The Problem With The America Right -- A Realistic View

In my last article, I took apart an article from The Economist which purported to outline the problems with the American right. Their arguments were of course, garbage. Basically, they concluded that the problem with the American right is that it doesn’t do the bidding of the left. Boo hoo. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t problems with the right. Here are the problems as I see them.

1. Poor Communication Skills.

The biggest problem with the right, and the one that has frustrated me to no end for decades, is that the right is very poor at communicating:

Conservative Politicians Don’t Understand The Principles

First, few of our politicians actually understand the principles for which they stand. The most obvious example is John McCain, who showed during the last election that he didn’t know the difference between an “earmark” and a deficit, didn’t understand how the Federal budget works, didn’t understand how or why free market principles work, didn’t understand when regulation is necessary and when it isn’t, and didn’t have a clue how tax cuts stimulate economic activity. Basically, he knew the buzzwords but doesn’t understand the principles.

What this means is that McCain and the rest are incapable of explaining those principles to the public in a way that is understandable and persuasive. It also means that McCain and the rest are incapable of coming up with conservative, free market solutions to the nation’s problems. More than anything, this is what keeps the public wary of Republicans -- they don’t know what we stand for, we can’t seem to explain it, and we often seem not to have any solutions to offer.

This is why sixty percent of the American public shares conservative views, but only forty percent are willing to identify themselves as “conservatives.”

Conservative “Thinkers” Don’t Understand Politics

Secondly, most of the “thinkers” on the right who understand the principles don’t understand politics. This harms our ability to reach the public. Indeed, for years now, it seems that conservatives have been incapable of speaking English. Whenever they speak about budget matters or tax policy, they speak in terms of line items and supplemental measures, and they use heavy economic and accounting lingo. This is the political equivalent of sleeping pills. The public wants to know what you stand for, they don’t want to have to take a masters course in accounting just to follow what you’re saying.

Moreover, these thinkers live too much in the land of pure theory. They never understand that politics is not played on a field of pure logic where all values are clearly defined. It is played on the field of emotional appeals where believability trumps fact and imagery trumps truth. By not getting this, these thinkers repeatedly prove themselves incapable of coming up with compelling arguments, and they routinely come up with arguments that only anger the public.

For example, it is absolutely true that increasing unemployment benefits will increase the incentive for people to stay unemployed. That’s undeniable. Yet using that argument to oppose an increase in unemployment benefits during a recession is political poison. But conservatives stupidly did this because they assumed the public would see the logic of their position. They didn’t. They saw conservatives being “uncaring.”

This same impulse causes these thinkers to fall into traps set by the left. For example, the left loves to frame capitalism as “survival of the fittest,” which scares the heck out of the unfit. But the right, rather than refuting this mischaracterization, almost revels in it. Indeed, they pound their chest and say, “absolutely, and that makes us great.” But in reality, capitalism is about reallocating resources to create better opportunities for everyone. Firms that sell things no one wants go under, and new firms put those resources to better uses, and everyone benefits. Capitalism doesn't abandon people. It is socialism that leaves people behind in perpetual ghettos of joblessness and shortages.

Sadly, the right never fights back on these mischaracterizations because it doesn’t understand the power that emotional appeals have. Instead, it sits around telling itself, “no one is going to believe that, because that’s wrong.” But that’s not how humans work. Of all the recent conservatives, only Reagan understood the need to fight back on this front.

Conservative Activists Live In A Bubble

A lot of people won't like this one, but it’s true: conservative activists are a problem.

Politics is about persuading the public that your goals are worthy of being put into law. But activists (left and right) rarely understand the public. Indeed, they tend to live in bubbles because they surround themselves with people who share their views. This causes them to become increasingly extremist in their thinking because there is no one to put the breaks on their “enthusiasm,” and it causes them to lose touch with the public because everyone they know agrees with them. This also causes them to wrongly assume that the public supports them.

