It seems like ages ago, but in October 2001, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Republican policymakers pushed for what they called an "economic stimulus" bill. The GOP plan was absurd -- the "stimulus" was a massive corporate giveaway, tilted towards the richest of the rich. Even the Wall Street Journal admitted the plan "mainly padded corporate bottom lines."
Democrats, eager to expose the ridiculous GOP agenda, convened focus groups to sharpen the message, but quickly ran into trouble: voters thought it was impossible that the GOP would actually do this. Paul Krugman explained at the time that the Republican stimulus "was so extreme that when political consultants tried to get reactions from voter focus groups, the voters refused to believe that they were describing the bill accurately."
I couldn't help but think of this when I saw a report yesterday on the pro-Obama super PAC, Priorities Action USA, which ran into similar trouble telling voters about Mitt Romney.
[Bill] Burton and his colleagues spent the early months of 2012 trying out the pitch that Romney was the most far-right presidential candidate since Barry Goldwater. It fell flat. The public did not view Romney as an extremist. For example, when Priorities informed a focus group that Romney supported the Ryan budget plan -- and thus championed "ending Medicare as we know it" -- while also advocating tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the respondents simply refused to believe any politician would do such a thing. [emphasis added]
As Jon Chait put it, focus group participants were hearing accurate descriptions, but the truth "struck those voters as so cartoonishly evil that they found the charge implausible."
Imagine how frustrating this must be to Democratic strategists. They can tell a room full of voters the truth about Romney's agenda, and a whole lot of folks respond, "That can't be right."
I can appreciate the underlying problem here: voters have been confronted with a lot of wild accusations over the years, and have become largely inured to the hyperbole. When the American mainstream hears about Candidate A or Party B supporting some radical policy, it assumes, just as a matter of course, that the claims come with built-in exaggerations. It's "just politics."
Except, sometimes, it's not.
To a certain extent, I suspect this is why the Republican Party didn't pay a severe price for the debt-ceiling crisis they created last year. In reality, the entire Republican Party threatened to crash the American economy, on purpose, and trash the full faith and credit of the United States, deliberately, unless Democrats met a series of non-negotiable demands. It was, to my mind, the most scandalous tactic adopted by a major party since the Civil War, but the American mainstream never responded that way -- in part because the media characterized the crisis as being the fault of "both sides," and in part because it seemed so hard to believe that literally every Republican in Washington would hold America hostage, threatening to do severe damage to the nation and its people unless they got their way.
But these assumptions are wrong. In the case of Romney, the Republican really does support a budget plan that would scrap Medicare and give tax breaks to millionaires. He really is planning to eliminate Wall Street safeguards and take away health care benefits from millions. He really believes the country will be better off if more teachers and police officers are laid off, and foreclosures continue unabated.
This isn't a liberal caricature based on election-year demagoguery; this is Mitt Romney's policy agenda.
If the American mainstream assumes accurate descriptions of Romney's plans are literally unbelievable, voters may be in for a shock early next year.
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and this is why I'm getting to the point of not giving a damn about humanity. Far too many of them are lazy, unintelligent, greedy, selfish and far too often willfully ignorant. It's the Emperor's New Clothes again and again and again, with so very few able or willing to do anything if it means their comfort is in jeopardy.
Agree. The US seemed to be on the right track, women's rights, minority rights, environmental regulations, animal test bans, then what happened? The missile crisis, the oil embargo, the dot com bust, 9/11, climate change? Now instead of facing our problems and doing something about them, we're running around like headless chickens, hording money and food, buying guns for safety, and hating on each other in a sea of disinformation and anti-facts. In just my lifetime.
agree absolutely. the old saying that people get the kind of government they deserve applies here, and a lot of american deserve willard in spades. my fondest dream is that there is indeed a heaven for tea baggers and baptists and they get to spend eternity there under the rule of these knaves.
Not for nothing, but it seems these same folks will easily believe Pres. Obama is a socialist, Marxist Muslim who created a way for people to access affordable healthcare in order to enslave everyone into a gub'mint-run program featuring death panels.
"My mind is made up. Don't confuse me with the facts."
That is why last week Mitt said on the stump, "Obama doesn't have a jobs plan." And the crowd nodded their heads, because he was preaching to the choir. Or quire: (25 sheets of blank, white paper.)
Yeah. You beat me to it.
"It can't happen here!" and "Stupidity is the most abundant element of the universe."
Come to mind when observing unwitting, unassuming, good hearted people cast aside a big picture view, and embrace myopia! -Kevo
Here's a good example of why Democrats aren't believable. The economy wasn't going to crash and default on our debt is impossible. People understand very well that the Govt credit card is maxed out, and spending has to be reduced. The boy has cried "WOLF!" far too long and far too often.
