In his op-ed today I think that Krugman missed the salient point, more below the fold
I have read "What's the matter with Kansas" and I like the book, and it describes an important phenomenon, but it fails to provide the rational and the logic which drives this movement. And Krugman misses the same connection, a common mistake that is a large part of the reason we are losing. In my opinion Frank's book is in the vain of the"truth shall set you free meme". He shows us what he sees to be a coalition of hodgepodge issues that is so tenuously built that simply exposing the truth of the matter will rip it apart. But sometimes the truth isn't enough, if it were we would have President Kerry.
Krugman says:
The message of Mr. Frank's book is that the right has been able to win elections, despite the fact that its economic policies hurt workers, by portraying itself as the defender of mainstream values against a malevolent cultural elite. The right "mobilizes voters with explosive social issues, summoning public outrage ... which it then marries to pro-business economic policies. Cultural anger is marshaled to achieve economic ends."
This is an extremely accurate portrayal of Frank's book, and for me that's the problem. The Right doesn't just "marry" cultural issues to economic issues. This misses the entire point, which George Lakoff fleshes out in his two books "Moral Politics" and "Don't Think of an Elephant". The cultural issues are logical extensions of strict father morality, and so are the economic issues. What the left has failed to realize, and Lakoff points out is that the right and the left are driven by competing moral visions, derived from strict father morality, and nurturing parent morality respectively.
Strict father morality places importance on discipline, and rewards and punishment, among other values. They see "explosive social issues" as a result of a lack of discipline; the solution is to simply be more disciplined, as Nancy Reagan famously noted "Just say No". And in this Strict father morality, a disciplined person is rewarded, they are rewarded with wealth, for them taxes and progressive taxation is punishment for the disciplined, the "best" people in their moral system. It is immoral to punish these people. As I hope you can see from this description pro business issues aren't just married to cultural issues, they are both driven from the same over riding moral system. After reading Lakoff I remembered an important passage from Frank's book, he meets with a women who heads an anti-abortion group and Frank asks the women about taxing the wealthy, and her answer, in retrospect after reading Lakoff is predictable. She says you can't progressively tax the wealthy because they earned it, and to do so isn't fair. That is at the heart of the matter, the wealthy are so because they are disciplined and this is their reward for living the "right" kind of life.
And that takes us to the next important misstep:
So it doesn't matter that Social Security is a pro-family program that was created by and for America's greatest generation - and that it is especially crucial in poor but conservative states like Alabama and Arkansas, where it's the only thing keeping a majority of seniors above the poverty line. Right-wingers will still find ways to claim that anyone who opposes privatization supports terrorists and hates family values.
Krugman is right, social security is pro family, but it is pro-family in the nurturing parent moral sense. At the end of the day for a person who believes in strict father morality if you are poor it is your fault, you weren't disciplined enough. And to take money and give it to poor people is immoral. Because if you give people rewards for being undisciplined they will never learn to be disciplined, these people ought to be punished. I know this isn't an accurate description of the reality of poverty in our country, but that's the point, even in the face of reality, the Right still chooses to believe this version of reality, and simply showing it to be untrue isn't going to win elections. We need to appeal to their sense of morality and change their thinking there. Krugman's last point is extremely salient, people who are against privatization do hate family values, and they hate the family values of those who subscribe to strict father morality; strict father morality and nurturing parent morality are to competing versions of morality, to subscribe to one is to be against the other.
I need to write a disclaimer at this point, I like Krugman, and this isn't a Krugman sucks diary, it also isn't a Frank's sucks entry, quite the contrary, I feel that both these men have a lot to offer to the debate on the left, and the right. But Democrats need to get past this the truth shall set of free nonsense, IT WONT. We need to figure out what is really going on, to simply dismiss the right as a coalition of hodgepodge interests is dangerous, and quite frankly intellectually snobbish. I encourage everyone to go out and read "Don't Think of an Elephant" as well as "Moral Politics" if you haven't already. We need to start a new dialogue, and analyze why we are failing, this misunderstanding of our own moral system as well as that of the conservative movement isn't the only reason we are failing but it is a big reason.