SwiftVets.com

[fortdixlover]

SwiftVets: Understand that the article below should be mandatory reading for your group, from a former master Leftist who knows the ropes quite intimately regarding who and what you are fighting.

Evaluate the current situation re: the SwiftVets' position and you will see the wisdom in this piece.

FDL


From http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.17180/article_detail.asp

Full-Contact Politics
By David Horowitz

Here are six principles of politics that the Left understands but conservatives do not:

1. Politics is war conducted by other means. In political warfare you do not fight just to prevail in an argument, but to destroy the enemy’s fighting ability. Conservatives often seem to regard political combat as they would debates before the Oxford Political Union, as though winning depends on rational arguments and carefully articulated principles. But the audience of politics is not made up of Oxford dons, and the rules are entirely different.

For starters, you have only 30 seconds to make your point. Even if you had time to develop an argument, the audience you need to reach (the undecided and not-paying-much-attention-middle) wouldn’t get it. Your words would go over some of their heads and be quickly forgotten by the rest amidst the bustle and pressure of daily life. Worse, while you’ve been making your argument the other side has already painted you as a mean-spirited, border-line racist controlled by religious zealots, securely in the pockets of the rich. Nobody who sees you this way is going to listen to you anyway. You’re politically dead.

2. Politics is a war of position. In war there are two sides: friends and enemies. Your task is to define yourself as the friend of as large a constituency compatible with your principles as possible, while defining your opponent as their enemy wherever and whenever you can. The act of defining combatants is analogous to the military concept of choosing the terrain of battle. Choose the ground that makes the fight as “rigged” in your favor as possible.

But be careful. American politics takes place in a pluralistic framework, where constituencies are diverse and often in conflict. Therefore “fairness” and “tolerance” are the formal rules of democratic engagement. If you appear mean-spirited, nasty, or too judgmental, it will make the task easier for your opponent to define you as a threat, and therefore as “the enemy.”

3. In political wars, the aggressor usually prevails. Conservatives often wait for the other side to attack. In football, this is known as a “prevent defense.” In politics, it is the strategy of losers.

By striking first, you can define the issues and define your adversary. Definition is the decisive move in all political wars. Other things being equal, whoever winds up on the defensive will generally be on the losing side.

In attacking your opponent, take care to do it right. Going negative increases the risk of being defined as an enemy. Therefore, it can be counterproductive. Ruling out the negative, however, can incur an even greater risk. In the last California senatorial election, Senator Barbara Boxer, the number-one spender in the entire Congress, crushed a bland, moderate Republican who had the endorsement of both the state’s liberal papers—the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle (the first time that had happened since the 1960s)—and was running ahead in the polls. Because Boxer went negative and the moderate didn’t, she was able to define herself as the moderate and the moderate as the extremist. The American public favors the center. The decision to avoid the negative did not save the Republican from being defined as mean-spirited. But it did cost him the election.

4. Position is defined by fear and hope. The twin emotions of politics are fear and hope. Those who provide people with hope become their friends; those who inspire fear become enemies. Of the two, hope is the better choice.

But fear is a powerful and indispensable weapon. If your opponent defines you negatively enough, he will diminish your ability to offer hope. That is why liberals are so determined to portray conservatives as hostile to minorities, working people, and the poor.

The smear campaign against Clarence Thomas, for example, was designed to taint black conservatives as a warning to other blacks who might stray from the Democratic fold. Without their captive black constituency—the most powerful symbol of their concern for the victimized—liberals would be electorally dead. They would lose every major urban center and become a permanent political minority. Liberals exploit their image as the party of blacks to stigmatize conservatives as the party of racists. The success of these tactics means that as a Republican you may have a lot to offer African-Americans and other minorities, but you will have to work extra hard to get anyone to listen.

Because the religious Right has been associated by liberals with moralistic intolerance, it is easy for liberals to portray them as a threat to any constituency that does not share their values. “They will impose their morals on you.” It does not matter whether this is true or not. Once a negative image has stuck, the target is wounded—often mortally—for the political battle.

If you know you are going to be framed as mean-spirited and intolerant, it’s a good idea to put on a smile and lead with symbols that project generosity and inclusion. This will provide a shield from attack. When Clinton signed the welfare-reform bill he was flanked by two welfare mothers cheering him on.

Symbols are so powerful that if you manipulate them cleverly, as liberals do, you can even launch mean-spirited attacks on your opponents and pretend to be compassionate while doing it.

Liberals understand, for example, that positioning themselves as victims provides them with a license to attack. A gay politician like Rep. Barney Frank can assault an opponent and call it self-defense. The wife of the President can issue McCarthy-like proclamations about a “vast right-wing conspiracy” and get away with it because she is a woman and the First Lady, and because she has allies like James Carville and Sidney Blumenthal who will make her aggression look like self-defense.

