Posted on 11/12/2007 7:38:21 AM PST by freespirited
Hillary Rodham Clinton was asked this summer if she would describe herself as a “liberal.”
The Democratic front-runner shied away, saying the “word” — noticeably not using the word — has taken on a connotation that “describes big government.
“I prefer the word ‘progressive,’” she said. It has a “real American meaning.”
Then she expanded the term to “modern progressive,” and, finally, clarified that she was a “modern American progressive.”
These are heady days for Democrats. The party is favored by almost all measures in the coming presidential contest.
But while Democrats are emboldened, they remain wary of the term “liberal.”
Republicans, by contrast, as unpopular in the polls as they have been for at least 15 years.
Nonetheless, the label “conservative” remains in vogue.
At a recent Republican debate, Rudy Giuliani referred to himself as a “conservative” four times in roughly the same time span — a minute or so — it took Clinton to reject the word “liberal” and embrace “progressive.”
In seven Republican debates this year the word “conservative” was used 100 times.
In the seven Democratic debates the word “liberal” was used four times — not once by a candidate.
“Conservative is identified with a sensibility,” Stanford University linguist Geoffrey Nunberg said. “The rejection of the Bush-Cheney policy is very clear. But I don’t think the public identifies it with conservatism.
“You can be as liberal as much as you like, if you are a Democrat, as long as you don’t call yourself a liberal,” Nunberg quipped.
To Nunberg and his fellow liberal — or progressive — Berkeley linguist George Lakoff, the presidential election of 2008 may mark the ascension of the Democratic Party, but not of “liberalism.”
“They are running from the word liberal as fast as they can because it has been tainted. It’s ‘bleeding-heart liberal,’ ‘tax-and-spend liberal,’ ‘liberal elite,’ ‘liberal media,’” Lakoff said, who has been a rhetorical consultant for Democrats in the past decade.
The Republican debates bear Lakoff out. Most of the 18 uses of liberal in the GOP forums have been in pejorative terms: Liberal media? Check. Tax-and-spend liberal? Check.
Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) went so far in one debate as to claim that President George W. Bush “ran as a conservative and governed as a liberal.”
Of course, there is reason behind the Democratic rhetorical re-branding.
In early autumn, the Gallup Poll found that while 43 percent of Americans identified as Democrats, only 23 percent of voters called themselves liberals.
While 30 percent of Americans considered themselves Republicans, fully 39 percent labeled themselves conservative.
Today seven percent of Americans call themselves “very conservative.” But none did two decades ago, according to an analysis of Gallup data.
Meanwhile, though five percent of Americans today consider themselves “very liberal,” three times as many did in the summer of 1988.
That was when -- Democrat Michael Dukakis challenged Republican George H.W. Bush for the presidency -- Republicans successfully cast liberal in pejorative terms.
Many Americans accepted the negative implication. Dukakis became a “Massachusetts liberal.” Democrats have been fleeing from the word ever since.
The two linguists disagree, however, over the implications of dropping the word liberal in favor of progressive.
In the short term, Lakoff said it may be shrewd for the Democratic candidates to avoid the “L word.”
But, he warned, the party will suffer down the road by ceding it to the opposition, calling it “a terrible move.... a disastrous move.
“By not having reconstituted the word liberal over many years, by not defending it, they are forced to give it up,” he said.
“But they don’t adopt progressive in a serious way because they don’t know how to say what progressive means.”
A donkey by any other name is still an ass — and Lakoff believes Democrats are acting the ass by ceding “liberal.”
“Even if you call yourself a progressive, they’ll call you a liberal,” as Lakoff put it.
Nunberg once agreed. “I always thought that Democrats would have to bring back the word liberal, in part because it’s etched on the split screen of American life,” he said.
But Nunberg no longer longs for a revival of the word.
“Democrats have found they can concede the word without conceding the doctrine.
“And Republicans can do everything but concede the word” conservative, he added. “Conservatism has been a faith that says whatever we are, we are conservatives.”
During the 2006 midterm elections, Nunberg said, Democrats “had no branding at all” except not being Republicans.
That was enough to win back Congress. In 2008, however, Democrats must define progressive and their party, he said.
“How are they going to reconstruct themselves?” he asked, adding that merely not being Republicans “is not going to work this time around.
