Have you ever noticed two things you never hear from the right?

[underpants]

-No this isn't an Andy Rooney piece-

I noticed this locally (on the local RW radio station) when Governor Kaine proposed banning smoking-the first shot across the bow.

I have never once heard any RW talking head call on listeners to contact their representatives

or to even engage the government in any way. Is it just me or are they instilling their hierarchy of power by simply bellowing out orders from on high? This way the followers will never take an iniviative they will just follow the issue of interest today.

Also

I have never heard a call for their followers to volunteer for campaigns

Give money sure but you never hear, at least I don't on any regular basis, the guy behind the podium asking for support at the headquarters or even encouraging people to get involved.

Maybe this is more of the hierarchy/keep them angry and afraid of "gubmint" or maybe the army of christian (telephone) soldiers really is as formidable as we are told. I tend to not trust that assumption as all the others have turned out to be completely void of reality.

[pepperbear]

1. when the Dems control ALL, you'll hear that plenty. n/t

[Rageneau]

2. Only thing I never hear them say is, "Sorry, I was wrong."

I guess because, if they ever started saying it, they could never say anything else.

[InternalDialogue]

3. You're right.

I had dinner with my parents last night (conservatives), and they brought two subjects up. One was a proposal by my city to help preserve the trees lining the city streets by instituting controls on when they can be cut down. The second was the proposed bill in the H of R to institute efficiency standards for light bulbs starting in 2012 and increasing through 2020. They disagree with both of them, but the issue was that they spoke of those issues as if they were being victimized. I told them, as I tell them often, that regardless of the issue, if they disagree, they should contact their congress critters and let their opinions be known. Write a letter to the paper, take some action. (Even though I disagree with them on the issues.)

But that seems foreign to them. I think that's a modern conservative mindset -- the government wants to screw you. (And you can substitute many other things for "government": environmentalists, George Soros, the media, etc.)

That's a big difference from the vibe I get from liberal friends. To us, government is a structure for us to wrestle with and try to control for positive purposes. It's not easy, and it ain't always possible, but I sense that liberals who feel put upon want to fight, while conservatives want to whine and appeal to some higher power, whether that be George Bush, Rush Limbaugh, or God.

It's funny, they get all red in the face about fightin' terrists, but they don't want to take up the infinitely more possible challenge of working to change their very own government.

As to your thought that there's a possible hierarchy that would rather not have an active base of supporters, I suspect you're right. Isn't that the nature of power -- to consolidate and accumulate? Even from allies, who are strongly desired, but only if they're not a threat to steal some of the power itself.

[underpants]

6. Victimization is huge in the RW noise machine

see my sig line on that note

It is a solidation of power. Now let's be honest we could be being lead around too but I doubt it-we have real live activists in seats of power and you do hear calls for action quite a bit. Back on the power thing--what a wonderful scenario they are basically told that the government hurts them and when it does, by the hand of the guy speaking, it is a "See I told you so" which was not only a title of a Limbaugh book (I think) but the great continuation of the vicious circle.

I have had conversations with people on taxes and I always throw this in there "It's not just how much I pay in taxes* it is what is done with it" and that leads to a conversation about at least trying to be involved and letting the people we pay to represent us know how I feel on issues.

*-it is always important to isolate which taxes are being discussed. I receive shock when I tell them that I (we-my wife and I) pay about 12% in Federal income tax. Everyone is convinced that they pay 30% (that is the standard line) or up to 50%. I have to stress that we are talking about FEDERAL INCOME tax not state and Soc.Sec. and unemployment INSURANCE and so forth. They are amazed at what they have heard but that was not said-that goes for most discussions I have on political issues.

Lastly there does seem to be a vibrant strain of paternalism in the right. You hear it in the almost sadist calls for punishment of those who have been proven wrong whether in a legal sense or in the court of society. The culture of victimization's angry treatment of "Welfare queens" is a perfect example.

[OHdem10]

4. It depends on the issue and their concern

Limbaugh will go full throttle when it is something
the Republicans really care about --the rest of
Radio Hate World falls right in step.

