I stand by my comment. Yes liberals have ideas and an agenda, and yes they are good at getting the agenda accomplished, but they do it by taking every issue and distilling it down to a 30 second emotional soundbite. A perfect example is a discussion I had with a friend of mine concerning the the Medicare drug plan. I was trying to get her to consider the cost and the expansion of government that it was going to entail, not to the mention control it was giving to government over people’s lives. Her answer, don’t you want old people to get the drugs they needs? Do you want old people to have to decide between food and medicine? How you can you conservatives be so unfeeling and cruel? I tried to engage her in an honest argument about the issue, but she just kept returning to the emotional side of the issue. The Left is very good at playing the easy emotion card. It can take a few minutes to explain the conservative view and why it makes more sense, it takes 30 seconds to make an emotional appeal to an Oprahized nation.
That's not true. Hell, if all it took was 30 second soundbites, conservatives wouldn't be in our current disastrous position. But we are in deep trouble despite spending millions on soundbites.
Here's the deal: that 30 second liberal soundbite has traction because it simply summarizes a point made far more broadly over months or years -- it does nothing more or less than tell people what they already "know" from other sources.
Obama didn't win the election because of his soundbites -- he won because the foundations for his victory had already been under construction in the media (broadly defined) for years. His team played it brilliantly, taking advantage of the cultural framework built by the likes of Jon Stewart, whose message was essentially "conservatives are funny, and deserve to be made fun of." And despite the dismissiveness of many FReepers, Stewart's send-ups of conservatives are often hilarious, because they're based on accurate (albeit highly skewed) depictions of conservative talking points.
Obama's an empty suit with no record, of course -- but that simply aided his team's approach: with no clear record on anything, a sharp eye could spot the "cultural holes" that Obama's image could be moulded to fill. Obama's soundbites were just taking advantage of spots where the "cultural framework" was not being effectively addressed.
That's the liberals' real strategy: to control the cultural landscape. Once they've done that, they pretty much get to pick their battles on ground of their own choosing. We conservatives are at an intrinsic disadvantage. Obama found a chink in their armor, but I think it serves mostly to expose their strategy, rather than to weaken it.
There's more, though. We conservatives love our theories -- but we seem to have forgotten that real politics is played among real people, rather than just among academicians. Regardless of what it eventually ended up being, W's "compassionate conservatism" was essentially correct in its diagnosis -- that we tend to ignore the "people" side of politics.
Let's take a look at your Medicare discussion, because it highlights the point. You say that, despite your arguments, your friend kept returning to the "emotional side of the issue." She probably did -- but I think you've forgotten the most important part of the political equation (it's something I tend to do, anyway).
The fact is that many seniors do have a great deal of difficulty dealing with their medical expenses. I'm sure you gave her all sorts of fine and correct conservative economic arguments ... but how do they help the old lady down the street who really is trying to find some way to pay for her prescriptions?
I think I'm like most people, in that I tend to be more favorably disposed toward the person who offers to help me solve my current problem; than I am toward the person who offers theories that don't do anything to help me deal with what's ailing me at the moment.
Liberals understand that dynamic; conservatives seem driven to work against it -- which merely strengthens the liberals' hand.