The economy did crash in 2008 - Lehman Brothers, anyone? Credit freeze, anyone? Stock market plunge, anyone? Massive unemployment, anyone? Of course, debt default is always possible. The "government credit card" was maxed out by GOP policies, and the current Democratic president has reduced spending to levels lower than the most recent Republican presidents. Facts, one and all.
Come back when you're ready to talk debt ceiling and/or Democrat doom and gloom.
You still don't understand why the U.S. received a downgrade after the debt default hijinks of Boehner, Cantor, et al., do you? -- and speaking of doom and gloom, it's the Republican nominee that's running on that platform and praying that the GOP can keep the economy slowed down long enough to allow him to exploit it for political gain.
shooter is a complete ignoramus on economics. Not good at it in your younger days, were you Walter Mitty?
Ah yes, the Boehner credit downgrade. Something all American can all be proud of. What a pretty picture that sent to the world. Showing the world just why it is they have no reason to fear America intellectually because, when you have idiots with power like the GOTea, America will do its best to bring its own demise.
Right. In the Republican alternate universe where facts don't matter, it's "impossible to default on the debt" because, if the borrowing authority wasn't raised, the government could just refuse to pay contractors or employees or Social Security recipients to whom it owed money in order to pay bond holders to whom it owed money and somehow the credit markets wouldn't interpret that as an event of default affecting the government's credit rating.
Yep, gubbamint must, must, I say, be run like a business, because, after all there's no difference between a government and a giant corporation and a family sitting at a kitchen table--all the same. Except, of course, when it comes to how credit markets feel when the government starts having to make decisions about which creditors to stiff and which ones to pay. Nope, while the credit markets would freak out if Exxon or a family did that and instantly trash their credit ratings, when the government does that, the credit raters will go "Yay!" and our creditworthiness would soar and our interest rates would plummet.
And yeah, the government credit card is totally "maxed out." Because there's no one on the face of the earth willing to lend them more than they've already borrowed. That's why interest rates on federal debt are so catastrophically high right now.
Holy crap, the stupid is strong in this one.
Basically, Shooter is only ready to talk when you subscribe to his particular brand of delusion. They ARE talking debt ceiling, Shooter, specifically the way that the GOP has used it as a tool to push its extreme ideology at the detriment to the country. Come back when you're ready to deal in actual history.
Of course we can default. Come back when you're ready to talk knowledgeably about economics. We might not have immediately, but even economists who said it wouldn't be the immediate result of a failure to raise the ceiling said it would be cataclysmic. This wasn't a Democratic (or if it makes you happy, a "Democrat") thing. Responsible parties on both sides of the aisle were concerned. Bruce Bartlett, Pete Domenici, etc..
Would it help to hear it from Forbes? http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2011/06/09/threatening-debt-defaults-has-us-become-the-new-argentina/
Do you actually have a brain, you wanking moron? Please, send me your address. I want to come take your guns from your cold dead hands.
I love it when people like you demonstrate arrogant ignorance. It always makes me smile.
Any questions?
Oh please, I converse with all sorts that have their own personal delusions. You for instance. And forgive my absence, I decided to hit some range balls down at the club this morning.
Right, the extreme ideology of spending within one's means. How radical. Why are in favor of being a deadbeat?
If the government is indeed "like a family," then we shouldn't worry too much about the current levels of debt. Most families have a much greater ratio of debt to current income than does the U. S. Mortage debt, car debt, credit card debt, etc., for many families is several times that family's annual income. It's the equivalent of our spending money on things like infrastructure that represent long-term investment in productive capacity and an improvement in quality of life.
Gad. Yes we can, if we really want to, but we aren't going to. Would it make you feel better to know that default is illegal?
http://blogs.reuters.com/breakingviews/2011/06/28/default-not-an-option-under-u-s-constitution/
Most families have a much greater ratio of debt to current income than does the U. S. Mortage debt, car debt, credit card debt, etc.
Important difference, car and home loans have collateral. US Bonds do not. That's why Govt debt is like kiting checks, they're both pieces of paper promising payment in the future.
Yes. I have some questions. Like, for instance, how can you possibly pretend to believe that defaulting on one set of obligations in order to pay another set of obligations wouldn't be construed as an event of default that would send interest rates soaring and expect people not to point and laugh? If an individual or a business did that, the creditors would put them into bankruptcy in a heartbeat because it means they no longer have the ability to pay bills as they come due and, here's the part you don't seem to understand, have no credit.