Bottom line: If you are a white male in a culture whose symbols have been defined by liberals, be careful when you go on the offensive. And surround yourself with allies who are neither male nor white.

5. The weapons of politics are symbols that evoke hope and fear. Style, especially for high public office, is as important as any issue position or propaganda strategy. Jack Kennedy—a relatively inexperienced, do-nothing congressman and senator—was able to win a national election merely by reciting problems and then repeating the litany “we can do bettah.” Why? In part it was because he was handsome, witty, young, and charming, and wasn’t a zealot.

Conservatives lose a lot of political battles because they come across as hard-edged, scolding, scowling, and sanctimonious. A good rule of thumb says be just the opposite. You have to convince people you care about them before they’ll care about what you have to say.

When you do get to speak, don’t forget that a sound bite is all you have. Whatever you have to say, make sure to say it loud and clear. Keep it simple and keep it short. (A slogan is always better.) Repeat it often. Put it on television. Radio is good, but with a few exceptions, only television reaches a public that is electorally significant. In politics, television is reality.

6. Victory lies on the side of the people. This is the bottom line. You must define yourself in ways that the people understand. You must give people hope in your victory, and make them fear the victory of your opponent. You can accomplish both by identifying yourself and your issues with the underdog and the victim, with minorities and the disadvantaged, with the ordinary Janes and Joes.

This is what liberals do best, and conservatives often forget to do at all. Every political statement by a Democrat is an effort to say: “Liberals care about women, children, minorities, working Americans, and the poor. Conservatives are mean-spirited, serve the rich, and don’t care about you.” If conservatives are to win the political war and become a national majority they have to turn these images around.

As the Left has shown, the idea of justice is a powerful motivator. It will energize the troops and fuel the campaigns that are necessary to win the political war. Conservatives believe in economic opportunity and individual freedom. The core of their ideas is justice for all. If they could make this intelligible to the American electorate, they would make themselves the party of the American people.

Those are the principles. Now let’s look at four examples of the ways they work.

The left-wing sound bite that defines conservatives as mean-spirited fat cats and enemies of the poor is “Tax breaks for the wealthy on the backs of the poor.” This is a gross misportrayal of conservative aims, but it has been imprinted on the electorate through a million repetitions.

What is the corresponding chant on the right? There is none. Thus, the first new weapon conservatives need is a sound bite that neutralizes this attack and defines the Left in the process.

Here’s a suggestion: “Taxes for bureaucrats out of the pockets of the people.” It pretty well sums up what liberal policies are all about. If the trillions spent by the welfare state went to poor people instead of to bureaucrats, there would be no poor people.

Conservatives in Congress should label their bills with language that gives them an advantage. Unfortunately, they usually don’t pay enough attention to political details like this. Take the failed “Education Savings Bill.” Its very name projects an image that fits the liberals’ negative stereotype of conservatives as mean-spirited accountants. An “Education Savings Bill” sounds like something stingy people would dream up; it sounds like “Let’s spend less on education.”

In labeling their proposal, conservatives did the liberals’ work for them. Wealthy people don’t need a tax break to send their children to private school. Working Americans do. So why not call this legislation the “Working Americans’ Education Bill”?

And why not remind voters every chance you get that it’s well-heeled liberal legislators who send their own kids to private schools while denying working Americans and the poor the same privilege. Conservatives complain that liberals are using the politics of “class warfare” against them. But liberals will use class warfare as long as it works. The only way to stop them is to turn it against them. Taxes for bureaucrats out of the pockets of the people. Current policies mean private schools for liberal elites and educational squalor for working Americans. That’s a voter-seeking missile.

Issues and bills are not the only things that can be labeled to positive effect. There is a large socialist wing in American politics today (although few would identify themselves as such). Conservatives ought to be using a more accurate label for liberals: Leftists. Though conservatives are regularly identified as right wingers, almost nobody calls liberals leftists or left wingers. Even conservatives call them “liberals” rather than leftists. But “liberal” is a word whose root is “liberty,” not “government control,” which is what liberals want.

Conservatives should make “Left,” “Radical Left,” and “Far Left” reflexive labels for describing those who belong to what is now blandly called liberalism. They should practice referring to Maxine Waters as “my opponent from the far Left,” and to “my left-wing colleagues Bernie Sanders and Barney Frank.” Don’t blame the media for describing leftists as “liberals” while letting them off the hook yourself.

