Demonized Thought Crime
Lionized Heroic Word or Deed
Demonized and Lionized, Feb. 25-March 3, 2013
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Glossary, Feb. 26-March 2, 2013
an anatomy of key memes, phrases and obsessions in Wall Street Journal editorials and other precincts of the GOP blogosphere, Feb. 26-March 3, 2013
| balanced cuts | spending cuts replacing any tax hike |
| campaign mode | whenever Obama leaves Washington to make a speech; what Peggy Noonan calls his “soft-voiced pugilism” |
| flexibility, moving money between accounts | allowing the GOP to brandish their own line-item veto on the entire federal budget |
| government workers | Krauthammer: “nepotistic incompetents” |
| mainstream media | “house-broken” by Obama |
| Medicare premium support | means-testing. |
| muscle and fat ; (aka, “non-essential fluff”) | any federal programs for: job-training, nutrition assistance, teacher quality, financial literacy, homelessness alleviation or teen pregnancy |
| private world (aka, “imperious overreach”) | continuing meme of Obama’s weirdness, aloofness, haughtiness, superiority complex |
| squander | what happens when Democrats spend money on anything; 85% of gvt. spending is “sinfully wasteful and corrupt” |
| Voting Rights Act, Section V | a politicized weapon. Scalia: “a perpetuation of racial entitlement”. Any reference to race is now called “racialism”. |
Parallel Republican Universes: Hyperbolic and Counter-Intuitive Claims, Myths & Canards 2/15/13—2/26/13
| The minimum wage has nothing to do with poverty and employment. | WSJ editorial, 2/15/13 |
| Higher wages actually punish minority youth by making jobs scarcer | WSJ editorial, 2/15/13 |
| Obama is to blame for any economic downturn because if he doesn’t get everything he wants, he’s willing to inflict maximum pain on everyone else | WSJ editorial, 2/19/13 |
| The sequester is pro-growth because any spending relief means more money for the private sector. | Larry Kudlow, National Review Online, 2/20/13 |
| Anti-poverty programs cause poverty– the so-called ”culture of dependency”. | WSJ editorial, 2/20/13 |
| Any civil rights or voting rights initiative is based on a sense of “African-American victimology”. | Charlotte Allen, The Weekly Standard Online, 2/25/13 |
| Obama’s ultimate aims are “free education, free public health, myriad free government services, the evisceration of the private sector…Obama doesn’t want to create wealth, he wants to redistribute it to the urban poor, The Government Party’s client base”. | Devin Nunes, National Review Online, 2/15/13 |
| Obama is using the same tactics that Lenin used to destroy the private sector | WSJ editorial, 2/15/`13 |
| ObamaCare is making couples get divorced to keep their insurance | WSJ editorial, 2/23/13 |
| “our trajectory toward national insolvency and a nanny state” continues | William Kristol, on the Weekly Standard Online, 2/23/13 |
| “For Democrats, tax reform is about filling ‘loopholes’ to make government larger. For Republicans, tax reform is about eliminating biases to make the private economy larger.” | John Hood, National Review Online, 2/17/13 |
Demonized and Lionized, Feb. 16-25, 2013
Demonized Thought Crime
| Eric Holder | Politicizing justice via enforcement of voting rights, civil rights, gay rights, and financial reform laws |
| Jan Schakowski (D-IL) | calling welfare cuts “literally taking food out of the mouths of hungry babies” |
| Chuck Todd | Criticizing the “who started it” discourse around the sequestration |
| Saul Alinsky | Community organizing |
| Jane Mayer | “McCarthyist attack on Ted Cruz” |
| Rand Paul | Defending cuts in defense spending |
| Ray LaHood | talking about sequestration’s effects on air travel |
| Rick Scott, Bob McDonnell, John Kasich, Susan Martinez | “flipping” on accepting federal Medicaid subsidies |
Lionized Defense of the Indefensible
| Calvin Coolidge | Cutting taxes; spending cuts; stimulating the economy |
| Andrew Mellon | See Coolidge, above |
| Jeff Sessions | Welfare cuts as the best thing for the disadvantaged |
| Marco Rubio | Calling sequestration defense cuts “devastating” and accusing Obama of weakening national defense |
| Grover Norquist | Championing elimination of state income taxes |
| Ted Cruz | claiming that Obama’s faculty friends at Harvard during his student days were communists dedicated to overthrowing the US government |
Glossary, Feb 15-Feb 25, 2013
an anatomy of key memes, phrases and obsessions in Wall Street Journal editorials and other precincts of the GOP blogosphere, Feb. 15-25, 2013
an anatomy of key memes, phrases and obsessions in Wall Street Journal editorials and other precincts of the GOP blogosphere, Feb. 15-25, 2013
| bloated | any federal social assistance/safety net program. See also, “the culture of dependency”. |
| bosses and henchmen | anyone in the Labor movement. |
