Out of My Mind

Governing by "Soap Opera": The GOP Fine Art of Demagoguery vs. the Dazed and Confused Democratic Leadership Appeal to Reason

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

Republican campaign consultants are, in one way, right about the Democratic leadership.

It is out of touch with the meat and potatoes American who watches the equivalent of 77 days a year of television. The Democratic leaders, college-educated and generally a bit contemptuous of television outside of PBS, "The Daily Show" and some other hip offerings, don't get what's going on.

Just look at the on-cue crying jag and trembling flight of Mrs. Alito from her husband's hearings, egged on by Lindsey Graham, a former impeachment floor manager and now a senator who unethically was involved in the "coaching" of Alito during "mock Senate hearings" to prepare him. We can also safely assume that Graham was involved in the scripting of the hearings that included the soap opera dramatic moment of Mrs. Alito breaking down in tears.

It's not like the Democrats should have been surprised. For one thing, it was a warmed-over script. Clarence Thomas's wife had the same calculated "soap opera" moment during his hearings, and some of the Dem Senators were around then.

And despite the Democratic leadership's derisive dismissal of these tactics, they work in the elusive "Middle America," among those Americans for whom news and entertainment are so intertwined that they are indistinguishable. Take this account of a talk radio "experience" the Capital Times (Wisconsin) columnist Dave Zweifel had after the Mrs. Alito-staged "cry me a river" moment:

I got firsthand experience the other day on how this phenomenon some call "attack radio" is creating a misinformed and distrustful public....

I was treated to the tail end of strident attacker Vicki McKenna's ranting and raving over the news that Sam Alito's wife had to leave the hearing on her husband's Supreme Court nomination in tears. This was the first I heard of the episode so I listened more closely.

Clearing implying that the nasty Democrats on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee had caused this embarrassing situation with their over-the-top questioning of Alito, McKenna said if it was her she wouldn't have left in tears, but instead have thrown something at the nasty senators.

What really happened, obviously, was a far cry from what the attackers had led me to believe.

Incredibly, a fair number of Americans list attack radio shows as the place they get their news.

- Madison Times, January 16, 2006

And the crying scene (p. 43 of the White House script, no doubt) coverage wasn't limited to the right wing media echo chamber -- as vast as it is -- it was all over mainstream television and print, particularly Cable TV news. The people involved with the Swift Boat attacks were handing out press releases that they had no doubt prepared in advance, egging on coverage of the fabricated personal emotional moment. It was quite a propaganda operation.

The Democrats in Congress always looked dazed and confused when this tactic occurs, as if a nude streaker had suddenly jogged into the hearing, run a celebratory lap, and then disappeared. But that is why they are not blameless; this is a technique that Republicans almost daily employ -- and certainly trot out at decisive moments to compensate for their vulnerabilities and incompetence.

When John Kerry expressed admiration for how the Cheneys handled their daughter being a lesbian in a debate in which he, for the third time, pummeled Bush in the polls, the GOP propaganda machine was ready with an onslaught of feigned outrage. The claim was that Kerry was a cad who was using Mary Cheney's sexual orientation for political gain.

The fake uproar from the Cheneys was disingenuous and calculated, given that John Edwards had made a similar compliment directly to Cheney during the vice-presidential debate and Cheney thanked him for it.

But given Bush's lamentable performance during the debates, the Republicans desperately needed a "soap opera moment" to distract from Kerry's clear superior debating and policy articulation skills. So they turned to the same type of emotional news/entertainment story that dominates television: the GOP White House version of the "runaway bride." They made the debate pivot on a personal emotional moment, a diversion that dominated the airwaves of television and radio, because this is a story (the "protective parents" appeal) that voters who no longer have a choice between news and entertainment (since they are now pretty much one and the same) can relate to.

That's why the Republican consultants employ the formulaic appeal of the soap opera to get out of a jam, while the Democrats attempt cautious public policy approaches, urged on by fat cat consultants who are clueless except in knowing how to milk a cash cow. In this sense, the Republican consultants earn their money, while the Democratic veteran campaign and policy advisors don't.

In a nutshell, putting the multi-billion dollar funded right wing think tanks aside for the moment, almost the entire "appeal" of a radical, extremist political fringe element to television-addled Americans can be attributed to "soap opera" tactics to manipulate emotions.

There is a word for this and it's called acting like a demagogue.

And people who play the demagogue card usually end up being dictators. It doesn't matter whether they are Fascists, Communists or Nationalists, the two go hand in hand. That is how we go from "soap opera" moments that manipulate emotions, to the creation of a concept of a permanent war that manipulates fear, to the solidification of a "unitary executive" with powers to break the law and ignore the Constitution.

It's a sleight of hand all right. While many Americans are diverted by a tearful Mrs. Alito, her husband, who believes in the imperial Republican Il Duce, gets seated on the Supreme Court to help coronate King George.

The Democratic leadership in Congress believes you can appeal to public policy issues and the separation of powers in a Senate confirmation hearing. But reason and logic are not tools in the arsenal of the GOP demagogue. The GOP radicals have only emotions as their target, not reason.

The Democrats are looking to appeal to the brain; the Republicans to the manipulation of emotions that race through the heart -- and are subject to the strategic use of television "stories" and photo ops.

