There’s been some coverage today, much to the dislike of the Romney campaign, of a fundraiser being held at Dick Cheney’s home. Why would team Romney be so anxious to downplay it?
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It may surprise people to know that just a few years ago, I was a Republican, sort of, or maybe more a libertarian although that distinction would have eluded me at the time. I was a classic low info citizen. Politics bored me silly, I voted in Presidential elections, but only one or two trips to the voting booth comes to mind for a local context or a mid-term. Knowledge didn’t just kill that practice, it assassinated it.
So maybe it’s bias, but it is my belief that the GOP does not fare well in a high information environment. Most conservatives I know today fall into one of three groups consistent with that idea: 1) The Committed, they long ago adopted the mantle of conservatism as part of their identity, sometimes they break free but it’s hard for them to do it; 2) The Invested, they write books or run websites or work for organizations that directly benefit when conservatives prevail; and 3) The Managed Ignorant, who make up the foot soldiers by being carefully kept in the dark when required but fed a diet of non-stop out of context tidbits and flat-out false-hoods, some of which portray the opposition or its actions in the most unflattering light imaginable.
That’s not to say the GOP couldn’t be sliced and diced in other ways, but that one works too. That three-pronged coalition has been effective at winning elections even though the individual planks on the party’s platform do lousy when polled fairly and directly. They can win often enough, but collectively, they just can’t govern for shit or don’t care enough to try once they’re in office. They rarely deliver on the base’s treasured socially conservative issues, let alone anyone else, but they always deliver for the monied interests that cover the very large bill for the interlocking components of the party apparatus required to perpetuate the scheme. And that’s what scares me about Romney, is a true believer tm in the whole trickle-down dereg militant nonsense that wounded us so deeply over the last decade.
Romney isn’t just attending a fundraiser at Darth’s home, he’s hired on numbers of former Bush-Cheney advisors, the same guys who failed magnificently over seas and here at home. It gets worse, Romney is openly campaigning to reenact the same policies that caused those catastrophes. And they happen to be the exact policies that will generously benefit people like Mitt Romney and friends in the tippy-top zero-point-zero one percent at the expense of people who work for a living.
Although up ’till now, the social conservatives were just given lip service, after 2010, we had several initiatives really take off. First, the House focuses like a laser on jobs, jobs, jobs. And by that I mean rolling back abortion rights, defunding Planned Parenthood, and trying again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again to repeal the ACA. In many state legislatures, abortion rights and voting rights for people likely to vote for Democrats were the main targets. Many of those laws actually passed.
So, I think we’ve seen something different after 2010.
“The Managed Ignorant”, aka the Mushroom People: kept in the dark and given a steady diet of rotted manure.
Heard an interview in the late days of the ’08 campaign on NPR with David Frum (longtime conservative and GOP op, now reviled by them as an apostate for telling the truth about them) saying flat-out that conservatives and the GOP rely on low-information voters in general, and were hoping they would put McCain/Palin over the top.
Aww.. I thought you were talking about Darth Vader here.
Lord Vader a.k.a. Anakin Skywalker was a much nicer person tha Dick “ka-boom!” Cheney even in his all black* days!
PSA. Surprise me that you were once a Republican? Yep, it sure does! But then I guess it shouldn’t people’s views can change and pretty quickly sometiems too.
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* Not referring to him ever being part of the Kiwi rugby team although come to think of it that could have been interesting!