The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Ready for Some Class Warfare?

Posted on | September 20, 2010 | 34 Comments

Instapundit links to Jim Hoft talking about this New York Times story:

President Obama’s political advisers, looking for ways to help Democrats and alter the course of the midterm elections in the final weeks, are considering a national advertising campaign that would cast the Republican Party as all but taken over by Tea Party extremists, people involved in the discussion said.

In fact, as I reported Sunday – also at The American Spectator – Howard Dean’s Democracy For American is already using the “extremist Teabagger” attack.

If Democrats were smart, they’d ignore that kind of advice. Polls have shown that the Tea Party is more popular than Obama and if there is one thing the American people have gotten sick and tired of hearing in the past 18 months, it’s that anyone who disagrees with the president’s policies is a racist kook.

To quote Travis Tritt: “The Whiskey Ain’t Workin’ Anymore.”

Which is why I think, when push comes to shove, the Democrat attack in the fall campaign will be their bread-and-butter: Class warfare. Go back to the PA-12 special election, where Tim Burns got blistered with hundreds of thousands of dollars of DCCC class-warfare TV ads:

Democratic ads accused Burns of favoring tax cuts for companies that “ship jobs overseas” and, as nonsensical as the charge may seem — whoever proposed any such policy? — it evidently served its purpose of appealing to job-security fears among many blue-collar voters in this Rust Belt district.
This leads to what should be a profoundly disturbing thought for the Right: If Democrats can win elections by making these sorts of far-fetched class-warfare attacks against Republicans, have conservatives really won “the war of ideas”? Thirty years after Ronald Reagan’s election and the supposed victory of the supply-side revolution in economics, could it be that a majority of the electorate are now hostile toward the free market? . . .

Mark my words, going into these final six weeks, we’re going to see lots of endangered Democrats running ads accusing their GOP challengers of being sold out to corporate fat cats: “Tax cuts for the rich!”

Will it work? I don’t know. But there used to be a guy who knew how to fight back against that kind of stuff. I wish the Republican Party would put this video on every TV station in the country:

Professor Jacobson says “The Lombardi Rule” is in effect.

Six weeks to Nov. 2. Go out there and win one for the Gipper!

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Category: Barack Obama, Election, Tea Party, Video

Comments

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  • JeffS

    Stacy, we’ve been conducting class warfare for years, nay, generations, especially since Obama was elected; he just took it to another level. One that is failing, so what you’re really saying is that the Demonrats will go back to tactics that were successful before.

    The real rub, of course, is that old tactics work only when the adversary isn’t expecting them. Which is not the case this time around. At least, not completely so.

    As you say, “Will it work? I don’t know.”

  • http://warlocketx.wordpress.com/ Ric Locke

    It’s already working. Go to any leftoid site and you can see denunciations of “the rich” and “rich corporations” and the whole class-warfare agenda, taken absolutely seriously and getting lots of agreement. Even the new RightNetwork, less than a week old, has already attracted a persistent gadfly, “Oswald”, who sees everything in class-warfare terms and isn’t shy about saying so.

    The big problem is that class warfare fits on a bumper sticker, and its counter requires explanation. Mark Twain once commented that a typist who could do 100 words a minute could match his rate in public speaking. Announcers can cram 120 or even 150 words in, but a 30 second ad still is only 60-75 words, which isn’t enough, especially when the candidate’s name and party and “I endorse this message” uses up a tenth of it.

    It’s going to take some hard slogging.

    Regards,
    Ric

  • http://www.leftist.org/haightspeech/ Kyle Haight

    That’s why Angelo Codevilla’s recent essay on the “Ruling Class” is potentially so important. It provides a different framework for thinking about ‘class’ in America. There *are* two classes — the government-empowered Ruling Class, and the rest of us. If the left wants to play class warfare, I think we should oblige them, but we should do so using the terms of the real class divide in America.

