Grayson Breaks the Rules
Representative Alan Grayson’s statement that the Republican plan for health care amounts to “don’t get sick” and if you do “die quickly” probably doesn’t meet a test of literal accuracy. Reality is I guess closer to “only get sick if you’re stably employed in a good, well-paying job but if you do get sick and don’t have a lot of money die quickly.” And, yeah, that’s a polemical characterization. But so what? The idea of a hubub about this is absurd:
I think the real issue—and the real import—of Grayson’s statement is that it involved breaking one of the unspoken rules of modern American politics. The rule is that conservatives talk about their causes in stark, moralistic terms and progressives don’t. Instead, progressives talk about our causes in bloodless technocratic terms. This is also one of the reasons that Ted Kennedy’s stark, moralistic attack on Robert Bork’s legal theories are for some reason often cast by the MSM as some kind of illegitimate smear campaign. The reality is that it was just him talking about a conservative the way conservatives relatively talk about liberals. Like Grayson he characterized his opponents’ views polemically, but wasn’t offering any kind of wild factual distortions. But moralism from the left is very unfamiliar to American political debates.
There’s a semi-legitimate practical reason for this, namely the fact that substantially more people identify as conservatives than identify as liberals. Consequently, progressive politicians are at pains to describe their proposals as essentially pragmatic and non-ideological which doesn’t lend itself to moralism.
That all makes sense as far as it goes, but I think there are some real limits to how far it does go. For one thing, it puts you at a permanent kind of rhetorical disadvantage. But for another thing, it’s just very hard to do big things without a certain amount of moralism. In particular, you really can’t talk about the climate change issue in a sensible way without mentioning the irreducible wrongness of residents of a large developed nation endangering the lives and livelihoods of a couple billion people in the developing world with our industrial activities. When you think about it, it’s really wrong! Wrong in a way that transcends the fact that it would be inconvenient for some key states and industries to recognize that fact.
117 Responses to “Grayson Breaks the Rules”
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October 1st, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Just wanna show ya how it’s done: “It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.”
Didn’t ya think that somebody might object to rhetoric like “it would be fatal for the nation”? Guess what? They did.
So what.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:13 pm
If swarms of voters demanded Congress to keep them healthy, the first message to the swarms of voters should be, Don’t Get Sick.
If anybody has a better first message, let me know.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:18 pm
I suppose it’s a fine first message, but is it realistic?
October 1st, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Matt-
I get where you are coming from, I really do. Grayson appeals to my dark side, but ultimately one of the reasons I support progressive causes is because we tend to be the adults in the situation. We may score short term victories with rhetoric like this, but I think the GOP has already shown how one’s soul can be rotted from the inside out when we encourage this type of behavior. We must strive to raise the rhetoric, not just because it may or may not help us in the short term, but because it needs to be emblamatic of the type of society we hope to see.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:19 pm
The national media also on some level accepts the idea that the Democrats are the good guys, and the Republicans are the bad guys, so they view it as unremarkable when Republicans behave badly (e.g., by demonizing their opponents), but a scandal when Democrats do.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Maybe the reason more people identify as conservatives instead of liberal (even when their policies line up with liberals) is precisely because conservatives use emotional arguments and liberals run away from these arguments like scared little cowards.
I enjoy seeing people like Blitzer fail to compute when this dynamic is turned on its head.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:22 pm
In other words, Jared doesn’t care so much about good policies as “mature” arguments.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:22 pm
[...] I cannot improve upon these sentiments: I think the real issue—and the real import—of Grayson’s statement is that it involved [...]
October 1st, 2009 at 1:23 pm
I don’t actually think liberals have used bloodless technocratic terms in advocating for policy on healthcare and the environment. It’s all the same kind of “moral imperative” nonsense that republicans use when it comes to abortion.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:23 pm
If anybody has a better first message, let me know.
There’s a difference between “don’t get sick, because it’s for your own good, plus we’re all in this together” and “don’t get sick, because if you do, then you probably deserve to die or be bankrupted.” There’s a difference between healthcare and Health Calvinism.
Not that you’d know that.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:24 pm
And this is a life or death discussion.
Of course emotional arguments are appropriate. Just because one uses emotion doesn’t mean one isn’t also rational. FDR needed to use emotion to sell his policies.