The parties are targeting two different body organs.

And in a world dominated by trivial news that appeals to the emotions -- and sensational celebrity gaffes, romantic entanglements and crimes -- the appeal to the brain has but the shortest of shelf lives.

It's barely but a blip on the radar screen of the evening news.

"The Big Show" -- Confirming Alito Moves Us One Step Closer to Erasing the American Revolution

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

A Washington Post headline on January 9th blared, "Democrats Ready to Go After Alito". But, it's probably too late, as usual. And this time, the Democrats are signing their own death warrant -- and that of Congress -- if Alito gets seated.

As usual, the hearing will all just be a farce, a sparring match like pissing into the wind. These hearings almost always are, as the Madison Capitol Times pointed out: "When the Senate Judiciary Committee begins questioning Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito this week, Americans will again be reminded of the limitations of the confirmation process for presidential picks to serve on the federal bench. Alito will lie to the committee, intentionally and repeatedly."

While the Democratic senators once again surrender to the concept that stage-crafted hearings filled with lies and evasions by the Republican Supreme Court nominees matter, the GOP has been running ads, holding rallies, and grassroots lobbying like a well-oiled machine. The Republican junta isn't waiting to make up its mind.

That's why Jerry Falwell already proclaimed joyous victory for a fundamentalist Supreme Court that would accede to the demands of the Executive Branch in all things totalitarian and religious. On the latest in the rounds of Sunday religious/political rallies for Alito, Falwell let you know Alito was their guy in no uncertain terms. He didn't need to wait for the "performance" of the hearings:

"What we've worked on for 30 years, to mobilize people of faith and value in this country, what we've done through these years is coming to culmination right now," Falwell said at a rally on the eve of Alito's confirmation hearing.

"Now we're looking at what we really started on 30 years ago, reconstruction of a court system gone awry," Falwell said.

-- "Christian Conservatives Rally for Judge Alito," Reuters, January 9, 2006

Alito will facilitate the merger of church and state under the nearly full control of a Republican executive branch that will be able to use any means it wants to ensure permanent rule, including wiretapping of political opponents in the guise of national security.

You see, Alito is a key architect, as we have pointed out in two previous BuzzFlash commentaries, of the absolute authority of a Republican President. Not only is he a firm believer in near dictatorial powers and making congress irrelevant, he was a key strategist in having the Republican executive branch assume such powers incrementally so as not to be noticed -- and therefore disarm any opposition among the American people or in Congress.

In short, Alito believes in the boiling frog theory of the Republican Executive Branch takeover of the American Constitution and democracy: boil it slowly and no one will realize that our balance of powers is being killed.

Howard Dean and Ted Kennedy are among the few Democratic leaders to take notice of the threat that Alito poses to the American Constitution and to democracy. Most of the other Democrats in the Senate express "concern" about Alito's championing of Executive Branch domination of government and exemption from following Congressional laws, but these Democratic senators -- wishy-washy and timid as usual -- say, "well let's wait and see what he has to say at the hearings."

This is the cruelest cut of all. The hearings are carefully crafted by the White House to make Alito appear as moderate and non-committal as possible in order to make the Democrats appear extreme if they filibuster Alito.

Alito is the mastermind behind presidential signing statements that allow Bush to -- in essence -- rewrite congressional law by stating his interpretation of the law. This, in reality, eliminates the need for a Congress at all. (Alito is also similarly a key advocate behind the strategy of dismantling Roe v. Wade in increments until people don't realize that it has been overturned through a series of "smaller" decisions. This, he believes, will bolster judicial consensus and help avoid political fallout to the Republican Party.) He is, in short, acutely conscious of the political context of how to achieve radical judicial objectives.

In not promising to filibuster Alito, the Democrats AND the Republicans in Congress are signing the death warrant of Congress as an institution.

Polls show the American public is about evenly split on Alito, or leaning slightly in favor of him. They would be adamantly opposed if the Senate Democrats had come out early and vigorously against his anti-Constitutional positions and extreme judicial viewpoints. He's not a virgin. He's a known quantity and an important architect of the imperial Republican presidency.

He will say whatever he needs to say to make a Democratic filibuster seem like extremism, when he is the extremist who threatens the very foundation of our democracy and system of checks and balances.

The Democrats in the Senate have already made an enormous tactical mistake in once again deferring their courage until "the big show" gets under way. Everyone has seen this play before, just some of the lies and evasions change. And then the Dems will cave, and promise to fight the next nominee. It's deja vu all over again.

As for Alito's skill in doing the Senate hearings rope-a-dope, "Sam was the kind of person you want when the entire world is going to be flyspecking everything you write and challenging every construct you advance," a former colleague in the Reagan/Meese Justice Department said of the man the Democrats claim they will "pin down."

And to those Republicans who have started yelling every nominee should have an up or down vote, then why did the right wing sink the Harriet Miers nomination before it even got to a hearing room?

This isn't a theatrical production. We're about to see the balance of powers guaranteed in our Constitution dismantled.

An election was stolen in 2000 by a 5-4 vote. It's about to get a lot worse.

# posted by The Seditionist @ 1/24/2006 04:44:00 AM