Un****ing the Donkey ( Rick Perlstein Says Free Republic More Crucial than Heritage Foundation)

The Village Voice ^ | Thursday, July 28, 2005 | Rick Perlstein

[kristinn]

The centrist Democratic Leadership Council meets this week in Columbus, Ohio, with Senator Hillary Clinton the newly named chair of their newly launched yearlong "American Dream Initiative." Her mission: to come up with a new idea agenda for the Democrats. Recently our former national correspondent Rick Perlstein gave a speech to a group of powerful Democrats suggesting an agenda of his own based on his new book The Stock Ticker and the Superjumbo: How the Democrats Can Once Against Become America's Dominant Political Party. Here, with some identifying details changed, is what he told them.

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The name of this panel is "Building a New Idea Infrastructure for Progressives."

I was given the privilege of coming before you today, I suppose, because of my expertise on the history of the conservative idea infrastructure.

So it may come as a surprise to you that I've never been impressed by the argument that we need a new idea infrastructure. We've got more ideas than we need.

Sure, the right talks about "ideas" all the time. But they define it exactly opposite from us. For us it is a synonym for clever, complicated new policy options. For them, it's Plato's definition of Ideas: as unchanging essences. The stuff that builds foundations.

As usual, Ronald Reagan boiled it down to essentials. He liked to say—maybe he said it to some of you—"There are no easy answers. But there are simple answers." I'm here to say he's right. "Building a progressive idea structure" ain't the problem. It's recovering the progressive foundation. Do that, and we are un****withable.

It's simple. Barack Obama put it exquisitely in his victory speech: "Government can help provide us with the basic tools we need to live out the American dream."

Here's a dirty little secret. The Republicans know this. Nothing scares them more than us returning to our simple answers.

Here's Bill Kristol, in a famous 1993 memo I'm sure you're all familiar with: "Health care is not, in fact, just another Democratic initiative . . . the plan should not be amended; it should be erased. . . . It will revive the reputation of the . . . Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests."

I'd say this memo is the skeleton key to understanding modern American politics, if it didn't make me yawn. There's nothing here that's unfamiliar to historians who've read Republican secrets going back 25, 35, even 70 years. You can sum them up in 10 words: "If the Democrats succeed in redistributing economic power, we're screwed."

They have reason to fear.

There is a website that thousands of committed Republicans spend hours on, giving and receiving marching orders. When people stray from the party line, it's not unusual for them to be banned. Free Republic, I'd argue, is far more crucial to the Republican infrastructure than the Heritage Foundation.

Please refer to your handout. The first column records some typical things "Freepers" say. The second records what the same Freeper said after the Senate voted cloture on the president's bankruptcy bill. Column A: "We are going to see a day, in our lifetimes, when schools force children to engage in homosexual acts as 'projects' or 'homework' for sex-ed." Same guy, column B: "The newly amended bankruptcy law is a criminal act perpetrated, bought and paid for by commercial pirates masquerading as legitimate businesses."

I won't belabor the point that I believe that the Democrats pay a huge long-term price for those Democrats who let that bankruptcy bill go through. The Republicans understand us better than we understand ourselves. When we are not credible defenders of the economic interests of ordinary Americans, we amount to little. When we are, we're a nuclear bomb to the heart of their coalition.

The Christian right is a political machine. Very little is asked of its cogs: just that they consult the call board on election day, and vote the way it says. It takes enormous effort to get them to do just that, as any of their leaders will freely tell you. Any of Richard J. Daley's precinct captains would have told you the same thing.

It doesn't take much to demobilize a machine voter: Just install some doubt that people who claim to be their champions are not really their champions. If the Democrats had been united against the bankruptcy bill, we could even have demobilized some of these Freepers.

That's the way they did it with us. The stuff about the Democrats being "cultural elitists" spread a nagging doubt. People stopped looking to the call board. Even some of the activists.

The time is ripe to do it to them. A Pentecostal friend of mine just returned from a mission to El Salvador with his childhood church from rural Louisiana. He used to regale me with tales of annual July 4 Pentecostal retreats that were like Nuremberg rallies in praise of the Great Leader. That's over now. The straw that broke the camel's back, he tells me, was people not being able to afford to go to the dentist. They also have vanishingly low faith in Bush's foreign policy, and in the Iraq war.

They're getting demobilized.

That's great. But here's the catch. They have to have somewhere to go. That's where the simple stuff comes in.

Let's talk about Social Security.

The most glorious thing about congressional Democrats is that they have drawn the line and said: No further. Don't. Touch. Social. Security. It is a heroic stand. What's more, it's been enormously politically effective.

Now think about this: They are drawing on the capital of an entitlement passed 70 years ago.

They'll be drawing on the capital from Medicare 35 years from now. Congressional Democrats won't let them kill it. Because they understand: These programs make life in America fundamentally better. And because these gooses, Social Security, Medicare, lay golden eggs. They manufacture Democrats.

It is the duty of every generation of Democrats to produce new geese to lay 70 years of golden eggs. It is the only way our party has grown—as Bill Kristol puts it, by reviving the reputation of the Democrats as the generous protector of middle-class interests. They know they're screwed if we're credible in our pledge to deliver new kinds of power to ordinary people in their every day lives.