In fact, as we are seeing, it’s nigh impossible to sell policies without an emotional appeal–as Democrats as a whole are trying their hardest to prove in the health care debate.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:25 pm
one’s soul can be rotted from the inside out when we encourage this type of behavior
This is insane. Democrats’ #1 problem is that they never hit back, but just complain about the unfairness of getting hit. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to finally see a Democrat say, “No, fuck you until you actually bring something of substance to the table.”
October 1st, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Progressives need to do much more of this.
Politics is fundamentally morality. People decide based on their feelings and cold facts just don’t move them. So if progressives want to actually win, they have to connect with people on an emotional, moralistic level.
The average citizen feels that our health insurance system is bogus, but he needs stark, emotional images to bring it home for him.
Grayson is on the right track. No doubt Rahm Emanuel will be deploring his actions any moment now.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:27 pm
I don’t actually think liberals have used bloodless technocratic terms in advocating for policy on healthcare and the environment. It’s all the same kind of “moral imperative” nonsense that republicans use when it comes to abortion.
From liberal activists, maybe somewhat. From politicians, definitely not.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:27 pm
This is silly. Republicans would prefer that you have a tax credit to purchase health insurance on the individual market, one that is deregulated so people have more options.
Are there reasons to disagree with this option? Yes. Are there strong arguments that the progressive plan will help more people who are in need? Yes. Does this mean the GOP wants people to get sick and die? Don’t be retarded.
In the same way, Kennedy missed the crucial distinction in constitutional law between thinking that something is constitutional and that it’s a good idea. Bork thought that a number of policies were constitutional, such as banning abortion-that doesn’t mean the legislature had to enact them. Bork may have been wrong on the constitutional merits, but his constitutional stance didn’t mean he was in favor of backroom abortions.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:27 pm
The real problem with what Grayson said is that there is no Republican plan other than defending the status quo. The Republican message for health care is that the status quo (Medicare and all) is the best of all possible worlds, except that it’s too easy to sue for malpractice.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:29 pm
The real problem with what Grayson said is that there is no Republican plan
How is that a *problem* with what he said? That’s exactly his point, which he repeated over and over during the CNN bit.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Well, then, the Republican plan isn’t “don’t get sick and if you do, die quickly”, it’s “you already have the best health care that you can possibly get, fear any change.”
October 1st, 2009 at 1:33 pm
I think Grayson is a little inaccurate and risks making the debate about him. The real Republican plan is “Don’t change anything.” And the way the current system works is not that anyone wants you to die, but that you go bankrupt. Once you have sold off everything you have, including your house and (where I live) your car, and made yourself destitute, then you apply and wait for months, and maybe then you can have Medicaid.
Some people die in the meantime, and that’s a tragedy that deserves compelling rhetoric and urgency from Congress. However, Grayson crossed a subtle line in alleging that it’s the plan. He may help us pass a good bill, and in that case I’m grateful to him. I still think that he needs to refine his message if he wants credibility in the long term.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:42 pm
No, wait, it looks like they’ve shared the secret plan with Jamie @ 1:27. O’ lucky man!
October 1st, 2009 at 1:42 pm
The reality is that it was just him talking about a conservative the way conservatives relatively talk about liberals. [...] There’s a semi-legitimate practical reason for this, namely the fact that substantially more people identify as conservatives than identify as liberals.
But try this: take the passage above and replace “conservative” with “Republican”, and “liberal” with “Democrat”. The first sentence remains completely true, and the second becomes completely false.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:44 pm
The rule is that conservatives talk about their causes in stark, moralistic terms and progressives don’t. Instead, progressives talk about our causes in bloodless technocratic terms.
It’s funny — this is neither here nor there — and I”m not a Hillary Clinton basher (heck, I supported here early in the primaries) — but I always thought that on the stump she in particular (unlike, say, John Edwards) exemplified this weakness of progressives. She was always going on about “policies that work” and such.
Does this mean the GOP wants people to get sick and die? Don’t be retarded.
You’re the one who’s retarded. Grayson’s not saying Republican want people to get sick and die. He’s quite accurately saying that’s the logical outcome of their preferred policies.
