The right’s demon-creating machine

March 1, 2006

It’s an election year, and Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) is up this year, so it stands to reason that the National Republican Senatorial Committee is going to go after Byrd as aggressively as decency will allow. And then just a little further.

But in a swipe at Byrd yesterday, the NSRC went after Byrd for a couple of his loose associations.

For Disavowing His Association With One “Fringe Leftist Group” And Then Funding The Website Of Another, Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) Receives Today’s “Politician Award.”

Today Byrd Is Advertising On The Extremist Blog, Dailykos.com… (The Daily Kos Website, www.dailykos.com, Accessed February 28, 2006)

…But Earlier This Month, Byrd’s Chief Of Staff “Tried To Sidestep” The Senator’s Association With Another “Fringe Leftist Group.” “When Kercheval asked Byrd’s man [Tom] Gavin about Byrd’s recent association with the extreme liberal group, Moveon.org, Gavin tried to sidestep this by saying that it was merely a one-time speech before this fringe leftist group.” (Editorial, “Spinning Out Of Control: Byrd Spokesman Gavin’s Absurdity,” HuntingtonNews.Net, February 1, 2006)

It’s a fairly predictable pattern utilized — often successfully — by the right. MoveOn and Kos aren’t wrong, the NSRC says, they are “fringe” and “extremist.” For a Dem to have a connection to these progressive institutions is to make plain that that the Dem has misguided values. The same applies to Michael Moore and a half-dozen other bogeymen.

Here’s the part I don’t get: how is it that the right is able to demonize liberals so effectively, while Republicans think nothing of their connections to “fringe extremists” on the right?

Republican officials at the highest levels — the White House, Congress, the RNC and the campaign committees, governors — regularly appear with likes of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. They advertise on far-right blogs with scurrilous, often bigoted, rhetoric. They deliver speeches to crazed TV preachers like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. They often associate with the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who, by any reasonable standard, is a very strange cult leader. They consult all the time with activists like Grover Norquist, whose record of scandalous comments has literally no rival on the left.

This isn’t a rhetorical question; it’s one of those things I’ve never understood. Do Dems just not try to demonize the far right? Do Republicans just not care about the company they keep?

It’s strictly a media thing. The left gets called out by the media on rightwing charges, but the right is never held accountable.

If the next Democrat in the White House doesn’t spank the hell out of the media by breaking up their cartels, I’ll be very disappointed.

  • It’s just that the Repubs do the phony outrage routine so well. We Dems can’t keep a straight face. Or maybe it’s just that the genuinely harmful mischief that the Repubs are engaged in makes it difficult to work up a head of steam over a guest appearance by The President with the bigot du jour. The good new is that I don’t think the demonization tactic is nearly as effective as everyone assumes.
    . . . jim strain in san diego.

  • Republican politicians and supporters thrive on fringe behavior and intolerance. They seethe with anger when anyone has a differing opinion and the offender is in cahoots with the devil. A rational thinking person cannot feel this way. Liberals tend to be more tolerant and more likely to listen to differing viewpoints without invoking the wrath of God on anyone who disagrees. This type of politics will never be taken seriously by most Democrats/Liberals. Republican Media and Pols use this to their advantage.

  • It’s strictly a media thing. The left gets called out by the media on rightwing charges, but the right is never held accountable.

    One thing I can’t stand is the pathetic scapegoating of the media for the problems of the Democrats. Don’t get me wrong; there are huge media problems today. But on the specific point of calling out extremists, the ineptitude of the Democrats cannot be explained away by media bias.

    Why would the media ever ask if Republicans should associate with the likes of Malkin, Coulter, Limbaugh, etc. if Democrats never make an issue of it. I have NEVER heard a Democratic leader chastise a Republican for associating with the fringe elements. Nor have I ever seen a concerted effort to demonize the fringe elements.

    Imagine if Democrats responded to the charges of racism against the U.A.E. as follows:

    Wolf Blitzer: How do you respond to charges that the Democats are racist for opposing an Arab company from operating the ports?

    Democratic guest: Are you joking, Wolf? That is so absurd I want to laugh out loud. The Republicans can’t side with Michelle Malkin, who wants to intern Arab-Americans, like the Japanese-Americans during WWII…they can’t side with Ann Coulter who calls Arabs “ragheads”…they can’t support profiling Americans based on how they look…and then claim to care about not insulting Arabs.

    The Republican party is crawling with extremists who think Islam is an evil religion and Arabs are guilty until proven innocent. And now the GOP wants to accuse the Democrats of being racists because we don’t want to turn port security over to a foreign government? That is CRAZY!

    I would pay good money to hear someone say that just once.

  • OK guys, we have to do better than this. This is the type of thinking that keeps Dems losing.

    Here’s the part I don’t get: how is it that the right is able to demonize liberals so effectively, while Republicans think nothing of their connections to “fringe extremists” on the right?
    Yes, you do get it. Dems are weak. Period.

    You want to keep the GOP from tar-and-feathering every progressive group? Stand up and say, “I DO support them, they are NOT fringe, and by the way, you are a blow-hard moron. I am going to keep working for America, you keep up your work of attacking Americans who are interested in a prosperous, safe, and free America.