Democratic congressmen can do that, for example, by making a credible collective pledge that if you vote Democrat enough you will never pay another medical bill as long as you live. You really think people wouldn't stop voting Republican then?

It makes a virtuous circle. The most important exit poll finding from last year's election was not about moral values. It was all the people who said they disagreed with Bush on the issues, but they were voting for him anyway because they knew what he stood for.

What I call "superjumbos"—grand policy commitments that span generations—add value by the very credibility of the commitment.

It isn't any accident that not raising taxes is a pledge every Republican makes, on pain of political death. It has not hurt them even though, according to Stanley Greenberg's polls, only 30 percent of Americans call high taxes a very serious problem.

To complete the circle—in the same poll 77 percent called "the state of health care in America" a serious problem.

Remember when Dick Morris used to tell President Clinton that he couldn't afford not to be on the side of any issue supported by 60 percent of Americans? Paul Krugman reported a poll that 72 percent of Americans favor "government-guaranteed health insurance for all."

Guaranteed. Health Insurance. For All. Not, as I found it formulated on the website of even one of the most liberal senators, "access to affordable health insurance."

Simple.

Not easy.

So Democrats, let's get to work.

[section9]

Understand that it's what's important for the Democratic Party and Democrats that's important, not the United States as a whole that's important.

For instance, in Russia, Lithuania, and Hong Kong, they've gone to a flat tax on incomes. Result? People pulled the rubles out from under the mattresses and put them to work. Growth in Russia is going great guns, for instance. You'll never get a liberal Donk to sign on to that, because they value redistribution of income much more than they value creation of wealth. Without the ability to redistribute income, the Donk loses power.

Power is what matters to the Donk, not what's good for America. Get that through your head, and you'll understand liberals.

If it weren't so predictable, it would be a piss poor chapter from an Ayn Rand novel.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[Tribune7]

The Dems are hopelessly corrupt, but then once upon a time so was the GOP.

[Teacher317]

You have been quoted by a high-profile Dem in a pep-talk about how to fix the Democrat party... and your posts have even been re-quoted in other Dem webpages! See this from the Village Voice (a MAJOR liberal mouthpiece in NYC, IIRC) and this.

[Tribune7]

Good post re 279

[185JHP]

They've sold their poisonous package to enough people that a guy whose candidacy for the Big Job should have been thought laughably ridiculous only lost by one state. A lot of people are fine with the idea of getting things for themselves, at other people's expenses. They'd like to cut "other people's benefit" spending. "Gimmee greed" and selfishness...

[willyboyishere]

OOOooooooo, that Perlstein is a deep thinker. His total misreading of FR is especially galling, because I think he has in fact developed some kind of "relationship" with FR which indicated he did seem to have an intellectual grasp of what FR really was, and is. Most of this piece exhibits the usual ratcheted-up hysteria, smartypants rhetoric, mischaracterizing anyone who's not abidingly on the Left, and the usual can't-see-past-the-end-of-his-nose PROJECTION, in the Freudian sense. (Take the worst things you feel about the tendencies and behaviors of your compadres, and accuse your "enemies" of just those things.)
It's like a hydraulic lifting-off of guilt and responsibility , especially CONSCIENCE.

[Watery Tart]

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There is a website that thousands of committed Republicans spend hours on, giving and receiving marching orders.
Thursday, July 28, 2005 | Rick Perlstein | Village Voice

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In a debate tonight at CUNY Graduate Center, in New York City, called "What Liberal Bias?," and sponsored by the Nation Institute, Eric Alterman, the Nation's media columnist, said it wasn't only Fox News and radio talk shows that liberals had to worry about, it was also Free Republic.

He described how sticky we are, with average user hours per day at over 5.
Posted on 03/18/2003 8:52:26 PM CST by by firebrand on Free Republic

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Marching orders given to those who would be drawn into our forum. They keep trying, but it's always the SOS-DD. Or DY, for that matter. Why are these @$$clowns so obsessed with us? You'd think they'd have some talking points by NOW. Sheesh.

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[philman_36]

There is a website that thousands of committed Republicans spend hours on, giving and receiving marching orders. When people stray from the party line, it's not unusual for them to be banned.
Hey Perlstein, let me assure you that this FReeper takes marching orders from nobody! I'm nobody's mule!
I stray quite far from "party lines". Just visit the WOsD threads and the occasional illegal alien threads I visit and see how far I stray. The 16th and 17th amendments should be struck down, don't touch my weapons, detain Islamists for the duration, seal the borders...and on and on.
You're full of it when you say people who stray from the party line get banned 'cause I stray quite far from the party line and I'm still here!
However, having said all that, I'd still rather have a R than a D in office any day. I don't dig the flat out Socialism that the D's desire. (though you'll probably say they desire no such thing)
Free Republic, I'd argue, is far more crucial to the Republican infrastructure than the Heritage Foundation.
That's about the only thing you said that I agree with, but I'm pretty sure it's not in the same context. Free thinkers are far less constrained than those who are in think tanks. It just isn't as free.