But anyway, we need more of this. FDR talked in stark moral terms all the time. And he was right both in terms of political efficacy and ethics.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:45 pm
@21;
There are conservative democrats, there is no such thing as a liberal republican. America has a centrist party and a far-right party, there’s no balance in the system.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:50 pm
This works and it works because of the context. The Republicans have been undermining the debate and arguing in bad faith. That is why I think this is (i) legitimate and (ii) will probably be effective. Letting the Republicans indulge in their nihilistic tendencies and then as people started to weary of it and notice the bad smell before hitting them was a smart move.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:50 pm
There’s a ton of people in this country who are favorably inclined to liberal policies but don’t identify themselves as liberals. And one of the main reasons they don’t identify themselves as liberals is because liberals never defend their policies in stark, moral terms, while conservatives repeatedly attack those popular policies in stark, moral terms. “Death panels” may be based on utter lies, but it stirs people up, and whimpering about a need for civil discourse isn’t going to calm people down. The right response is to point out that it’s conservatives who want people dying – and who’ve been letting people die all along. Grayson is my hero this week.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:54 pm
And by the way: of course Republicans want people to get sick and die. So do Max Baucus and Ben Nelson and a lot of Democrats. The insurance industry in general thrives off the principle that the uninsured and the underinsured, once sick, will die quickly and spare them the expense, and much of Congress has been living off their bribes for years.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:54 pm
At any rate, that’s bending over backwards to give a ‘neutral’ reading of the Republican position, which is exactly not the point. If you want to demonstrate how ugly the Republican position is from the Democratic point of view, then, yes, “don’t get sick” is pretty apt. But then, by that standard, “death panels” are apt too.
When you get right down to it, it doesn’t seem that the Republicans prefer a truthful argument to an untruthful one in any way; their only standard is whether the argument is effective. Liberals will mostly accept an effective, untruthful argument, but I think they genuinely prefer one that they actually believe is objectively true.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:54 pm
To have any sort of outrage over what Grayson said after months of “death panels” and “socialized medicine kills” is ridiculous and should forever put to death the notion of liberal media. Grayson was talking specifically about the uninsured and the study that showed how many preventable deaths occur every year because of lack of access to healthcare for that population. Yeah it was over the top, but at least it was a reality based rhetorical point.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:59 pm
“….you really can’t talk about the climate change issue in a sensible way without mentioning the irreducible wrongness of residents of a large developed nation endangering the lives and livelihoods of a couple billion people in the developing world with our industrial activities.”
Developing nations acquire a good deal of their infrastructure and material required for modernizing and evolving from third to second to first world status through trade with industrialized nations. If it was unavailable for purchase or trade they’d resort to making some of it on their own under less than ideal enviromental controls. Does a car or tractor or piece of mining equipment made in Japan or the U.S. result in more or less pollution during manufacture than similar goods made haphazardly in a 3rd world country? If you assume they’re somehow going to get these goods isn’t it better from us, both for economic and enviromental reasons? Once they’re put into operation won’t their superior construction and technology also result in less pollution during usage?
October 1st, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Does this mean the GOP wants people to get sick and die?
Does the GOP actively want people to get sick and die? Perhaps not. But it would prefer that people who get sick die rather than receive universal health care, and when they do die, they don’t lose a lot of sleep over it.
October 1st, 2009 at 2:09 pm
By the way, while I agree both emotional and moral arguments have a firm place in politics, I would note that lately the GOP’s resentment-based versions of that brand of politics has driven their party into a ditch. So I would caution Democrats against actually imitating the GOP’s tactics, but that still leaves plenty of room for more effective tactics.
October 1st, 2009 at 2:11 pm
The tragedy of democracy is that Jared @4 and SFHawkguy @6 are both right. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to lots and lots of votes. Once you start down the path to the polemic side, forever will it dominate your electoral coalition (and eventually your party organization too). Eventually the resulting trainwreck will shock the electorate back into sense, but it won’t necessarily do the same to the party.
I really don’t see how our country could possibly benefit from having two such parties. Having one is damaging enough.
What we really need for a functioning democracy is an electorate that reacts *negatively* to cheap emotional appeals with no or insufficient factual grounding. Anyone know where we can find one?
October 1st, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Don’t mistake correlation with causation. I don’t see any reason to think that resentment-based politics have hurt the GOP. It’s just that they don’t trump disastrous policy outcomes. But in the absence of said disaster, they work pretty darn well.
