The Conservative Narrative
Sep 18th, 2008 by nick
Sarah (full disclosure: my sister) is participating in an interesting discussion over at An Angry American. The conversation there is I think quite representative of the political conversation as a whole in this country. Sarah wrote several specific, concrete, points about why she’s voting for Obama: the economy, the war in Iraq, abortion, etc. Her conservative interlocutor responded with generalities: “don’t look to anyone else to solve your problems,” “government needs to get out of my way,” and so on. It’s not that she doesn’t have specific issues she could cite; I’m sure she does. However, she chooses to focus on this small-government, each-to-her-own, narrative.
This style of response mirrors what we’re hearing from John McCain, Sarah Palin, and others. Both McCain’s and Palin’s speeches at the Republican National Convention were short on substance and long on this kind of rhetoric. McCain said things like, “We believe in the values of families, neighborhoods and communities” and “We believe in a government that unleashes the creativity and initiative of Americans. Government that doesn’t make your choices for you, but works to make sure you have more choices to make for yourself.”
Granted, all politicians speak in these kinds of generalities. Barack Obama certainly can wax poetic like no one else. But it seems that the conservative narrative is more pervasive. You don’t see rank-and-file liberals going around talking generically about how government is a force of good, enabling people to help themselves, giving people chances who weren’t born with them, and so on. We talk about specific issues. Why is that? The conservative answer would probably be that their narrative resonates better with people because it’s more accurate. My liberal response to that is that conservatives have to resort to flowery narratives to hide the fact that most people in this country agree with the liberals on the actual issues. People might say in general that government should get out of the way, but how many individuals turn down their social security, their unemployment pay, their corporate welfare, their subsidized airline travel, their police protection, their clean water, their safe food, and so on? Actions speak louder than words. And people’s actions agree with the liberals.
Thus, conservatives realize, consciously or subconsciously, that they can’t win on the issues. How many people would vote Republican if conservatives all admitted that the logical result of rhetoric is that people are truly on their own. Deregulation leads to financial industry collapse and workers lose their investments and their jobs? Too bad; you’re on your own. You can’t afford health insurance? Tough luck; you’re on your own. Gas prices too high? Sorry, not our problem.
In short, believing in small government that should get out of the way while simultaneously benefiting from all that government has to offer is the modern double-think that Republicans exploit to continue getting elected.