    You want to go after the right? The do it, you weak little Dem leaders. Start swinging. I mean, is there anything left to lose?

    It’s strictly a media thing. The left gets called out by the media on rightwing charges, but the right is never held accountable.

    God, please let us all stop blaming the one group with less backbone than the DLC for ruining America. I wish the media had the energy and dedication to be biased—at least it’d be a sign of life. What a waste of time.

    The media operates like hookers: they go where the action is and wait for people to tell them what to do. The “problem” with the media is two-fold: Repubs have built up a pseudo-media empire to by-pass any semblance of clear, unbiased thought; and (more importantly, so much more importantly) Dems aren’t bothering to make noise.

    Remember Repubs not swearing-in Gonzales? That, along with about 100 other absolutely transparently retarded Repub moves, should be the single, coordinated focus of all Dem leaders. All the time. But what actually happens? They bark a little at the meeting: the one place they are definitely powerless.

    Sorry, I’m a little cranky, but I can’t take the “let’s talk about all the stuff standing in our way” rather than just recognizing that what’s in our way is all the talk.

  • I think left organizations confront the hypocrisy of people by representing what they should do and right-wing organizations support the hypocrisy of many people by saying what many secretly think. So demonization works better on things that people feel guilty about than on their secretly pleasurable bigotry.

  • Partly I think it’s that Democrats no longer have the “street smarts” they used to when the immigration/labor movements were strong. Their elected officials are now middle class “genteel” and prefer not to engage in relentless name-calling. They act like the academics most of them were/are: make your point in the seminar then listen to others, and that’s it (go out for a beer and a few laughs). Anger plays no part.

    Partly I think it’s that very few people are actually rich enough or mean enough to be Republican. The number of people who make over $500,000 couldn’t elect dog shit, and gap-toothed drooling hillbillies mostly don’t know how to vote. Most run-of-the-mill Republicans (now) are like those guys who dress up in funny fraternal costumes. They look ridiculous, but once they’ve crossed that line they’re free to “go all the way” with the silliness. Once a non-rich, non-mean person becomes a Republican, then Pat Robertson and Ann Coulter and all the rest are just parts of the morality play. Reason plays no part.

  • Maybe the readers of this blog don’t hang out with Republicans. I work with a hardcore Republican. He is reasonable in most aspects — with the exception that he finds Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity REASONABLE, if humorous, not crazy.

    Go figure.

    Thus, associating with those folks isn’t seen as unusual or discrediting in any way.

  • Democrats just don’t do the demonization thing.

    Why not raise a fuss when Bush or some Republican appears with Rush or Colter? These people say outrageous things, and there should be some accountability.

    Democrats expect the media to do their jobs. Republicans lead the media around by the nose.

    The problem is not the media. The problem is Democrats without a media strategy.

  • Necessity is the mother of invention. When your party is focused on serving the needs of the wealthiest 10% of the population, but you still have to get 50% of the vote, you had better be good at this type of thing, or you would never get elected.

    What I wonder is not so much “How to they do it?”, its “How do they look themselves in the mirror every morning?”.

    The possible andwer to that is, to quote George Costanza, “it’s not a lie if YOU believe it”.

  • The Democratic leadership reminds me of the People’s Front of Judea from Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, where they basically sit around and just bitch about the Romans, without really doing anything, except some benign act of rebellion (“Romani ite domom!”). And the only people they hate more than the Romans is the “fucking Judean People’s Front.”

  • The Democrats run from confrontation. The Republicans do not. This means that Republicans gain a lot by forcing confrontations whenever they can manufacture one. This would just be standard playground bullying philosphy, if it didn’t raise “co-dependency” questions on the part of the Democrats.

    The Democratic leadership reminds me of the People’s Front of Judea from Monty Python’s The Life of Brian

    ROFLMAO, 2Manchu!

    So true, so true.

  • I think the question has to be asked in a broader
    context: how did progressivism, or liberalism
    come to be such a maligned and discredited
    political philosophy in America? Everywhere
    you go today, liberals are demonized. The word
    itself has become a term of disparagement.

    Why are Democrats distancing themselves from
    liberalism as they rush toward the center?

    Nobody today wants to be known as a liberal.
    I have no idea why the American people hate
    “libruls,” but they do. In polls, they often vote
    overwhelmingly for liberal ideals, like national
    health insurance. But they still hate “liberalism.”
    Why?

    Probably because the Democrats caved in on
    the issue. I think it started with Reagan. He
    killed the Democratic Party. They wouldn’t
    fight back. They knuckled under. They allowed
    liberalism to become synonomous with
    welfare queens and communism and atheism
    and elitism and pacifism and all the other things
    Americans hate and fear.

    But why? Why didn’t the Democrats fight
    back? I’ve no idea. All I know is that they are
    still running from liberalism, and as long as
    they do, things will stay this way.

  • I think the short answer is that Republicans DON’T care if they’re associated with criminals and jerks.

    They really don’t.

