Why the Right Wing has it Easier...

The diary on the Overton Windows by thereisnospoon is tremendously illuminating, and certainly set me thinking.  One of the key challenges we face is that we are trying to change things, not make them more so.  What do I mean by this?

Our opponents basically say things like the following:

- If you just let the free market work...

- If we just returned to traditional values...

- If we just get the government out of our lives (meaning our economic lives of course)

And so forth.  Meaning, just let the status quo set of social and economic arrangements become more so.  Let capitalism flourish and help the state wither.  Let (our) churches exert moral controls over everyone's behavior.

What WE want, of course, is to change things.  We want things to be more fair, to provide more opportunity for everyone, to expand the rights of individuals, to inject the environmental externalities into our economic calculus.  We are trying to bring about progress, to move beyond the social and economic arrangements of the past.  This is a much harder fight.  

The known, even if it qualifies as "euphoric recall" of a past that never really existed, is always more easily accepted, with all its pain, than the unknown.  No matter how much we say, this will be better, no one really believes it until they try it.  

That is why it is more than just framing, more than just the Overton windows.  Because the choices posed by our opponents  at their end of the Overton continuum are historical antecedents, these choices represent the way things were at some point in the past (somewhere between 1962 and all the way back to before the Reformation).  What we are pushing for has rarely existed, except perhaps in Scandinavia among one of the more culturally and ethnically homogeneous populations of the world.  We are proposing a bold new vision of the world we want to build for our children.  This will always be a harder sell than retreating to a fondly (incompletely and inaccurately) remembered past.

•  It is easier to

  get people to give in to base emotions such as fear (war on terra) and  hate (gays, brown people, etc) than it is to get people to rise up beyond self interest, think and do the right thing. So yea, I think the right has a much easier job.

  by Hibernian on Wed May 10, 2006 at 10:46:32 AM PDT

•  Easier or not

  I suspect both sides of using Overton or extremist rhetoric to mask the real issues, the kitchen table concerns of the voters.

  In this respect the Overton tactic works superbly by distracting us from what's actually going on.

  by Gegner on Wed May 10, 2006 at 10:55:31 AM PDT

•  They have it easier because...

  ...they have no sense of responsibility. Donald Rumsfeld can nonchalantly point out the obvious, that soldiers die in war, but is he responsible for it? No.

  Bush can talk about a good economy, how tax cuts are beneficial (for rich people and corporations), but does he take any responsibility for it when our jobs are shipped overseas or gas is $3+ per gallon? No.

  The Republicans talk about alternative energy and education, but do they fund either? No.

  I think the Republicans have found that merely talking about something AS IF they're doing something about it is enough to fool most people. After all, how many people actually look at all the legislation that gets passed in this country?

  by cirrocco on Wed May 10, 2006 at 11:44:45 AM PDT