By Bree Hocking
On the second “real” night of the Republican National Convention with all those much-ballyhooed ”American hats” tucked snugly away in a closet somewhere, the GOP intensified its war cry against Washington (a place so horrible one wonders why it’s so eager be there), against Obama (whom it mocked with a vengeance as a frivolous former community organizer with lofty ideals and no common sense), against the “liberal” media who has raised questions about the experience of John McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, and against Islamic fascism everywhere, which it is just chomping at the bit to hunt down and defeat. Natch.
I’ve long argued that for better or worse it’s always easier to remember what the GOP wants you to remember than the Democrats (except under Clinton). Less than a week after the DNC wrapped up, I’d be hard pressed to name a single major theme of the Denver convention (maybe healthcare?) — there were just so many competing voices, so much catharsis, such effort to honor McCain’s service while questioning his judgment and not appearing unpatriotic.
I watched Wednesday night as Republican speaker after speaker — Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Linda Lingle, Rudy Giuliani, Palin – drove home the following themes till they were emblazoned on my mind like the Pledge of Allegiance. Man, these people can stay on message. The delegates ate it up, of course, and America might, too. It has before. The themes below, with a few twists, are effectively the George W. Bush playbook to winning the presidency.
1. Throw the Liberal Bums Out.In one of the more revealing lines of the night, Rudy Giuliani noted: “I learned as a trial lawyer a long time ago that if you don’t have the facts you’ve got to change them.” Then he did just that. “Can you imagine how they are going to shake up Washington,” he said, conveniently forgetting the fact that the White House (and for the better part of the past decade the rest of Washington, too) was controlled by Republicans. But wait, Mitt Romney went a step further. “We need change all right: change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington. We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington: Throw out the big-government liberals and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin,” he averred. But the conservatives are already in power. That means George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are “the big government liberals” McCain would be replacing? Roger that.
2. Only Republicans “really” love America.We, the GOP, are proud Americans (unlike some people whose names we won’t mention). We hate Islamic fascists, terrorists, extremists. Obama wants to read them their rights and a bedtime story. Let’s talk about Sept. 11, 2001, some more. Why aren’t we hearing more about that? Maybe because the Democrats are chickens, unlike the GOP. (Remember how we got that Osama Bin Laden guy? Oh, wait. That didn’t actually happen. Shucks.)
3. Sarah Palin has more experience than the entire Democratic ticket combined. How dare the “liberal” media question her in any way. She is the female Teddy Roosevelt. Check out the Mount Rushmore graphic behind her. All this media sexism is just terrible. Palin’s small-town mayoral experience is more significant than anything Obama ever did in Chicago (with a population roughly quadruple that of Alaska) and more relevant than anything Biden might have seen in some three decades as a Senator from Delaware (which is tiny but still bigger population-wise than either Wasilla or Alaska). She has real American small-town values and is a real American. A real American, with a real religion. Oh, and even LBJ thought it was harder to be a mayor than president.
4. John McCain is a war hero. A war hero, for crying out loud. Let us tell you the unspeakable things John McCain suffered during his honorable time as a POW…again and again and again. Obama has never fought in a war — ipso facto he’s never really fought for you. He likes to write books (Note: actually McCain has penned plenty of his own “memoirs”, too, with help from his faithful aide Mark Salter) and think fancy elitist thoughts at his Ivy League college while making nice with the Euros in places that are not America. Obama is a celebrity, while John McCain is a shrinking violet who avoids the spotlight at all costs. Sarah Palin wants you to know that Obama thinks he’s the messiah. Or at least Moses.
McCain would just like to be “emperor.” And after all, what’s so wrong about that?
Well done! Two comments:
1. I missed Giuliani’s speech, and I hadn’t heard that quote yet. How comforting. It’s like saying “If there’s no evidence, we’ll invent it”, which we have, in fact, seen the current administration do.
2. I think you’re right that Republicans are much better at getting their message across than Democrats are. George Lakoff, professor of cognitive linguistics at UC Berkeley, did some interesting analysis of this in his book “Don’t Think of an Elephant” – in his view, it’s mostly to do with how the party frames the issues (“frame” is used in the linguistic sense here)