“The self destruction of Republicans has obviated them to come up with the need for more of a party identity.”
Democrats still have no forward-looking product to peddle, Nunberg said, cracking, “The only difference between ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ is that liberals think there is one.”
Are these the ones with the 40 y.o. porky nerdy guy and the thin always dressed in black kid who can’t seem to grow a mustache? every time one comes on, i remind myself not to buy an Apple product
Someone calls themselves “Progressive”, I don’t call them a Liberal...I call them what they are: A “Back Door” Communist.
What this survey shows is that a true conservative has the best chance of winning. RINOs need not apply.
(Around and around it goes and where it stops nobody knows.)
(Around and around it goes and where it stops nobody knows.)
Hillary Rodham Clinton was asked this summer if she would describe herself as a “liberal.” “I prefer the word ‘progressive,’” she said. It has a “real American meaning.” Then she expanded the term to “modern progressive,” and, finally, clarified that she was a “modern American progressive....
Excellent move Hill.
Go ahead with the "progressive" label and add any qualifiers to it you wish. However, don't forget - smartest woman in the world - that for those in the know, "Progressives" are and forever will be linked with and tied at the hip to COMMUNISTS and the CPUSA.
Progressive/Communists goes back much further than Henry Wallace and the 1948 Election sweets where the CPUSA endorsed him -- and you know it, ms 'smartest woman'. So I'm glad you're coming out of the closet and finally outing yourself as a COMMUNIST.
Now how about that other 'thing' in your closet everyone is wondering about???
The anti war (pro USSR) Platform of the 1948 Progressive (commie) Party is almost IDENTICAL to the trip spewed by today's 'Surrendercrats' regarding the Iraq War and the WOT.
“Progressive” polls with focuas groups much better than “Liberal” does...
You’ll take note of the “Pro-Con” commercials being run by The Center For American Progress (Clinton-Soros) to attempt to push this “Redesignation”.
It's not that they don't know how - it's that they don't dare.
"The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”The aims, the goals of the Gramscian totalitarian Left have never changed. Those aims are merely re-packaged in innocuous and diseingenuous language. If the American public truly understood what those aims are, if the American public had any sense of the historical outcomes such aims and ideas - mass murder, poverty and misery - it would be the ideology of the Left, not Christianity that would be driven form the public square.Norman Thomas, co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union
Personally, I favor public hanging for anyone who wants to 'take things from me' for the 'common good.' But that's just me.
Actually, history is quite clear about where it stops, once these ‘progressives’ acquire the levers of power: mass murder, poverty and misery.
That’s why ‘progressives’ and their ilk are absolutely unfit to live in a free society.
Actually, “liberal” has a respectable history, compared to “progresssive.” It originally meant those who believe in freedom, whereas “progressive” means those who believe in Utopian or Marxist ideas of progress.
Historically, Progressive is way, way to the left of Liberal. It does, in fact, fit hillary very well, because she is an old-line Marxist of the worst kind.
The reason why people may not flinch at the word “progressive” the way they do at “liberal” is that the word hasn’t been much used since the days of the Hitler-Stalin pact, because by that time it had become a dirty word.
Several hundred million people died over the course of the twentieth century, due to the evil programs of progressives.
There are lies and there are damn lies.
Seems RINO Rudy also won't admit to being a liberal.
He in fact tells a bigger whopper than Comrade Hillarys labeling of herself as "progressive."
The CommieRAT MSM, which tryed to get away with labeling Rino Rudy as "moderate," doesn't even match RinoRudy in the liar competition.
Let’s call them what they are - totalitarians or fascists.
It seems to me that there is disagreement among people that call themselves conservative, as to what is or is not a ‘true conservative! How do you really define a ‘real or true’ conservative Republ., as opposed to a RINO?
For example, so many people on this forum anymore call themselves ‘real conservatives’, and verbally jump all over other conservatives because they don’t believe as they themselves do! Would you, or could you, define what a ‘true’ conservative’ is?(in general) How about the difference between a ‘conservative’ Republican, and a RINO?
I know that make me seem to be clueless, but I’m curious as to what some ‘real’ conservatives and/or ‘real’ conservative Republicans define themselves as opposed to a RINO! End of rant.
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