    And the reason they don’t is that they’ve convinced themselves that the other side is WORSE. Of course this was done by lying jerks, but that’s the beauty of it. If Rush says the Democrats are evil, then then you can simply ignore any Democrat that tells you that Rush is lying about (some subject or another). Because they’re Democrats. And Democrats are evil. Because Rush says so (and his stories confirm this to be true).

    All they need is the occasional anecdote (exaggerated, usually) about some corrupt or devious person who happens to be a Democrat (God knows we do get our share) and then it’s all a wrap. Case closed. “They all do it” and “Democrats are worse”. No amount of reasoning will penetrate this shield.

    It’s no coincidence that Republicans are also fundamentalists, because the process works exactly the same way for them. It’s an incurable condition where the brain refuses to look at anything without looking through a filter.

  • thanks, shargash
    Having watched Python since I was six has given me a twisted sense of reality

  • Republicans do it because it works. Don’t forget the goal – attaining and holding power. Anything done to advance that goal is fine. Total, complete, insane hypocrisy? Fine. Who cares?

    It helps if your fringe is “Christian” then they can respond to any attacks from Dems as an attack on Baby Jesus by the Godless Liberals.

    But having some basic backbone, standing up and not taking any shit is all it will take. They really are just schoolyard bullies. Handle them the same way…thekeez

  • I don’t think most of America feels the same way about the rightwing crackpots. Even myself, when I watch Pat Robertson on TV, he actually sounds normal for a few moments, and his show is sort of set up like a normal news show. I can watch him for quite some time without anything seeming amiss, lulled into a sense of normalcy, then I get jolted awake and think “WTF – did he just say what I think he said???” But I think most viewers just see the normalcy and never have that WTF moment.

  • As far as I know, Daily Kos and MoveOn have never threatened to kill a supreme court judge and then tried to laugh it off as a joke, or encouraged the bombing of San Francisco so obviously the right wing is not the best judge of what constitutes “extremism.”

  • This was said above, but I think the main difference isn’t that the right has its own “demons” and fails to notice… it’s that they don’t consider them demons and will protect them, no matter what.

    If Democrats would stand up for places like Daily Kos and MoveOn, and say defend them as examples of true grassroots momentum against an administration and party that are taking the country in the wrong direction, the demonization would be far less effective. The demonization works now because a Democrat associated with these groups instinctively cowers and downplays his/her connection with them, which gives even an independent voter a feeling that there must be something wrong with the group. Otherwise, why deny it?

    The other thing, of course, is that the demonization is of a group, not a person. I don’t think most reasonable observers truly think Markos is an “extreme liberal,” although he’s certainly loud and active. But “loud” and “extreme” are totally different things, just as opposition to Bush is not necessarily “far left.” Kos himself isn’t proclaiming beliefs anywhere on the order of justifying internment (Malkin) or fantasizing about killing members of the other party (Coulter) or leaders of other nations (Robertson). But demonization of “Daily Kos” is demonization of a group of people, in which there are undoubtedly extreme elements. There is in any political group of enough size, of course.

    Basically, people don’t feel that right-wing extremists are as extreme because only one side is decrying them. Left-wing elements, extreme or not, are tarred by both sides (even if only passively by Democrats) and so appear worse, even though their actual positions may be more mainstream.

  • I spent part of the weekend with in-laws, and the guy is a Fox viewer. He’s a good guy, intelligent, hard working, but he has bought the right-wing line 100%.
    They have convinced him.
    It is the media, and it is the Democrats. And, it is us.
    He was taken aback when I whacked Rush as a nut-case. But I believe that I made a dent.
    How often do we discuss issues with the Righties? Not often enough, in my opinion. We need to do this a lot, but in the correct way. Let them be the ones to get angry, not you. You appear to be reasonable that way.
    Convince them. We have the facts on our side. There are a lot of layers of lies to peel away. No reason to try to rip them out of their world view all at once.

  • Simply, we need a liberal Limbaugh. Not someone to make reasoned arguements based on facts and logic. Someone to invent Republican strawmen out of whole cloth (is that a mixed metaphor ?) and rail at them ceaselessly for a 3 hour radio show. Someone who’ll call Coulter a racist and not back down; call Limbaugh and Hannity facists and make the case with every damning half-truth at his disposal. Someone who’ll do the job the MSM should have been doing for the past 5 years and hold the liars in power – and their lies – up to the light for all to see.

    I regularly listen to Limbaugh and Hannity because (1) I believe in knowing what the other side is saying and (2) the added adrenaline and kicked up heart rate allows me to skip the occassional trip to the gym and gets me home thru traffic all the faster. Yesterday, what was Hannity (or maybe it was Limbaugh) raving about ? Whitewater. What’s that..13 years ago ? Anything to distract from the current crime-fest.

    We need someone to get on the radio and drag Newt Gingrich around the block a few times. Let’s revisit Iran-Contra. Hell, kick Dick Nixon’s corpse in the balls a few times too.

    If someone wants to tell me I’m wrong, I’ll be glad to listen. But really, we need some totally insane, liberal loudmouths on the radio. If Limbaugh and the rest want to claim there’s an extreme liberal fringe group, let’s give ’em one and make sure they have no trouble identifying it.

    Hell, let’s give them a liberal Michael Savage.

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