Yesterday, in Episode I of this diary, I made an argument about brand strategy: that Wingnuts have captured our national discourse by constructing a myth that all progressives are dangerous "Ultra-Liberals."
I argued that this tactic, promulgated by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, took and continues to take advantage of a general progressive stupor when it comes to brand strategy.
And I argued that this Right-Wing Brand Strategy (RBS), despite its overwhelming strength, includes a few critical flaws that progressives can target in order to get themselves off perpetual life-support.
Those flaws explored, after the flip.
What do Wingnuts have in common with Cool Hand Luke? After Luke wins a game of poker on a bluff:
Dragline: Nothin'. A handful of nothin'. You stupid mullet head. He beat you with nothin'. Just like today when he kept comin' back at me - with nothin'.
Luke: Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Next time you're around a blathering Wingnut, don't argue. Just listen. Arguing only feeds the rant, and it will over-power you. Let the rant run its course. Observe. use the Scientific Method. You'll notice something: the Wingnut doesn't problem-solve when he's all worked up. In fact, the Wingnut has no ideas (sound familiar?). The Wingnut is only effective in doing one thing:
Ranting about the evils of Liberalism.
When you really look at it, the RBS amounts to nothing, which for them has been a real cool hand.
Sure, we can talk about the tenets of "conservatism" amounting to ideas. When Teddy Roosevelt was alive, that was the case. But not anymore. Conservatives no longer have ideas, they have pre-existing ideologies from which thou shall not deviate.
Why do you think that modern Conservatism is so popular with the religious right? It's because modern Conservatism is a religion. And people who think alike tend to hang out. And if there's one thing you can count on, it's that Americans don't like somebody else telling them what their religion ought to be. Before it's too late, liberals ought to remind them.
The new hope for Liberalism is a process, and it goes something like this:
1. Admit defeat in brand strategy
2. Observe what the Conservative has done
3. Identify the flaws
4. Target them
5. Win.
The fatal flaw of moden Conservatism is that it's a wolf in sheep's clothing. It gets away with being extremist by convincing Americans that liberals are the extremists. It can't problem solve-because it is a religion. And it has no ideas (which give rise to progress) because it is primarily concerned only with its winning hand: breeding hatred of and distrust for liberals. In so doing, the Wingnut gets away with simply resting on his ideologiocal laurels, which is to say: he gets away with doing nothing.
The job of the New Liberal is to expose this ruse, to pull back the curtain on all-powerful Oz to reveal the little man at the big microphone. This, combined with a knack for open-minded problem-solving, in my view, will give rise to a winning Liberal Brand Strategy (LBS).
More on that in Episode III.