A Progressive Recruitment Drive for Republicans Posted by Lorelei Kelly

Depressing news. The world is turning against us. Polling used to show how those queried in other countries separated American citizens from their government. Seems that is changing.  Which makes Karen Hughes' speech last week at the Council on Foreign Relations both ironic and probably too late.  Her main theme: Our actions must match our rhetoric.  After 5 plus years in leadership the Bush administration acknowledges that reciprocity (doing unto others....) and legitimacy (leading by example) are strategic assets. 

That the administration's chief campaign messenger is making this point is significant. It is an indirect acknowledgement that her gang has let politics trump good public policy far too often and the results are hurting them. Perhaps Hughes has become reflective in order to attract back the Republicans who are turned off by the Bush administration's leadership.

It's time for progressives to go on a recruitment drive to attract Republicans.  I just spent three days at bipartisan workshops, one on internal security and the erosion of democracy, the other on re-balancing our national security policy so as to not over-militarize it. These meetings included conservatives (not just libertarians) and liberals, Democrats and Republicans.  "Something's rotten" seemed to be a consistent theme--and in both cases the many problems discussed led back to philosophical beliefs about the role of government.  Good government Republicans are starting to get annoyed and we need to attract them to our side.

Sure, its gratifying to say "I told you so" or that they should have seen this all along and done something about it. That might be true, but its not going to help us out of our dual predicament of being unloved and increasingly corrupt. We've entered a national political terrain that should be a progressive haven--discussing the role of government as a problem-solving agent, a collective risk-taker and a guardian of public goods. 

The starting point of this conversation, however, must avoid the traps laid by conservative rhetoric architects over the past decades.  Long ago, conservatives began to blur the lines between "progressive" "liberal" and "Democrats".  This allowed them to purge liberal Republicans and lump the rest of us in the deviant---now the "America hating"--basket.

Note how few liberal Republicans exist in Congress in contrast to a sizeable chunk of conservative Democrats.   This realignment has given conservatives a ground field advantage because it is easier for them to cast progressives as partisans (this imbalance has huge implications for policy advocacy and for philanthropic funding).   The key today is to avoid this rhetorical trap. We must not equate progressives with the Democratic party. They are not synonymous, no matter how tempting. Progressives need to create the philosophical habitat where the Democrats can once again find a home. The Dems are a party still largely driven by polled issues as opposed to convictions.  This is improving, but it will take time.    

We need to build a progressive philosophy separate from the Democratic party so we can call lousy leadership on their actions right out the gate. We know that American leadership depends on reciprocity and legitimacy, for example--that these qualities made us great.  Why has it taken 5 years for Hughes to mention it in a speech? And Rove is preparing to smash and grab the national trust again for '06.  His campaign murmur this time round will probably be be attacking Iran.  Their policy is becoming the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Yet it works politically. 

Progressives must use these attacks as a pivot in every single "soft on security" accusation to discuss real national security policies--like determining the mission of the US Army and asking why have we privatized so much of our national security? And by the way, where is the money going?  Everything purporting to serve national security ends needs to be on the table and up for discussion. Good government Republicans know this--which makes them ripe for the grabbing.

Comments

[Ivan Carter]

A couple clues on how to do this.

Many people are democrats, and think they are republicans. While the republican party used to stand for some good principles -- fiscal accountability, responsibility, limited government, freedom, etc, this is not the case any more. The party has become dominated by its right wing, and has become the party of rhetoric.

People dont like rhetoric. The irony is, it works, brilliantly, when not recognized. It is also hard to recognize, which is part of what makes it so effective.

Kerry, for example, made some critical points right after we went into Iraq and toppled the Hussein Regime (as did I, but he was a Senator running for President). Points that in hindsight would have saved lives, and would have increased our chances for success in Iraq. These are critical points, given the stakes we've created, the soldiers valiant sacrifices therein, and the 300 billion plus cost that perhaps could have been better used elsewhere in the war on terrorism.

Yet during the campaign of 2004, what was this turned into? Constantly, Kerry was "undermining our troops," dividing America" "undermining America" great sounding rhetoric, that took the issues, and turned them upside down on their head.

The entire election was like this. The media did a poor job of assessing the facts, but so did the democrats, in recognizing the importance of this, using it to show how the other side in fact was not the party of trust, candor and forthrightness (its entire platform) and undermining its mischaracterizations therein.

If one side constantly misrepresents, mischaracterizes, or, as others put it "lies," and constantly contradicts itself -- but repeatedly convinces the public that the other side lies [Gore in 2000]or repeatedly contradicts itself
Kerry in 2004, while it itself is the party of consistency, trust and candor, what does that tell you?

If the other side can create this false perception of both parties, with so little to work with, and the other side -- namely democrats, can not create the CORRECT perception with so much evidence, to work with, WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU??

It tells you that maybe democrats are not as good on politics as they think they are,and that the erroneous view that they think they are is a bigger limitation than the shortcomings to begin with, maybe??

It tells you that maybe there is a systematic habit of fundamental errors that get repeated over and over, that go to the core of recognizing what needs to be communicated to the majority of America, how to do it, again, TO THE MAJORITY OF AMERICA -- NOT the self interested, self selecting their blogs of choice on the Internet -- and the critical role of the media therein. It tells you that maybe it is time for democrats to stop blaming everybody else, and to listen??

To some of the key fundamental points that need to be made, even to a kicking and screaming democratic audience....
HERE

Yet, as suggested, democrats often disagree, sometimes vehemently, with even these basic precepts (which is a bigger part of the problem than the fact that democrats dont know how to effectively do this in the first place. Not recognizing that democrats are not that great when it comes to politics hurts them even more, for example, than not being that great on politics in the first place, and then when they are, being self righteous about what is "wrong," when if they were so good at identifying what was wrong, they wouldn't have been so mischaracterized for the past five years, and beaten by the far right wing whose policies and rhetoric have mainly been backward....in the first place.

Why? the reason is found in the last sentence of those quick suggestions "democrats often think that everybody knows what they know." They also often, and this is a classic one, mistake the supposed importance of "communicating with their base,' with the far more important; "communicating with A MAJORITY OF AMERICA." The two things can be very different. The key, however, is that done properly, the latter does not exclude the former, but the former almost always excludes the latter. (I.e., you make the effective case to a majority of America,your base will get it too).

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