Has the right been too extreme? Will they stop?
These questions are mute. Right wingers are not about to tone down their extremist rhetoric in response to events in Tucson.
The truth is they can't. If anything, they'll be doubling down.
The question our leading media lights should be asking - so that they might have a useful conversation, for once - is really:
Why does the right use extremist rhetoric? Why do they stoke extremism?
The fundamental answer is that they have to.
Because in a calm rational debate, they lose. Because they are a minority. Most citizens disagree with their objectives. Most citizens disagree with their values. If they don't blow up the debate, they lose.
As long as we're debating things like whether the famous Palin crosshair chart is extreme or not, we're playing on their turf. We're wasting our time and breath. We're living in the land of misdirection and magical thinking.
Their rhetoric and tactics are obviously extreme. By attempting to lie about the crosshair chart so blatantly - surveyors symbols? - people like Palin have effectively conceded this obvious point. Its time to move on and ask why they do what they do.
The answer is pretty straight-forward, and probably not that controversial outside W's 27%. Its just accepted too blithely as the way of the world.
Why do they stoke extremism? Because the facts are usually against them. Because their theories on economics, regulation, foreign policy - whatever - generally hold no water. (They're not really meant to hold water - they're designed to be marketable.) Their diagnosis of problems is deeply corrupted because they are so deep in the pockets of special interests. Their policy prescriptions are indefensible when brought under sunlight, scrutiny, and analysis.
The key equation for right-wing success has four parts:
- Blow up the debate
- Stoke the hatred of their base
- Stoke the fear of the "independents"
- Intimidate the democratic base (i.e., "voter fraud")
Pretty much everything they do fits with one of these strategies.
When the right succeeds at these things, they win. When they don't, they lose.
Blowing up the debate was a tactic they were able to take to new levels in 2009 and 2010 because neither Obama nor the villagers seemed willing to call them out on their intransigence. It turned people off on the political process and just made citizens angrier in hard times.
The stage is set, so cue the hate. My aunt regularly forwards me right-wing rants. They're never remotely accurate on a factual basis. But they're great propaganda - raving about the "$1 trillion a year we spend on welfare for moochers." Ronald Reagan, whose 100th birthday they'll celebrate with blatant whitewashing and hagiography in 2012, stumbled upon the mythical "Chicago welfare queen" almost by accident. But resentment of "her" propelled Reagan into the history books.
Republicans can't attack real federal spending - because that would imply dismantling the baroque 21st century patronage system they've built through the vast expansion of the military-industrial complex, and which "business-model" they've now carried into other "opportunity" areas of the federal budget through initiatives like Medicare Part C and Part D and Tom DeLay's K-Street project.
Their policy prescriptions are generally ridiculous. The Laffer curve? They're the ones laughing that anyone takes that shit seriously in 2011. Privatization? Medicare "Part C" - "Medicare Advantage" - was significantly less cost-efficient for comparable outcomes than regular old Medicare.
There is a big difference between A) installing private sector actors with a profit motive (who will immediately look to open up veins and start drinking blood like vampire bats) and B) leveraging market forces to spur real competition - as, for instance, a public option in HCR would have done - and which, famously, even dillweed O'Reilly couldn't deny.
Supposed libertarian kings, the Koch brothers have used their political clout not to shrink government, but to kill environmental regulations and to line up rivers of corporate welfare for their empire.
If more people recognized the difference between A and B, right wing special interests would be screwed. Right wing politicians would be screwed. So they need to keep changing the subject.
When George W. Bush was (temporarily) obliged to tone down the hate a notch after 9/11, he turned up the fear to compensate. He won re-election in 2004 on the marginal votes of the famous "soccer moms."
"Breaking - the terror alert has gone to orange again!"
The voter fraud bullshit is actually a twofer - stoking the hate of their base, and suppressing the vote of their opponents.
If the right gets stuck dwelling on substance, people start to see through the con. Voters start to get sick to their stomachs. So the right needs to go back to the hate and the fear and the intimidation. Its the oxygen of their movement.
They need to conjure a vast imaginary federal workforce of bureaucrats funneling money to imaginary minority mooches. Gotta hate that. They need to suggest that hidden among the minority mooches are Al Qaida sleeper cells comprised of Mexican anchor babies implementing sharia law. Or something.
This stuff keeps their shock troops on the march.
The right isn't going to change its modus operandi until it leads to significant electoral backlash. Scolding by a handful of lefties and dimwitted villagers is only going to unify them more. They won't be moved.
But maybe there's an opportunity to move some of those "independents" who fell for the right-wing con in 2004 and (again) in 2010 by focusing right now on the reasons the right has to resort to extreme rhetoric. Maybe there's an opportunity to get more of the Democratic base to start waking up - and standing up.
Fundamentally, without the politics of hate, fear, and intimidation, they've got nothing.
The real question people should be asking is not "has the right been too extreme?" or "will they stop?" The answer to these questions isn't really in doubt.
The real question to ask is: Why does the right use extremist rhetoric? Why do they stoke extremism?