October 1st, 2009 at 2:16 pm
This is silly. Republicans would prefer that you have a tax credit to purchase health insurance on the individual market, one that is deregulated so people have more options.
Are there reasons to disagree with this option? Yes. Are there strong arguments that the progressive plan will help more people who are in need? Yes. Does this mean the GOP wants people to get sick and die? Don’t be retarded.
That’s just a smokescreen tactic. Not only will that not solve the problem (deregulation is the opposite of solving the problems of the uninsured), but the fact is that the Republicans had almost total control of the federal government for most of this decade, and did nothing to solve the healthcare crisis. Now that we are on the verge of passing a Democratic plan, all of a sudden they have all these “serious” counter-proposals? It should be pretty obvious that the only agenda that matters to them is trying to defeat reform so they can weaken Obama and regain power ala 1994. (Not that this is likely to happen.)
October 1st, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Does the GOP actively want people to get sick and die? Perhaps not.
Only to the extent that having other people get sick and die vindicates their self-conception as Healthcare Elect.
The GOP generally views the uninsured, underinsured, healthcare-bankrupted etc. en masse as People Who Deserve Their Fate, Because They Fucked Up In Some Unspecified Way. Their position is simple: “Sucks to be you.”
When those people show up to town hall meetings and become individualized as constituents (see: Coburn, Cantor) they are directed to their church, to private charity, to “some government program” or to the congresscritter’s office.
October 1st, 2009 at 2:24 pm
When those people show up to town hall meetings and become individualized as constituents (see: Coburn, Cantor) they are directed to their church, to private charity, to “some government program” or to the congresscritter’s office.
The GOP plan can perhaps best be summed up as the Scrooge Plan: “Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons?”
October 1st, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Actually, neil, I care deeply about good policy. You don’t see me arguing for 65 votes in the Senate like Ben Nelson. I simply am saying that it matters how we get there.
Part of the reason Pres. Obama was elected was because he generally avoided the cheap political stunts and tried to be the adult in the room. Does that mean that change sometimes comes slower, likely yes. But it also means that change is far more likely to be stable and to lead to a larger progressive consensus. Scorched earth politics wins the battle and loses the greater war. Just ask Rove about how his permanant majority worked out.
October 1st, 2009 at 2:28 pm
About 1/4th of those people who identify as “conservative” are black folk. Do you honestly think they give a shit if you bad mouth Republicans? Another chunk of those folks just call themselves “conservative” because the media tells them that “conservative” is better than “liberal”, even though they actually support liberal policies. It’s a lot like all those so-called Independents that always vote for one party or the other, always the same party, and yet keep pretending theres a chance the other side could woo them.
These numbers have always been a joke. 90% of the public doesn’t even know what a Liberal or a Conservative is.
October 1st, 2009 at 2:30 pm
@ Chris @32
I don’t disagree with you at all! We do need a better electorate, but we will never develop one going down this path. I think the only way we get to a better electorate is by demonstrating that political victory is possible when we take the high road. The more we pass things like health care reform and climate change, the more politicians will believe being an adult matters.
October 1st, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Bloodless technocracy and moralism can go hand in hand. Moral systems are useless if the only way we can justify that an action is moral is by appealing to our emotions. You are very literally appealing to people’s prejudices that way, and that’s a bad habit to get into in a democracy. But if you show that an action maximizes the good or whatever, and you are making an ethical argument.
Perhaps at the root of it, there will still be some sort of appeal to emotions, since trying to derive moral premises from first principles is kind of an open and perhaps unsolvable problem in philosophy. And there’s no reason why you can’t throw a few appeals to emotion in alongside a dry technocratic argument. (X is good for this-and-this reason, but ALSO doesn’t it just feel right?) But a more rationalistic approach to these sorts of things is quite attainable, and it is something we need to do if we don’t want politics to just be led around by demagoguery.
October 1st, 2009 at 2:32 pm
What’s struck me is that all the commentary re Grayson’s remarks has been about whether he should have been so strident. Nobody has said, “Damn! 45, 000 people? That’s horrible!”
October 1st, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Chris@32 wrote:
“Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to lots and lots of votes.”
And that is why President McCain will address healthcare when he’s damn good and ready.
The American people sometimes are smarter than you expect.
Didn’t Yoda actually put it as anger or hate leading to suffering?