Or, here are some more for you. How many companies do you know of whose business, whose entire purpose for existence in very real sense, is to do things that benefit the public and private enterprise but that can't be done by private enterprise because they aren't profitable or, if profitable, can't be consigned to private entrprise because the incentive to act unethically is too high? HHow many businesses or families do you know that have their own currency? How many businesses or families do you know whose revenue and cash position actually get worse when they reduce expenditures?
As to that fed thing? Yeah, congratulations. You finally caused me to hit the point of futility that comes when you try to explain physics to a fundamentalist. I could do it, but what's the point.
You're going to like this one, folks: shooter's major in college was Economics. Hahahahahahahaha...
And interest rates are low because money has no considered safe place to go but to where investors think it is safest at this point: in U.S. debt. And government's sole function is society is to make a profit, you know, like a business!
In a way, it's sort of nice he drops by to deliver his poo nuggets of wisdom so we can all have a look-see at just how damaged the thinking and logic on the far right is.
What a joke this Walter Mitty libertarian kook is. Just read him and laugh.
Gad.
Business has cash flow problems all the time and that doesn't mean bankruptcy. Illinois hasn't paid vendors in months and months, are they bankrupt? Not yet.
Every one that kites a check. My checks don't have my picture on it, but they serve as promissory notes all the same.
This is interesting, you think Govt has less cash when they spend less? Let's hear the reasoning on that one.
Yes I understand that the real world is wearing on fantasists but since you don't believe me, maybe you'll believe this guy.
http://toughmoneylove.com/2009/03/20/when-fed-really-prints-money/
And the Fed bought 60% of the bonds issued last year.
http://www.moneynews.com/Headline/fed-debt-Treasury/2012/03/28/id/434106
Any questions?
I have one for you shooter: when people have proven you wrong and yet you STILL post nonsense, is that for your own ego or for a troll pay check?
When the economy gets bad, people spend less money. When people spend less money, the economy gets worse. When the economy gets worse, people lose their jobs. When people lose their jobs, they don't pay taxes. When people don't pay taxes, the government gets less tax revenue.
When the government spends money on projects for the public's good (law enforcement, transportation infrastructure, healthcare, education, etc), more people are employed, so more people pay taxes. This makes revenue go up, but since the government is spending more money, it doesn't actually reduce the deficit.
However, the projects that the government is paying people to do also lower the cost of business: law enforcement reduces losses due to crime, healthcare reduces the burden of health insurance on employers, infrastructure reduces the cost of transportation, and so forth. When the cost of business goes down, the economy improves. Everyone gets paid more and more jobs open up. When that happens, more people are paying more taxes, and the government experiences a net increase in revenue.
This is also why running the government is not like running a corporation or keeping a personal budget.
"Bread and Circuses"
I'm sure the Romans felt the same way about the end of their time at the top of the political food chain.
The American system is breaking down, piece by piece. The morals and actions of the GOP are only the most blatant example of the disintegration.
Name any one single system that functions well for the American people as a whole.
Social Security. That's why they want to destroy it.
This is exactly the nightmare we're living through. I had stayed out of paying strict attention to things for quite a while after Obama's election, thinking things would get back on track. When I got back to it, I simply could not believe what was going on. It's damn near impossible to believe that the Republicans haven't been extincted after causing the fu king mess they have with 30+ years of failed conservative ideas and policies resulting in crushing inequality and a worldwide Great Recession. But there they were, obnoxiously and loudly claiming we needed to get back to the policies that caused the problems in the first place. I couldn't believe it. I simply couldn't believe it.
And this is the sad part. Democrats have allowed this to happen. Obama and Democrats could have AND SHOULD HAVE ruined the Republican brand with nonstop ridicule after Obama election.
Democrats need to learn. Sometimes something just has to be killed. And the Republican party needs to be killed. No mercy. Just kill it. Or it is going to kill you. KILL it.
I can't get too worked up about this. I work in market research and have been involved with hundreds and hundreds of focus groups over the past 25 years. A focus group is 8-10 people. If you get one respondent with a dominant personality, that respondent has a lot of influence over the opinions other people in the group feel comfortable expressing. It's possible there was only one person in this group who didn't believe the Republicans would actually do this, and that influenced the remainder of the discussion. And even if all 8-10 people felt that way, it's 8-10 people. There's a reason you can't draw statistically sound conclusions based on focus groups, and especially not based on only ONE focus group.
If there's actual quantitative polling data to back this up, then it's time to get worried. For now, nah.
There is a rare book containing speeches from most of the Republicans in congress at the time, AGAINST going after Hitler. They seemed to think Hitler was just taking care of business and America should stay out of it. I've lost the link and am wondering if anyone else knows of it. Those speeches are likely indicative of the Republican world view, that has even gotten crazier. And it SHOULD scare the @!$%#e out of us.
