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Pandering is New to Republicans, But They’ll Catch Up

Jimmie | February 6, 2008 | Comments (0)

On what would have been Ronald Reagan’s 97th birthday today, Robert McCain is in a bit of a contemplative mood. I don’t blame him. I’ve been in the same mood all day and I think I’m in the same boat as most conservatives who have spent at least part of today thinking “[bad curse word]! What do I do now?”.

The choices are not pleasant. I’ll probably write more on the choice and expand on this post perhaps this evening. To be quite frank, I’m carrying around my own little storm cloud and I’m pretty much ready to hit the booth, cast my vote for the Socialist Senator, then hit a couple or six good German beers. I’m not looking forward to the nearly monthly fight I and my conservative friends are going to have to fight starting in January. Robert’s post just kind of intensified the dark cloud a bit more.

His quote, and thoughts on it, after the jump.

What got me thinking about Ronald Reagan today was my dissatisfaction with the mediocre communicators of today’s Republican Party, as I said after last week’s debate:

“It’s the damnedest irony in the world: The party made great by the Great Communicator is in decline because nowadays Republicans can’t seem to master the basics of being even a Fairly Decent Communicator, and the GOP’s speechwriting teams seem to be composed entirely of Michael Gerson clones …”

…I have no idea how an experienced executive like Romney can allow himself to be surrounded by such a second-rate message team. He’s got every top communicator in the conservative movement — Limbaugh, Malkin, Ingraham, Mark Levin — in his corner, and yet Romney can’t seem to figure out what the problem is. It’s frustrating to watch.

I think I have the answer and, when it clicked with me last night, it seemed the most obvious thing in the world. The reason that today’s Republicans are such woeful communicators is that they’re speaking the wrong language.

Look at the candidates we have out there. The messages are all full of nebulous, populist claptrap that’s all slogan and no substance. That’s not the language that conservatives speak and it’s certainly not been the language that Republicans have spoken for at least thirty years. It’s the new vacant language of “mommy fascism” that calls for action for action’s sake and promises to take care of you whether you want or need to be taken care of. In short, it’s the language of Democrats going back at least as far as the 1960s.

Now, there are certainly Republicans who believe in that sort of thing. We have at least two of them running for President. Republican speech writers are writing that bilge because they saw George Bush elected on a platform built of it and the party operatives are telling them that “hope” and “change” and “you suck, rich boy” plays in Peoria. And sure it does, to a degree. It’s like eating a Twinkie to fend off starvation. It tastes good and it’ll give you a little kick in the pants to get over the next blazing hot dune, but the benefits fade very quickly and soon you’re in worse shape than when you started and there are a lot more dunes to go. It’s not the natural language of the party, at least not in my lifetime, and so it sounds stilted and unnatural.

I had written a bit more, but, really, it just belabored the point. The Democrats are better communicators right now because they have had lifetimes of practice with the language of pander and vacant slogan. It’s inculcated into them nearly from childhood, cultivated in a thousand colleges by legions of unfailingly liberal professors, and spoon-fed to them by an undeniably liberal MSM. Give the GOP time, though. The siren song of the easy platitude is tough to resist. I imagine a couple more Johnny Macs and Hucksters and the patter will sound pretty smooth.