October 1st, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Don’t mistake correlation with causation. I don’t see any reason to think that resentment-based politics have hurt the GOP.
Their numbers among the out groups and the people who sympathize with the out groups predictably suck. That wouldn’t have been such a problem several years ago, but at this point the portion of the electorate that is either in an out group or sympathizes with the out groups is getting too large for the GOP to compete nationally with such sucky numbers in that portion of the electorate.
Of course disasterous policy outcomes may have sped along this decline. On the other hand, a combination of weak Democratic presidential candidates and 9/11 may have delayed it.
October 1st, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Rachel Q @ 19 wrote:
“I still think that he needs to refine his message if he wants credibility in the long term.”
I think his approach works very well if he wants universal healthcare to pass congress, and he wants to fire up the base and cares little or none about his long term credibility.
If a he help a good bill pass he will have all the longterm credibility he needs.
October 1st, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Humans have been making decisions for thousands of years – long before they had much cognitive ability. Those decisions were based on rapid, emotion induced feelings.
People still operate that way in most situations. Most have neither the intelligence nor the time available to do otherwise.
If politicians don’t appeal primarily to feelings, they will not connect with the majority of their potential audience.
October 1st, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Wrong in a way that transcends the fact that it would be inconvenient for some key states and industries to recognize that fact.
Style nazi here! change to “…transcends the inconvenience of recognizing that fact for some key states and industries.”
Whenever your thoughts lead you to write “the fact that…”, look for an opportunity to tighten your sentence!
October 1st, 2009 at 3:08 pm
ron: And if Congress was in the business of deciding how to hunt down the wildebeest, then that would be okay. But the problems Congress addresses are rather more complicated, which means means we have to take out the heavy artillery and actually think about what we’re doing. We can’t realistically shun emotion entirely quite yet, but to lean on it entirely leads to bad things.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:08 pm
of course about a thousand and one wusses are going to pop up here and there and criticize Grayson, but that’s to be expected, because many “liberals” have Stockholm syndrome up the yang so badly even their own mothers shake their heads and wonder where they went wrong. as if it’s impossible to have both the facts and the moral heft of being RIGHT about something going on at the same time, that’s how most of the ‘left’ approaches debates. and the conservatives eat it up with a spork, because they know how fundamentally helpful this self-suppression/oppression is.
good analysis of this dynamic. funny how more identify as “conservative” than “liberal”, although vastly more prefer “liberal” policies, and people are much more likely to self-identify as “Democrats” than “Republicans.” that’s how successful the right has been at demonizing the term liberal – with no, none, zero actual basis. there is no single, large-scale problem in our society that I can think of which can be attributed to “liberalism”, whereas we can all think of dozens of conservative principles which have cost our society hugely, in innumerable ways. isn’t that odd?
October 1st, 2009 at 3:16 pm
BUUUUUUUWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!
Which, of course, is why all of your side of the “debate” has concentrated on crap like “Republicans say if you get sick you’re on your own, sucker!” It’s just really, really impressive when you try to make an argument that explicitly refutes your own thesis!
All of the Democratic Party and general Leftoid “argument” for this issue has been selling the Big Rock Candy Mountain — all about the wonderful glorious benefits of taking health care funding out of the hands of private bureaucrats and turning it over to Government bureaucrats, combined with endless endless sob stories about how so-and-so lost his or her house while the President of the ::fx:hollow reverb +5, background anguished screames +3:: Insurance Company got a new one. (see: FireDogLake, TalkLeft, and your very own effusions, Matt)
“Rethuglican” outrage over Senator Kennedy (D,Chappaquiddick)’s attacks on Robert Bork was not because they were “emotional”. It was because they were distorted, factoid-based character assassination from somebody who had no room to talk.
We don’t think your plan will work. We don’t believe it will provide health care to anybody who won’t get it now, and we don’t believe you believe it will. What’s going on now is straight-up political logrolling, and you can’t give without expecting to receive.
Regards,
Ric
October 1st, 2009 at 3:17 pm
No, it means they’re willing to accept large numbers of people – those who don’t have enough money to get decent medical care – getting sick and dying, because they consider that outcome better than taxes going up a little bit, and huge insurance companies having their shadier business practices regulated.