[dirtboy]

Where does this paranoia come from? Is it entirely unfounded?

First of all, freepmails are not meant to be a way to bypass the posting guidelines regarding personal attacks. I've never had a problem with freepmail "monitoring" because I don't abuse it.

But beyond that your problem is that you take the fact that some folks get banned and draw an entirely erroneous conclusion from that fact:

There is a website that thousands of committed Republicans spend hours on, giving and receiving marching orders. When people stray from the party line, it's not unusual for them to be banned.

First of all, there are no "marching orders" delivered here. Folks debate politics, often quite fiercely, and the best arguments win, whether or not those may correspond to GOP or Bush Administration positions.

Second, there are plenty of folks who deviate quite often from the "party line" (such as myself) who have never been banned or suspended or even remotely threatened with such. Take the debate on immigration. Some folks who oppose illegal immigration have gotten banned. But there are also folks who are cheerleaders for Bush's immigration policies who have gotten banned or suspended.

In most cases, there is something else involved, usually either a failure to adhere to posting rules regarding personal attacks, or an attack on FR and Jim Robinson himself. I've had issues with FR myself from time to time, but I deal with those issues behind the scenes - it's asinine to engage in personal squabbles in the open forum, something too many posters don't realize. If I'm having a party and a guest starts trash talking me in my house, I'm gonna ask them to leave. Nothing more complicated than that, but some folks have personalities that internalize an anonymous forum to where they see forum moderation turn into a personal vendetta against them

But after all that, please go ahead and continue to misunderstand how FR works. As long as the libs fail to understand us, they will also fail to successfully emulate us.

[righttackle44]

"It's simple. Barack Obama put it exquisitely in his victory speech: "Government can help provide us with the basic tools we need to live out the American dream."

Did he mean OUR government, or the 1930's National Socialist government another government? The 1930's Nazi government eventually gave Germany gas chambers and ovens.

That's the trouble with Barack Obama. You can never find the roach spray when he's around.

[middie]

I've never read The Village Voice and have only seen it once in a hotel lobby in NYC. The postings here are open to the public and available for anyone to cite, quote, critique, denounce or otherwise use in any other written or spoken denunciation, agreement or mere report. No poster here has any proprietary right in what she/he writes, neither should anyone of us be burdened with reproach from other FR.

If some knucklehead (at one extreme) or brillant scholar (at the other extreme) chooses to quote or cite to something written here as a spontaneous response to another post then, he asked rhetorically: how is that my fault?

If we reject impromptu responses that agree, disagree, crtitque, scorn or laugh at another's offering, why does FR exist? In fact, I recall something along that line of thought in the statement of purpose of FR.

So, let 'em quote or refer to anything I've said or written.

[Lijahsbubbe]

They hate us! They really hate us!!

[Peach]

Perlstein:

Free Republic, I'd argue, is far more crucial to the Republican infrastructure than the Heritage Foundation.

[prairiebreeze]

Apparently the author is a poster on this forum. See posts 269/270 if you haven't already.

As far as Social Security, the RATS have simply succeeded for the moment to shove the problem to the back burner yet AGAIN! They have NO plan for the future and can only cling with their fingernails to the old, overdrawn program of the past. And they lie to the public by claiming there is nothing wrong with SS. But then, they lie to the public about most things.

Rick, your party is losing and will continue to lose because you have nothing to offer. America is rejecting Democrat policy and I predict will continue to do so in ever increasing numbers.

[GeronL]

Please refer to your handout

Thats the Democrat campaign in a nutshell

[Travis McGee]

Which FR button do I click to get my marching orders?

[HamiltonJay]

Like many things established when the US was the only real modern manufacturing power on teh planet, and money was basically printed hand over fist.... The Dems have refused to accept the fundamental change in the world and keep clinging to the old ways and ideas in terms of their fiscal ideas... while at the same time advocating rediculous anti main stream american stands on social issues.

The mantra of SPEND on anything and guarantee transgender a right to live without any criticism and pedophiles the right to be preschoolteachers and predatory homosexuals to be boy scout leaders isn't selling, isn't going to sell, and finally (hopefully) they have now lost the courts as well..... The last vestage of their insanity, there is hope for America again.

[HamiltonJay]

Like many things established when the US was the only real modern manufacturing power on teh planet, and money was basically printed hand over fist.... The Dems have refused to accept the fundamental change in the world and keep clinging to the old ways and ideas in terms of their fiscal ideas... while at the same time advocating rediculous anti main stream american stands on social issues.

The mantra of SPEND on anything and guarantee transgender a right to live without any criticism and pedophiles the right to be preschoolteachers and predatory homosexuals to be boy scout leaders isn't selling, isn't going to sell, and finally (hopefully) they have now lost the courts as well..... The last vestage of their insanity, there is hope for America again.

[Petronski]

Thats the Democrat campaign in a nutshell

Arguably, that's the Democrat mind in a nutshell

And most Democrat minds fit quite comfortably inside the shell of a nut. Witness Perlstein, for example.

[bt_dooftlook]

The fastest way to shutdown collective health care is to move to a flat tax; until everyone is paying a share of the government's costs, politicians will continue to sell 'free' IMHO