What's in question here isn't linguistics or framing. It's the nature of the world. There will be periods when the conservative view best sums up reality, and periods when the liberal view looks more plausible. Because of scarcity and the complexities of human feeling the liberal view doesn't last for long, and we have to return to conservative values -- to Kipling's "Gods of the Copybook Headings."
Nurturing parents are fine and necessary, but we can't all be nurturing all the time, and we can't be parents to each other forever. It looks to me like Lakoff's scheme is itself caricatured and childish -- the "Mommy Party" vs. the "Daddy Party." The sphere of adult interactions can't be paternalistically coddling. I can't devote myself to nurturing people who are in competition or combat with me. We have to expect that people will grow up and shoulder their share of the burdens. And that adult world shouldn't be tyrannically authoritarian either (whether the conservative view really is "authoritarian" also remains to be resolved).
Fully adult relations and are left out of Lakoff's picture. Maybe the adult world where we can't run people's lives for them forever is reflected in the libertarian view. That view can't characterize all situations we find ourselves in, no more than the authoritarian or nurturing models can, but it shouldn't simply be ignored.
"Framing" plays an important role in politics. So does positioning. Conservatives frame the situtation as they do, because they have positioned themself in a place that gives them something close to the view of the average citizen/voter/taxpayer. When they don't find that place to stand, their characterizations of events are less convincing. When liberals choose to take a point of view opposed to the average citizen/voter/taxpayer, they fail, and no amount of framing will save them. When they take populist positions in bad times, they can come off rather well, because many in the public come to think of themselves as victims and have moved to a place where liberal framings seem to make sense.
I don't quite think Lakoff is on target about "framing" as a tactic liberals haven't mastered. Take a look at the evening news, or listen to NPR. It's done there all the time. Whether it works -- whether the networks can convince people that liberal framing reflects reality and provides a point of view that they can share -- is another question, but conservatives learned most of what they needed to know about framing from CBS and the other networks.
Lakoff's thinking is characterized by simplistic black and white oppositions of the sort more common to political combattants than political thinkers. You can make a case that taxes are the price we pay for civilization (though sometimes it looks like they are the price we pay for barbarism). But that doesn't justify any level of taxation no matter how high. Ruination or spoilation isn't justified. So liberals can make the argument, but people aren't obligated to accept it in any given situation. That is what democratic freedom is all about -- the right of voters to accept or reject impositions on them by the government.
I agree with you. I always thought Liberals were the masters of framing - not using that term, of course, but using the terms "liberal spin", "liberal buzz words", "liberal agenda". This guy takes that concept to a whole other level. What Lakoff is worried about is that Conservatives are catching up to the Liberals in terms of think tanks, framing our political identity, TV&radio political programing, books published, etc. Our very existence impinges upon his world view as a liberal/progressive.
It's obvious that the Conservative presence is catching up to the Liberals (in some cases even surpasssing it, e.g. think tanks), and he is clearly worried. Apparently, the current Democratic candidates aren't using as much framing as Lakoff would like.
With this guy studying us, the Conservatives had better not slack off.
In 2000 Lakoff and seven other faculty members from Berkeley and UC Davis joined together to found the Rockridge Institute, one of the only progressive think tanks in existence in the U.S.
Surprised, but pleased, to hear that there's only one. :)
My take is that Lakoff thinks his opponents succeed because of procedure. And so framing is just one more word for administration, communication, infrastructure, or career development. No doubt procedure helps the propagandist, but the succesful marketing of a stupid idea is but torquing an old line from the People's Daily.