    They want to attack the ‘rich’? You mean like the union leaders that Obama gave a car company to? The Wall Street bankers who donated so much money to his campaign and got themselves bailed out by a Democratic congress? George Soros? Those overpaid public sector employees whose gold-plated pensions are bankrupting cities and states all across the country?

    The Democrats *are* the party of the rich — the exploitative rich, the ones who got that way by cashing in favors given to them by the politically connected. The Republicans should be (and in their better moments occasionally are) the party of the *productive*.

    Ayn Rand gave us the words decades ago. This is the aristocracy of merit versus the aristocracy of pull. The left is trying to misdirect a justified public anger; the way to stop them is by hammering on the true nature of the class division — between those who would be rulers and those who would be free.

  • http://stephengordon.com Stephen Gordon

    I’m so confused. At first they said that the GOP had astroturfed the Tea Party movement. Now they are saying the Tea Party movement has astroturfed the GOP.

  • http://www.daveinboca.blogspot.com daveinboca

    The NYT ponders whether to suck the scum at the top of the Demonrat Slough of Despond or feed off the bottom! Stephen Gordon’s point is brilliant, as commissars Pelosi/Plouffe/Axelrod Goebbels-wannabes are now debating how to frame their latest big smear and big lie.

    The train’s already miles out of any station that the NYT could influence—60+% of Americans think the MSM is in cahoots with the RICO demonrats anyway.

  • MrPaulRevere

    Reagan had the guts to call out the left on the big lie that underlies all of their politics, i.e. ‘One mans prosperity is the cause of another mans poverty’. I wish all of my fellow citizens well. I hope they enjoy productive lives and accomplish the goals the set fotr themselves. Their income is really none of my concern. I worry about my income, thank you very much.

  • waylay

    Six weeks to Nov. 2. Go out there and win one for the Gipper!”

    Conservative dingbats sure fall back on to chanting the tired and busted Saint Ronnie mantra whenever everything seems soooo exciting! (or feels soooo confusing…) to your little mouse brains in human skulls in monkey cages in political jungles, isn’t it?

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  • http://thecampofthesaints.wordpress.com Bob Belvedere

    This class warfare thing goes back to William Jennings Bryan and the Irish pols at the turn of the last century. It has always been a destructive force.

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  • http://www.coldfury.com Randy Rager

    Conservative dingbats sure fall back on to chanting the tired and busted Saint Ronnie mantra whenever everything seems soooo exciting! (or feels soooo confusing…) to your little mouse brains in human skulls in monkey cages in political jungles, isn’t it?

    Leftards sure fall back on ad hom attacks any time their tiny little reptile brains come into contact with any concept which they do not understand or approve (which, being dimwitted Puritan Communist scolds, is almost everything), don’t they?

    Crawl back in your hole, little girl. The adults are trying to have a conversation.

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  • Adobe Walls

    For weeks this summer the left pundits have been telling the Social Democrats to make their races local because a referendum on Obama’s policies would be disastrous. Now they all plan on running against O’Donnell?

  • JeffS

    Now they all plan on running against O’Donnell?

    Derangement syndromes tend to…..well, derange people. Thus, consistent behavior from lefties should not to be expected.

    See Bush Derangement Syndrome, Palin Derangement Syndrome, etc.

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  • Estragon

    Great Reagan mash-up video!

    I’m baffled by this talk that Democrats are “considering a strategy of attacking the Tea Parties” . . . what the heck have they been doing for the last 15 months or so?

    If the accusations of racism and violent extremism aren’t “attacks,” what are they?

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  • Curved Space

    This mode of attack is so easily countered. Who is richer than Al Gore, fat from exploiting non-existent carbon markets? Where did Howard Dean get his money? Republicans have to start playing for keepsies. And as the best available political channel for conservative thought, they need some guidance.

  • Kojocaro

    waylay we get it your glad ronnie is dead now do the world a favor and kill yourself