If you really want to see how crazy they are, go google "Alexander Stevens cornerstone speech". Stevens, the VP of the Confederacy, laid out in 1861 how the Confederacy differed from the United States. Once you get past the ringing defense of slavery as "god's will" and read his description of what I would call "southernomics," you will be amazed, because those are the exact same policies today's "Republicans" (i.e., the modern Confederates) put forward.
And when they talk of themselves as the "party of patriotism," I will refer you to Doris Kearns Goodwin's book "No Ordinary Time" about FDR's leadership during WW2 on the home front. Reading about the actions of the Republicans then sounds almost word for word like their actions today.
Let us remember that Preston Bush, the father of two presidents Bush, made his money back in the 1920s organizing funding for the rise of the Nazis in Germany, which he profited from in the 1930s once they were in power, and he only avoided indictment for treason under the "Trading With The Enemy Act" by purchasing the available Senate seat from Connecticut in 1942. Again, voted into office by voters who couldn't believe he could have done such things.
Have you seen the "Southern Values Revived" article at salon.com:
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/01/southern_values_revived/
Yeah, you can see the crap influence Southern culture has had on the country in the last 30 years. I still can't believe NASCAR and wraslin' became big entertainment, nor can I believe somebody as clearly obnoxious and despicable as Newt Gingrich had a big of a negative influence on the country as was allowed to happen.
both of which where promoted by northern media and marketing companies.
Amazed? Not me. I know enough about American history to know the roots of the American right's ideology: straight down through the Confederacy, Calhoun, and the antifederalists. It's an ugly, sordid thing, "conservatism", and it's greatest strength is the fact that too many decent people can't bring themselves to believe how vile it actually is despite repeated demonstrations of that fact.
This should be sent to the Obama campaign and be the script for a face to camera tv spot.
Steve.
I am no communication guru,i wish it was a mathematical/physics doozy.However,i think that i "grasp" why they'd show reticence to Mr. Burton's pitch.
There are essentially 3 ways of winning an argument.
-The dialectic method -debate - rhetoric.
You can't use dialectic method,because it's essentially use in highly specialized milieus.
You can't use debate in its pure sense,given that the mass is distracted and not so intelligent and are too often influenced by the media and their own biases.
The media makes it too difficult for some to separate rhetoric(assertive reasoning) and debate(evidence based reasoning).So the resulting effect of this mess is that the mass "Think" in terms of Politics not Policy.
Put it this way:What if instead of presenting pitches to them,we ask questions?
Make them use counter-factual thinking? examples---
-Imagine the state of the Economy if Clinton had a third term,would He had rush us into two unpaid wars?
-What if Mr. Gore had won the 2000 election,do you think the economy would be this bad?
-What if Bush had increased taxes to pay for the wars and medicare part D do you think we would be this deep in debt?
-Do you know what a Presidential cycle is and how it affects you?
Yeah, i understand that is resuscitating the past,But that is the point.Make them go through the past and maybe just maybe they can think and realize a thing or two,before Presenting Pitches to them.
What is really scary about groups like these,is that these people call themselves moderate or independent---When i was young,i used to think that an independent is an enlightened individual who came to that position in our Politics because of some long and tedious analysis of our Political topology.I now know better.
Good thinking. Going at it by asking people to think will expand their minds a bit, and the more their minds expand, the less they will retract to their original size. It might be something worth trying to see how well it does and expand it if it works.
Shock treatments for everyone.
Ahhh, just more liberal con-spiracy theories.
You see they have conditioned people into A) seeing "liberal" as a sign of evil and B) Disbeleiving anything that they label as a conspiracy.
It is sort of like "Yellow Horde" worked against Japan and China or like how the McCarthy era instilled the fear of Communism to such a degree that when McCarthy started his communistic witch hunts and smear campaign nobody dared to speak out until that blessed moment when..
HUAC subpoenaed Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman of the Yippies in 1967, and again in the aftermath of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The Yippies used the media attention to make a mockery of the proceedings. Rubin came to one session dressed as a United States Revolutionary War soldier and passed out copies of the United States Declaration of Independence to people in attendance. Rubin then "blew giant gum bubbles while his co-witnesses taunted the committee with Nazi salutes."[22] Hoffman attended a session dressed as Santa Claus.
Gotta love Pigasus!
Shooter has hit his mark today - 8 replies to his weirdly provocative factually nonsensical comment. Here's a thought:
CONTENTMENT IS THE REAL WEALTH
There's an upside to this, if true. It should mean that the billions in negative advertising that Rove and his buddies will run against Obama won't have much effect. I've thought for some time that the Repubs may have done Obama a favor with their over-the-top rhetoric in the last four years. People may just tune almost all of it out as "just being more of the same."
That would be nice.