On cutural issues the same--Hate Radio and Fox
went after Dixie Chicks unmercifully.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

5. The much vaunted GOP grassroots is, and always has been, mythical

It's a well-oiled corporate machine. I have never once seen Republicans canvassing neighborhoods near me. On the phone, it's paid callers or robocalls. It's not really an army of soldiers on the phones, they work the churches by getting the pastor to politicize the pulpit. They control most of the business organizations and local news outlets. You see how their people to parrot the same talking points in LTTEs and calls to CSPAN. More often than not, these are GOP operatives, and they are often paid. Hell, most of their blogs are fronts for RW think tanks. They probably don't want actual volunteers. Real people are troublesome, what with their tendency to have questions and opinions.

This brings up a pet peeve of mine about the Democrats. I have beaten my head against the wall trying to persuade the local party that focusing so much effort and resources on traditional grassroots strategies like phonebanking and door knocking is not paying off. Sure, we win some local elections but not enough to lead me to believe that we're getting a good return on the invesment. I'm in the Arizona suburbs and they have people going door to door when it's 115 degrees and hardly anyone is home. Or they have volunteers making thousands of phonecalls to the same damn people over and over again. Most of whom don't even answer the phone because of caller ID. "But that's what we did in Boston/Chicago/San Francisco/insert other urban Dem stronghold" is the response I get from party officials and consultants. Who never do any canvassing or phonebanking themselves, I've noticed. You end up with an exhausted, burned out candidate and volunteers while the Republican opponent is fresh as a daisy and wins anyway. The way the GOP took over was by shrewd calculation, careful demographic studies, and leveraging technology. We're using marketing tactics that went out of vogue in the 1950s.

[underpants]

7. I have heard about the enormous expense the RNC has put into to training

I can't remember the annual number but it is huge. Dr.Dean has initiated this at the DNC or so I have also read.

I can tell you that running a phone bank for the Kerry/Edwards campaign the last weekend of the '04 race I got to talk to some high school kids who volunteered at both campaigns as part of their gov/civics class. They said that 1. our food was much better 2. everything at the Bush campaign was straight down the line right out of the playbook-read this script! do not adlib! do not dillydally we are interested in volume of calls here! and so forth. If the tables had turned the great criticism of the Bush'04 campaign would have been that it was too hardlined and too autocratic, not flexible enough.

My one petpeeve of Dems here in Va is how sloppy operations are. There has to be some happy middle ground in here between keeping it fun and happy and standing over people (see above) but good lord every office I went into looked worse than any flop apartment I ever lived in. I am not talking about just being a neat freak but trying to instill some snaptoitness or something.

I have to say that a lot of people do really appreciate that you personally took the time and are involved regardless of which side they are on. I had one person rip into me on the phone others mostly where fairly human about it.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

8. People are very nice on the phones and at the doors, and glad to see you too

That's really not the problem, and I don't mean to suggest that those are not worthwhile activities. In fact, it's great when the media picks up that we're doing that stuff. My problem is with canvassing being the centerpiece of a campaign strategy, particulary in what they call "the exurbs". My background is marketing and anyone in that field can tell you that trying to make sales on the phone or door-to-door is for dinosaurs. Yet I saw candidates for legislative seats, in very large districts of 100,000 or more voters, told that the key for winning was knocking on doors and phone calls. Sure, if you can personally contact 30,000 voters, it will make a difference but do you have any idea how time consuming that is? Some Dem candidates were spending several hours a day on the phone or pounding the pavement, 7 days a week. Most of them lost, and many lost by wide margins, even in districts that were somewhat competitive registration-wise. They simply couldn't get to enough voters in time to make the necessary impact, even with volunteers helping them. It's a numbers game. Meanwhile, the Republicans were mobilizing their business and media connections, whisper campaigns, and loading up the church vans. The Democrats who did the best, either winning or coming close, did some canvassing but focused more efforts on targetting specific types of voters with direct mail campaigns and getting media coverage.

[underpants]

9. Got ya

Thanks

[JohnWxy]

10. Good observations.. They just want to stimulate distrust of government a disengagement from public

policy matters. They don't want an informed public. Just uninformed distrustful and disengaged.

[slampoet]

11. Holy CRAP! You're right.

I use to have a visual metaphor for this.


I once saw a patch of public land where there were five little signs for Gore, and One big HUGE sign for Bush.