“And for that, you don’t have to agree with how others interpret “blood libel”, because it makes no difference — the results of the use of the word are clear, and it makes no difference whether that result is justified or not, because reaction simply “is”, and a good politician has to be able to predict reaction, and choose words that maximize the proper reaction.”
So we should choose our words carefully so as not to offend the left? Why? They are perpetually offended anyway. We need to choose words for impact and that’s exactly what Sarah did. What possible percentage is there in making nice with the people who are accusing you of being an accessory before the fact to multiple murder? You’re quite right, there will be a powerful reaction to the words “blood libel” as there was to the words “death panel.” In both cases the powerful reaction will transform the debate to our advantage. Sarah has seized the high ground here and a simple “thank you” would be appropriate.
YOu don’t have to choose your words carefully.
A good politician will always choose their words carefully, assuming the goal is to get a majority of the people to vote for you.
In 2006, Senator George Allen, cruising to victory in his re-election bid, looked at a dark-skinned guy filming a speech, and said the guy’s name was “macaca”.
A word with no meaning; a likely throw-away mistake of minor consequence. But in the end it cost him the election, and his chance of being President.
Is it fair, just, or logical? No. It just “is”.
If you walk up to a black thug on the street, and say he is behaving “niggardly”, your protests that you meant no harm and the word is appropriate will be of little consequence to your survivors after he kills you.
You choose words for impact, but you want that impact to be positive.
Now, I don’t have a crystal ball, nor do I assert that I am some genius in political maneuvering. It sure looks like a mistake to me, given the reaction and how people are arguing over the term rather than rallying to victory based on what she said.
But obviously it has attracted attention, and I suppose there may be some way she can turn the current strongly negative reaction into a positive. If so, I will be proven wrong in my assessment.
But right now, the initial response to me has been harshly negative toward our cause. I thought we had essentially won this battle already — the public was rejecting the claims, and the more came out about the shooter, the more clear it was that pretending he was influenced by speech was itself a losing argument.
(Remember there are two separate arguments, and the 2nd undercuts the first: The first is that we shouldn’t have to nit-pick our political speech simply because someone crazy person might mis-interpret what we say and act violently. The second is that there is no evidence that the crazy person WAS influenced by our speech. That second argument suggests that if there WAS evidence, it would matter, which the 1st argument rejects).
But now whatever sympathy our side had from being falsely accused of being complicit in murder is being lost as the common uninformed person just sees that our side is claiming equivalence with jews being accused of killing children, with jews being brutally murdered for these false accusations.
The analogy was a good one, used as an analogy, but the claim of the exact words has weakened the argument.