For a second example of the six political principles in action, consider the political destruction of Newt Gingrich by his opponents in Congress. This was a classic example of successful political warfare. It had nothing to do with intellectual argument or philosophical correctness. It was an illustration of Lenin’s injunction: “In political conflicts, the goal is not to refute your opponent’s argument, but to wipe him from the face of the earth.” Personal attacks can accomplish this task. That’s why liberals invented sexual McCarthyism to destroy Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. That’s why liberals call their opponents mean-spirited and racist. If people think you are a bad person, they will not listen to what you have to say about anything at all.

Gingrich was targeted as someone who had to be politically destroyed. “Newt is the nerve center and the energy source,” explained a Democratic strategist who understands political warfare. “Going after him is like taking out command and control.”

It was the liberals’ goal to cripple Gingrich, to kill him in political terms, so he could not return to the battlefield to fight them again. The centerpiece of their attack was an Ethics Committee campaign against his teaching and publishing projects. Left-wing opponents eventually lodged 74 separate charges, 65 of which were immediately laughed out of committee.

The number itself is significant. This was a case of “show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.” Some of the slanders inevitably stuck to the target. This steadily weakened the Speaker, making it harder for him to defend himself. A normally aggressive leader was kept off balance and on the defensive. Eventually, the conservatives on the Ethics Committee caved in, and Gingrich was forced to concede one frivolous charge. But one was enough.

What should the conservatives have done? They should have remembered they were in a war. They should have responded in kind to a blatant attempt to destroy their leader. Instead of standing around and watching him be pecked to death, they should have created a war room and a plan to fight back. The day Democratic Whip David Bonior (a charter member of his party’s militant Left) filed his first charge against Gingrich, the conservatives should have filed their first charge against Bonior. And then they should have filed charge for charge until the liberals gave up their attack.

This is exactly the way liberals neutralized the investigation of Clinton. They attacked the Special Prosecutor and put him on the defensive. They attacked him until every word and every charge he made became automatically suspect in the eyes of the people. Their attack strategy was the political equivalent of an anti-missile missile defense.

If conservatives had fought with half the tenacity to defend an innocent leader that liberals did to defend a guilty President, the political landscape today would be dramatically different.

Example three: The November 1998 elections in California. These were an unmitigated disaster for conservatives, a defeat unparalleled since the 1930s. The Republican gubernatorial candidate lost to his opponent by 20 points, taking down virtually the entire conservative slate.

In the Hispanic community, the results were even worse. Hispanic distrust of conservatives in California had been deepened over two elections by a pair of anti-illegal immigrant campaigns. As a result, the Republican gubernatorial candidate got only 17-23 percent of the Hispanic vote (depending on the exit poll). This disastrous showing was in spite of the fact that the Republicans ran more Hispanic candidates than the Democrats did, and in spite of the fact that the Republican gubernatorial candidate made an extra effort in the Hispanic community, including a television ad campaign on Spanish-language TV.

Five months earlier, however, in the same state, the results for a controversial conservative-backed ballot initiative affecting Hispanics were exactly the reverse. The victorious initiative to end bilingual education was opposed by every major newspaper and establishment figure in the state, by the chairmen of both the Republican and Democratic parties, and by the Republican candidate for governor. The sponsors were able to raise only $1.5 million for the anti-bilingual campaign, and were unable to finance a single television ad. Meanwhile, defenders of bilingualism spent $4.8 million to finance a strong TV ad campaign.

Despite these obstacles, the anti-bilingual campaign won a landslide victory, with 61 percent of the public voting for it. The measure even received 35 percent of the Hispanic vote.

How could this happen? The answer is that the sponsors followed the principles of political warfare, especially the most basic: They defined themselves as friends of Hispanic children who were trying to learn English and better their lives. They thereby won the sympathy and support not only of Hispanics who wanted their children to have a chance in life, but all those people who saw immigrant children as society’s underdogs deserving a fair shake.

There are many arguments that can be made for teaching Hispanics English. The survival of the nation is one. Bilingualism could legitimately be seen as a threat to national unity. Canada is a ready example of what can happen to a country with more than one official language. But such a positioning of the initiative would have invited the response that it was anti-immigrant and unfair, and that it would persecute a vulnerable segment of the community (poor immigrant children). This would have played into the hands of the left-wing opposition. Positioned that way, the initiative would have failed.

But once its image as a big helping hand to a disadvantaged group was imprinted in the minds of the California electorate, the result was inevitable. Not even a massive effort to smear its proponents as “racists” could whittle its support below 60 percent. This is what a strategically sound position on the battlefield can accomplish.

When liberals speak, every other word out of their mouths is “women,” “children,” “minorities,” “working Americans,” and “the poor.” This immediately organizes the battleground in a way that favors victory for them. Almost all Americans favor underdogs. Americans are tolerant and compassionate. To express concern for vulnerable people is to resonate with Americans’ sense of their better selves.

