: LouAvul

My wife is reading REWRITING HISTORY by Dick Morris. It validates every thing Rush Limbaugh has been saying about sHillary since White Water days...


55 posted on 02/08/2006 3:12:38 PM PST by tubebender (Everything I know about computers I learned on FRee Republic...)
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To: LouAvul
"It's the stereotype of the crone - angry, nasty, but powerful," Lakoff said.

As the discredited ivory tower huckster grasps desperately to hold on to a saving cliche, he totally misses the plain daylight reality overwhelming his pathetic pseudo-tropes from every side.

It's not a sterotype anything. It's a real nasty living breathing be-atch named hillary clinton! Stupid perfessors.

56 posted on 02/08/2006 3:18:25 PM PST by hinckley buzzard
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To: CFC__VRWC

Tirade it is. Is it just me? When she goes into that mode I get flashbacks of herr hitler, frothing and foaming at the mouth, shrilling his venom. She's hasn't matured out of the 1960s type postadolescent hippie antiwar rabble rouser style.


57 posted on 02/08/2006 3:44:03 PM PST by ArmyTeach (Pray daily for our troops.)
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To: siunevada
All the ranting, raving, moaning and whining certainly communicated something to me. I think we're due for more of the same this year.

Flashbacks of the debate where Rick Lazio crossed the stage to hand her something, and the media went berserk saying that he "attacked" her and was trying to intimidate her. We're just supposed to sit there and smile while she waves her arms and screeches and makes baseless attacks and wild accusations, and then just meekly nod and agree that she's the smartest woman in the world.

58 posted on 02/08/2006 3:52:23 PM PST by CFC__VRWC ("Anytime a liberal squeals in outrage, an angel gets its wings!" - gidget7)
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To: LouAvul
I really wish the Democrats would explode in anger. They're not the Nice Party.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

59 posted on 02/08/2006 3:54:16 PM PST by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives On In My Heart Forever)
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To: LouAvul

This strategy works because it is true. The most angry group in the United States today is the Democrat base. The American public sees it and the far left base does not seem to be self-aware enough to realize that they have become their own worst enemy. Day after day they deliver new gifts to the Republican party with their antics. They are like the gift-of-the-week club.


60 posted on 02/08/2006 3:58:15 PM PST by Chesterbelloc
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