| creating winners and losers | The inevitable result of any federal regulation or subsidies, always artificially “created” rather than evolving “naturally”. Bad when it comes to government policy interfering with the free market. Unequal outcomes are OK, however, when no “redistributionist” agenda binds the “invisible hand” of the free market. The opposite of “the efficiency agenda” |
| culture of dependency | any federal social assistance/safety net program. Part of an even wider “systemic dysfunction”. People are always “trapped” in this culture of dependency. aka, the public sphere. |
| energy policy | “forced economic contraction” |
| flippers | Republican governors who have accepted ObamaCare Medicaid subsidies, “flipping” from their previous staunch anti-ObamaCare stance. |
| Greece | shorthand for the inevitable outcome of “the Obama Project”. Aka, “the nanny state” |
| Medicaid | “a fraud-ridden, debt-fueled entitlement of questionable effectiveness”. No hint that it in any way serves as a social safety net. |
| the Obama project | (see also, “Greece”) The Journal’s Daniel Henninger’s label for all Obama administration policies and initiatives. Part of the meme of Obama’s “grandiose” and “delusional” expectations |
| red-tape strangulation | any government regulation. Aka, “the brute force of government” |
| sequester | “a pro-growth” measure for the private sector as both spending and taxes decline and more money is available to the free market. The only way to “open the doors to a stronger economy”. |
Demonized and Lionized
Demonized: Jack Lew; Valerie Jarrett; Chuck Hagel; John Kerry; Chuck Schumer; Republican governors who “caved” and decided to accept Medicaid expansion: Jan Brewer, John Kasich, Susana Martinez, Brian Sandoval, Jack Dalrymple; John Wellinghoff (FERC Director).
Lionized: Donald Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger, John Kasich (for a huge proposed tax cut in Ohio), Benjamin Carson, Marco Rubio
Glossary, February 1-14, 2013
an anatomy of key memes, phrases and obsessions in Wall Street Journal editorials and other precincts of the GOP blogosphere, Feb. 1-14, 2013
efficiency-oriented reform: no tax hikes or federal regulation.
energy regulation: aka, forced economic contraction
fawning: any media outlet that does not openly attack the Obama administration or Congressional Democrats
fiscal gimmicks: any attempt by the Obama administration to influence fiscal policy, whether around spending, tax cuts, minimum wage, or job creation. health care, climate change, job creation, or education. See also “political pressure”.
growing world turmoil: the ever-mounting state of threat to America from everywhere, always caused by “emboldened enemies” and Obama’s “leading from behind”.
modernizing entitlements: either cutting or means-testing Medicare. Aka, “entitlement reform”, “Medicare efficiencies”.
online education: the stalking horse for turning colleges and universities into voc-tech institutions, all under the shibboleth of “increased access to higher ed”.
political pressure: any attempt by the Obama administration to influence domestic policy, whether around health care, climate change, women’s rights, or education. See also “fiscal gimmicks”. Aka, “steamrolling the opposition”.
so-called rich: the much-bullied group of multimillionaires whose estates are subject to inheritance taxes or whose annual income of $400,000 is now subject to a tax rise.
spending scheme: (aka, “subsidy honeypot”). Any initiative or bill put forth by the Democrats. Must always be called a “scheme”—never just a proposal or plan.
trial lawyer: anyone attorney leading a civil or criminal suit against a corporation. Can never be referred to simply as lawyers.
unleashed: any federal regulators, especially in Obama’s second term
Inside the GOP Parallel Universe II: False Memes and Canards
As the GOP struggles to re-litigate the 2012 Presidential election and undercut any significant Democratic policy advances, they increasingly are retreating into parallel universes that have no foothold, really, in evidence-based reality.
change the “messaging”, not the policy As Red State so revealingly puts it,
We, as the low-tax & personal responsibility party cannot waltz into a low income housing area, look around, shake our heads and say “Hey, when are you guys going to stop being idiots and voting for people that think you’re stupid — also, you don’t pay enough taxes.”
Whether or not we view that as what happened, the people we’re talking to certainly did.
In the same vein, we cannot waltz into a border town and say “Hey, you know your high school football star? Yeah, his parents came here illegally 17 years ago when he was one. Sucks to be him but dammit, THEY TOOK OUR JOBS!! Deportin’ time!” There just might be a better way to engage that conversation.
Now before my twitter timeline fills up with people screaming “AMNESTY!!” take a breath and grab a glass of regulated water. No one, certainly not me, is asking for anyone to change their principles, beliefs, or policy positions. But maybe we should consider offering our principles, beliefs, and policy positions, in a way that doesn’t make people want to set us on fire.
