Fear Strikes Out

My favorite Nobel Prize winning economist, Paul Krugman of the New York Times, on Republican fear mongering as a political tactic:

And on the other side, here’s what Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the House — a man celebrated by many in his party as an intellectual leader — had to say: If Democrats pass health reform, “They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” by passing civil rights legislation.

I’d argue that Mr. Gingrich is wrong about that: proposals to guarantee health insurance are often controversial before they go into effect — Ronald Reagan famously argued that Medicare would mean the end of American freedom — but always popular once enacted.

But that’s not the point I want to make today. Instead, I want you to consider the contrast: on one side, the closing argument was an appeal to our better angels, urging politicians to do what is right, even if it hurts their careers; on the other side, callous cynicism. Think about what it means to condemn health reform by comparing it to the Civil Rights Act. Who in modern America would say that L.B.J. did the wrong thing by pushing for racial equality? (Actually, we know who: the people at the Tea Party protest who hurled racial epithets at Democratic members of Congress on the eve of the vote.)

And that cynicism has been the hallmark of the whole campaign against reform.

More here.

Krugman is talking about the conservative drive against health care reform, but his remarks could just as easily be used to describe Republican political strategy for the last forty two years, the entire span of my life.

Indeed, Richard Nixon ran for President in 1968 on a "law and order" platform, fanning the flames of white fear of the civil rights movement and anti-war activism. In 1980, Reagan elevated the decaying and militarily inferior Soviet Union to the status of "evil empire." He also prodded racist white indignation toward affirmative action and other civil rights programs by inventing the largely fictional, and totally black, "welfare queen." And let's not forget the "War on Drugs," and all the (black) crack babies who were going to grow up and slit our throats, which never did happen. George W. Bush went nuts on Islamic terrorism, ushering in an era of blatant anti-Muslim bigotry, even though the vast majority of Americans are more likely to die from a lightning strike than from terrorist violence.

This has been the basic right-wing political strategy for four decades: invent or greatly exaggerate a threat to the nation of some sort, usually with a racist tinge, call out Democrats for being weak in the face of that threat, and appoint themselves as the only serious national protectors on the block. It doesn't always work, but, like the Texas Longhorns using the triple option back in the 1960s, it has an extraordinarily high success rate--really, all the Republicans have to do is spook just enough of the electorate such that their enormous campaign cash advantage, which they've enjoyed over the years as the ostensible party of business, is able to do the rest.

But President Obama, and his allies in Congress, have just shown the effective counter to Republican fear mongering as a political strategy: don't cave in. Stick with your message. Fight back. It's really that simple.

The triple option continues to be an effective play in college football forty years after Texas used it to win a couple of national championships. But most schools don't use it anymore because smart coaches figured out how to counter the play: recognize the play as it develops and neutralize the options. Simple. But you've got to have smart players working together as a team to pull it off.

Historically, the Democrats haven't been too good with teamwork. But they've got a smart coach right now. Maybe this is their year...

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