As a result of this, when activists open their mouths, they often advocate things that are genuinely shocking or scary to the public. And this is a problem. Indeed, moving public opinion is like steering an oil tanker: you need to nudge it inch by inch, winning its trust the entire way. That means taking only the steps the public will accept. When the public sees that the world hasn't ended, then you ask for the next step -- not before. But activists don’t want to hear this because they “know” that the public is "really” behind them, because that’s all they hear from their friends.

And of course, this leads to disaster because the public may share some of the activists' views, but they definitely haven't hit the same level of extremism. Thus, while the public may accept "limit this" or "regulate that," it freaks out when it starts hearing “ban this” or “ban that” or “eliminate that.” Nor does it understand whatever nuance the activists are using. For example, when activists say “eliminate the Department of Education,” the public hears “end public education,” not “free education from federal interference.” When activists whine about certain books or television shows, the public hears this as “ban books” or "ban films," and they wonder what restrictions the activists are planning to heap onto a culture that the public generally likes. It doesn't help that so many on the right proudly proclaim how they "never watch television" or something similar. This is also why the nostalgia that besets so many on the right is so fatal to public opinion: no one outside the bubble wants to return to 1950.

The key to effective persuasion is to offer the public steps that they consider acceptable. That means finding ways to make your goals seem like their goals. But the activists don’t get this because they assume that the public is secretly already with them -- and quite a few actually don’t care at all what the public thinks, they are so obsessively focused on their pet peeve that they want it ensconced in law no matter what the public thinks. This makes the activists a problem because they tend to turn off and scare the public a great deal.

What makes this worse is that the media ignores or downplays the fruitier activists on the left, but it highlights those on the right. Further, the thinkers and politicians mentioned above are very poor at handling the activists, thus the public tends to think that these activists speak for the right as a whole.

2. No Plan.

And that brings me to the second big problem. The right has no plan at the moment. The reason for this is a combination of the above factors. Conservative politicians have no plan because they don’t understand conservative principles. Conservative thinkers offer plans, but they aren’t politically feasibly. And the activists are screaming for things that sound insane.

This makes the right very easy to characterize as the “party of NO” and as the party of extremists. This is what makes it so difficult to convince the missing 20% who share conservative views that they should be on the side of the conservatives.

Conservatives need to draw up a short platform of maybe ten points, based on actual conservative principles, to brand themselves. This platform needs to be spelled out in easy to understand, highly visual, and emotionally-grabbing language. These principles should not be vague or generic (e.g. “we’re patriotic”), and they should not be a laundry list prepared by activists (e.g. "eliminate the Department of Education") or lobbyists (e.g. "increase insurance coverage for all"). They need to be real principles. And this platform must be written to reach the modern public, i.e. it should not be written by people who like to image themselves living in 1776.

3. Too Many Knee Jerk Reactions.

Finally, too many conservatives have become knee-jerk thinkers. Just because the other side advocates something, doesn’t mean it’s bad. Just because someone you like advocates something, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. And stop circling the wagons around rotten eggs. When someone is corrupt, they are bad for us all around. If someone is stupid, they aren’t going to represent us well. And just because the left attacks someone, doesn’t mean they are a good representatives for our side. I hear this all the time: “they are attacking X because they fear X.” Really? Is that why you poke fun at Biden? Because you fear him?

Ditto the blog world. I’m amazed at how shrill and hyperbolic the blogosphere is. I still remember clearly how we told you that Obama was a fool from day one. But at the same time, conservative bloggers everywhere else were lost in a world of fantasy paranoia where Obama was the fulfillment of a secret master plan by Muslims and long dead evil-genius leftists to convert us into the Soviet Union redux. Even today, reading most blogs is like listening to air raid sirens. . . “Wwwwwaaaaaaah!! Obama did ___ today! He’s Hitler! He’s a socialist! He’s planning to destroy the country! There has never been a graver threat to our country that what he did today. . . at least until tomorrow!” Many on talk radio are no better.

Knee jerk reactions and paranoia have been the domain of the left for decades now. Conservatives are thinkers. Our views require understanding and thought, and they need intelligent, capable salespeople. Leave the knee jerk stuff to the left.


That's what I see as wrong with the American right today. Thoughts?