As the headline says, “It’s the messaging, stupid. It’s the stupid messaging.”
Arcane and perverse ObamaCare incentives are solely intended to “gather ever more health care spending under federal control”.
A new decade of war is beginning—America not only can’t lead from behind, but can’t even follow from behind (pace, Benghazi, Iran, Syria, North Korea). All as Obama “guts” defense.
Limits to growth mean limits to hope. Don’t tax work and investment. Mona Charen envisages a coming Doomsday: “A shrinking private sector drowning in regulations, a voracious public sector always in search of new ways to waste money…and the inexorable ticking, louder every day, of the debt bomb.
The anti anti-terror Left. The Left is not only against wars and foreign entanglements, but acyually opposed to any defense against terrorism.
Increased minimum wages will make the country uncompetitive, just as new taxes will “corrode work and investment incentives”. Wage increases are also a boon to the Chinese manufacturing sector still dependent on cheap labor”. Such “artificial wage increases” cost jobs and cut the bottom rung off the economic ladder. In other words, the Republicans oppose paying America’s poorest workers more per hour because doing so will hurt their economic prospects, but it’s OK to give the rich more money through tax cuts.
Obama has a “campaign” to “prevent entitlement reform”.
The federal government forced investors to rely on Moody’s & S&P and Fitch, and the government should sue the SEC for rigged credit ratings, not S&P.
Enforced equality rather than personal liberty is the new national creed
Energy regulation is forced economic contraction, especially new emissions controls, which “make overseas industries relatively competitive”, and “threaten US-made cars and US-produced oil”.
Online education is the future of higher education, behind the disingenuous calls for “increased access to higher education,” online education is tied to workforce readiness and a new business model for colleges and universities .
The sequester is the GOP’s main negotiating leverage. “The sequester will help the economy by leaving more capital for private investment”. Huh?
States will lose budget autonomy to the “carrots and sticks of ever-larger government”
Barack Obama now only wants to tell us what Uncle Sam will do for us so that we need do nothing for ourselves. If he is successful we will each be too dependent on the federal government to set our own course in life.
Parallel Republican Universes
Bill Maher talks a lot about the Republican Bubble, which was aptly explained by Marshall Fine in the Huffington Post last September
“We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers,” as one Romney pollster put it, while even Fox News called bullshit on much of vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s speech at the Republican National Convention. Because, hey, what does it matter if they’re lying? Half the country already assumes they are; the other half wants to swallow the lie whole, like a large pill washed down with cod-liver oil.
More like castor oil. With the same results.
It’s not like this is anything new. Go back to 2004, when an unnamed George W. Bush aide (later identified as Karl Rove) scoffed at a newspaper reporter as being part of the “reality-based community.” Rove went on to say, “When we act, we create our own reality.”
Or as Humpty Dumpty told Alice in Through the Looking Glass, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” To which Alice replied, “The question is, whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
To which, like Humpty, the Republicans reply, “The question is, which is to be master — that’s all.”
To note some recent Parallel Universes posited by the Wall Street Journal editorial team:
- civil liberties are to blame for recent mass shootings because the rights of the mentally disturbed are protected (12/25/12)
- a $5 million dollar exemption on estate taxes is a “mere pittance” to people who have worked all their lives and should be allowed to keep their money (1-1-13)
- the AIG lawsuit against the government bailout of AIG is entirely warranted (1-9-13)
- defense cuts will be used to fund ObamaCare (1/11/13)
- drilling & fracking will solve the carbon emissions crisis and turn the economy around (1/2/13)
- privatizing highways is in the public interest (1/15)/13)
- mandating ethanol production is “the sort of thing that created the Protestant Reformation”
Stay tuned for more GOP Loony Tunes.
Demonizing and Lionizing: The Right’s Orwellian Morality Play
The Politiscripting of the Right proceeds in binaries: freedom vs government; makers. vs. takers; free markets vs. regulation; laissez-faire vs. redistribution, self-reliance vs. communitarianism, etc.
The Wall Street Journal, The National Review, Red State and The Weekly Standard are critical sources of fuel for stoking this “versus” state of mind by perpetually offering up galleries of the demonized the lionized. For example, between Jan. 18-31, here is a partial cast list for this unceasing morality play:
The Demonized: Hillary Clinton, Chuck Hagel, Barack Obama, Mary Jo White, Richard Cordray, Jack Lew, the NLRB, Ben Bernanke.
The Lionized: Republican governors Bobby Jindal, Pat McCrory, Mike Pence, Susana Martinez, Dave Heineman and John Kasich; Art Laffer; Marco Rubio; Stanford economist John Taylor.
Politiscripts, by Richard Roth 