Out-Republicaning the Republicans: Triangulation gone wild

[Karmadillo]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/01-6

Published on Thursday, April 1, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Out-Republicaning the Republicans
Obama Revives Clinton's Disastrous Triangulation Strategy
by Ted Rall

"It was Bill Clinton who recognized that the categories of conservative and liberal played to Republican advantage and were inadequate to address our problems," President Obama wrote in his book The Audacity of Hope. "Clinton's third way...tapped into the pragmatic, non-ideological attitude of Americans."

Clinton's "third way" was "triangulation," a term and strategy invented by his pollster Dick Morris. Triangulation is a candidate's attempt to position himself above and between the left and the right. A Democrat, Clinton insulated himself from Republican attacks by appropriating many of their ideas.

Obama is even more of a triangulator than Clinton.

Triangulation can work for candidates in the short term. Clinton got reelected by a landslide in 1996. (It failed, though, for Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004.) But triangulation hurts parties, which sell an ideological point of view. Clinton worked so hard to out-Republican the Republicans that he forgot he was a Democrat­. He also forgot that Democratic voters expected to see liberal policies.

Clinton's greatest achievements ended up being Republican platform planks: free trade deals like NAFTA and the WTO, welfare reform, balancing the federal budget on the backs of the poor and working class.

<edit>

In his first year Obama chose to continue numerous Bush Administration policies, many of which originated in the far extreme wing of the GOP. Each of the following asterisks represents a broken campaign promise:

+Keeping the Guantánamo torture camp open*
+Continuing the war against Iraq*
+Expanding the war against Afghanistan
+Renewing the USA Patriot Act*
+No-string bank bailouts
+Continuing "military commission" kangaroo trials*
+Reserving the right to torture*
+Continuing the NSA's "domestic surveillance" program of spying on innocent Americans' emails and phone calls*

more...

[joeybee12]

1. Clinton did it because he was going down...he had to push the Repukes

even farther to the right...Obama came in witha sh*tload of good will so there was no need for it, at least not yet, and as a result squandered that good will.

[Echo In Light]

2. That's what is meant when the Establishment deems a candidate "electable."

[Greyhound]

3. Yep, "electable"="our boy". n/t

[tavalon]

4. We needed another FDR and we got another Clinton

[FiveGoodMen]

9. I don't even think we got another Clinton

[LaPera]

15. We got instead-as Mike Malloy coined & Rachel Maddow uses"Clinton was the best republican president

we've ever had"!

[NJmaverick]

5. More like stupidity gone wild .. Ted's to be precise

the fool even mentions how liberals betraying Clinton and the Democratic party helped get Bush into the White House, while at the same time calling on liberals to behave the exact same way. Ted you need to learn about that definition of insanity where they discuss repeating the exact same actions and expecting a different result.

[Froward69]

6. it just occoured to me that if Obama

played the republicans hate for him just right...

he could turn them all into lefties without them ever knowing the difference.

[cali]

7. wowzer. more dishonesty

more obama is bush 2 stupidity.

[NJmaverick]

11. I invite everyone person under that delusion to come to NJ

where they can see a teacher hating, union busting, mass transit despising, environment destroying, wealthy loving republican in the form of our horrible new governor, Chris Christie

[ecstatic]

8. yawn. by ignoring all the major liberal things he has done,

you lose credibility.

[NJmaverick]

10. Even before one notices all the nonsensical hyperbole that was used

[joeybee12]

12. Well, please enlighten me! Put down the pompoms and go at it! n/t

[ecstatic]

13. I don't have pom poms. Just common sense and the ability to read

[zipplewrath]

16. Wait a minute, strawman in action

He didn't "ignore" those things. Triagulation isn't about "ignoring" things. It's about positioning ones self, based upon politics, not policy, between competing factions. If you engage in this political behavior, you will move certain issues forward. The college loan thing for example, wasn't particularly opposed by many on the right. Some even (quitely) agreed with it. So the idea of triangulation says to move towards the "left" on this. Not because of any ideology or policy, but because of pure politics. In fact exactly for the reason that you are using it. It's a "fig leaf" so to speak to provide "defense" for the larger accusation that one has "sold out" or "abandoned" a particular constituency. It's an attempt to marginalize ALL critics by creating "corners" (which is where the triangulation term comes from) into which you can push opponents on ALL sides. Triangles have at least one acute angle. The political strategy is to "push" everyone towards a corner by co-opting positions close to the OPPOSITE side from the acute angle. Think of a triangle, and where the centroid is. It is "far" from the acute angle, and relatively "close" to the opposite side. So you stake out a position close to the side and push a large number of folks to the opposite "corner". You repeat this over and over on issue after issue. Find the acute corner and move AWAY from it.

Why that is a problem is because of exactly what we saw on health care. In the senate, a few democrats were able to basically cooperate with the GOP and oppose popular items like the public option and no mandates and drug price negotiations. So you move towards the GOP. As you do, the support for the GOP dries up, because you don't have to go all the way to that side of the triangle. You only have to get "close enough" to get that last vote. The problem being is that that centroid is "closer" to the "side" than to that acute corner.

And it is this kind of strategy that gave us DADT, NAFTA, and DOMA as well as welfare "reform". All the while allowing things like expanded national forests, and restricted logging.

Obama found an acute corner on our international reputation that allowed him to move towards the left and away from the right. Conversely, he found one called "peace" that moved him towards the "war" side. He found on on Iran that moved him towards negotiation and away from military action.

It's a policy that works because of people like yourself. You will help push folks into the corners.

[Doctor_J]

14. In order to "out-republican the republicans", he would have to

make health care LESS available, not more

nominate a second-rate partisan crook to the SCOTUS instead of a thoughtful moderate scholar

give the banksters MORE of the student loan money instead of cutting them out

Come on. Is he too appeasing and centrist for me? Yes. Is he out-bushing Bush? :rofl:

[rudy23]

17. The Clintonites that advise Obama don't realize the internet happened.

And the Daily Show. Do they not know that we can now play or post contradicting statements back to back, and make triangulators seem like fools? Like, anybody with a keyboard.

Wasn't the whole reason Clinton's triangulation worked is because his contradictory statements went down the memory hole?