Joe the Plumber and GOP 'Authenticity'

[Sidney J Mussburger]

Good article today by Thomas Frank in today's WSJ.

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The conservative movement made its name battling moral relativists on campus, bellowing for a "strict construction" of our nation's founding documents, and pandering to people who believe that the Book of Genesis literally records the origins of human existence.

And yet here are the words of Ronald Reagan's pollster, Richard Wirthlin, as recorded in one of the main Reagan strategy documents from 1980: "People act on the basis of their perception of reality; there is, in fact, no political reality beyond what is perceived by the voters." The context of Wirthlin's reality-denial, according to the historian Kim Phillips-Fein, who unearths his statement in her forthcoming book, "Invisible Hands," was the larger Republican plan to woo blue-collar voters.

The mission was a success. It worked because Republicans wholeheartedly adopted Wirthlin's dictum. Reality is a terrible impediment when you're reaching out to workers while simultaneously cracking down on unions and scheming to privatize Social Security. Leave that reality to the "reality-based community," to use the put-down coined by an aide to George W. Bush.

The "perception of reality," on the other hand, is an amazing political tonic, and with it conservatives have cemented a factproof worldview of lasting power. It is simply this: Conservatives are authentic and liberals are not. The country is divided into a land of the soulful, hard-working producers and a land of the paper-pushing parasites; a plain-spoken heartland and the sinister big cities, where they breed tricky characters like Barack Obama, all "eloquence," as John McCain sneered in last week's presidential debate, but hard to pin down.

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More at link
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122463199532056477.html