And now we come to the liberals’ trump card—the matter of race.

Conservatives have appointed blacks to significant positions. But unlike Democratic appointments, theirs are invisible. Pete Wilson appointed a black former welfare mother to head his welfare department and preside over its reforms. Eloise Anderson is one of the most informed and successful public-policy experts on welfare issues, a tough-minded conservative and a Republican who served on the welfare task forces of Governor Tommy Thompson and Newt Gingrich as well. Think of how powerful Eloise Anderson’s voice would be on the social-policy issues that are the key to conservatives winning the confidence of minorities and poor people in California.

But few people have ever heard of Eloise Anderson, including conservatives. Pete Wilson, whose political instincts are normally sharp, kept her existence a virtual secret. He did not give her a public platform to make important policy announcements, or showcase her on television at state events. If a political figure is not on television making important policy announcements, she does not exist.

And so conservatives got no credit—in this case, or in many others—for trying to free poor people and minorities from the oppressions of liberalism and the welfare state.

Politics is about winning elections and implementing programs. Because there is no majority in America that agrees on all the important issues, politics is about forming winning coalitions and holding them together. It is about getting people who disagree with each other to form an alliance to make things happen. In short, it is about compromise. The art of politics is to know how to get your principles implemented without compromising them too much.

Ronald Reagan was a famous compromiser. Throughout his administration he allowed deficits that no conservative in good conscience could justify. He did so because his choices were limited by political realities.

Reagan’s priorities were tax cuts and winning the Cold War. He gave the liberals their spending programs in order to get them to agree to a radical reduction in marginal tax rates and a dramatic increase in the military budget. He gave one negative (deficits) to get two positives (prosperity and peace). He compromised principle but for a greater good.

The problem of political purism is always with us. The reason is that many people confuse politics and religion. Politics is the art of the possible. Religion is the pursuit of an ideal. In religious matters, integrity of principle is not only an advantage, it is the goal itself. Religion is not about getting tax cuts or building schools. It is about saving souls. Being virtuous and right, having integrity and standing on principle are the very essence of its agendas. You can’t compromise with the devil and expect to get to heaven. In politics, on the other hand, pacts with the devil are made all the time, and on both sides of the political aisle.

Oddly enough, this can be regarded as a healthy development. The 20th century is littered with the corpses of people who got in the way of politicians—Hitler, Lenin, Pol Pot—who thought they were on a religious mission of social redemption. The appropriate places for making people moral and good are churches and synagogues and mosques, not statehouses or congressional hearing rooms.

Many conservatives want to have it both ways. They think that by being morally correct, conservatives can win. In fact, they think that’s the only way conservatives can win. The problem, they say, is a “loss of backbone”—by which they mean the failure to stand up for conservative principles.

We can agree that political squishiness has been a serious problem for conservatives during the Clinton years. We can also agree that being on the defensive generally means losing the political war. Where we may differ is on whether this defensiveness is the result of lack of principle or a lack of confidence in facing the enemy. In my view, conservatives blink not because they lack principle, but because they are convinced the firepower of the Left is superior to their own.

If current Republicans were naturally squishy, there would have been no “Contract With America.” The House conservatives became squishy after the disaster of 1995, when they were outgunned by the White House and knocked on their rear ends. Only two years later, however, they showed they could stand up for principle when they impeached the President, even though in the end they failed to remove him.

The House conservatives disregarded Clinton’s 70 percent poll ratings because they were committed to defend the constitutional process. Yet Clinton was able to survive a year that no other politician could have, because of his mastery of political combat. (Being a pathological liar and a borderline sociopath didn’t hurt either.) Clinton’s bulletproof political character naturally made conservatives cautious again.

Look at Clinton and ask yourself: How does he do it? How does he boff an intern in the White House, perjure himself before a grand jury, lie to the American people, and prevail in political combat at the same time? The answer is the children. The answer is the blacks. The answer is the poor. It’s the Democratic version of wrapping yourself in the American flag. Like every successful Democrat, Clinton wraps himself in the flag of the “dispossessed.” He says: “However badly you think of me, I’m all that stands between women, children, minorities, and the poor and those mean-spirited conservatives, who are probably racists as well.” Until the Republican Party takes this weapon out of the Democratic arsenal, conservatives are doomed to long-term defeat. If Republicans don’t convince the American people they care, conservatives will only win when liberals screw up.

David Horowitz, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, is author of The Art of Political War, which can be found on the Web at www.noleft.com.

[Barbie2004]

I just happened upon this and it is indeed a MUST READ!

But I would like to add a footnote: It doesn't hurt that the media is also a leftist arm of the Socialist Democrat Party of the USA.

[Me#1You#10]

Moving to Geedunk

Thanks