It’s not about actually wanting people to get sick and die; it’s about valuing certain things more than the well being of ordinary people.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:18 pm
@DTM #31 – no, because the Republicans use the moralizing and heavy-handed, inflammatory language to bolster absolutely bogus policies that have no chance of actually working in the real world. big dif there…
October 1st, 2009 at 3:27 pm
And this right here is Ric Locke loses the argument:
Not Barney Frank. Not Barack Obama. Not John Kerry. Not, you know, anyone who has ever held a position of influence in the Democratic Party or federal government.
No, he came up with three bloggers.
Meanwhile, we have Senator Chuck Grassley telling people at public meetings that they have reason to be afraid that health care reform will mean bureaucrats deciding your grandmother isn’t productive enough to get medical care, 2008 Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin saying her opponents will set up death panels, and virtually the entire GOP Congressional caucus asserting without the slightest evidence that providing health insurance to people who don’t currently have it will mean widespread death and suffering.
But, hey…how ’bout them bloggers, huh?
October 1st, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Re: the claim that Republicans want to keep healthcare the same.
This is totally false. I’ve been hearing for over 10 years from conservatives how medicare is hopelessly bankrupt and will need substantial reform if we are to survive as a country. All those Republicans trying to scare seniors with their death panel talk would love to actually slash medicare funding. Obama wants to reduce spending growth in a way that still maximizes the care available (by limiting costs). Republicans just want to throw Grandma in the street. It really is that simple.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:32 pm
We don’t think your plan will work. We don’t believe it will provide health care to anybody who won’t get it now, and we don’t believe you believe it will. What’s going on now is straight-up political logrolling, and you can’t give without expecting to receive.
I don’t know who “we” is (are you speaking on behalf of the Republican Party?), but the rest of your post doesn’t give me any reason to believe that you even care if it works. But then, that would certainly be consistent with the history of the GOP on this issue.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:49 pm
no, because the Republicans use the moralizing and heavy-handed, inflammatory language to bolster absolutely bogus policies that have no chance of actually working in the real world. big dif there
I’m not saying their policy failures haven’t contributed to their political problems, but the alignment of their worst numbers and the targets of their resentment-based rhetoric is a little too strong for that to be the only cause.
And again, I’m not saying Democrats shouldn’t use moral and emotional arguments. I’m saying they should model those arguments off the sort the Republicans have been using lately.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Correction: SHOULDN’T model those arguments off the sort the Republicans have been using lately.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:50 pm
#54: I speak for myself, and those I consider “conservative”. Like yours, my opinions are my own.
No, Republicans aren’t “conservative”, just like Democrats aren’t “liberal” in any real sense. They’re both politicians, in it for variously egoboo, graft, and a vanishingly few sincere but clearly stupid people.
Do I “care if it works”? That’s irrelevant. If you fall off a cliff, whether I “care” or not doesn’t affect the size of the splash in any way. “It won’t work” is not the same as “I’ll prevent it from working”, and claiming that the two are the same is blatant dishonesty.
And how do I know it won’t work? Well, one very strong indicator is that Grassley, Kerry, et. al. clearly don’t believe it will work — otherwise they wouldn’t have carefully excluded their favored interest groups and their own precious selves from it. If nothing else, politicians have a keen sense of how to derive advantage from public policy, and if they don’t even think they can graft from it there’s something clearly wrong.
Regards,
Ric
October 1st, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Chris @ 32,
Emotion and facts are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I get most outraged at things that I am rationally justified in being outraged at. See? Some things demand moral outrage. Like when one’s country tortures or starts illegal wars.
Another example of righteous outrage is when our government is so beholden to corporate interests that politicians, mostly Republican, are willing to let 45K people die every year so that health insurance companies can make a handsome profit. Republicans obviously care more about health care CEOs making a killing (ha!) than doing anything about the real heal care holocaust going on in this country.
Of course Republicans would prefer even more people die than the 45K a year–they would get rid of Medicare if they could (the Dems should make this the first vote and any reform bill to demonstrate this) and would gladly suffer a few more dead old folks.
The only real policy solution is Medicare for All. These half steps are designed to protect industry at the expense of average Americans.
See? Facts and appropriate moral outrage.
October 1st, 2009 at 4:03 pm
#54: I speak for myself, and those I consider “conservative”. Like yours, my opinions are my own.
Then why the “we”?
Do I “care if it works”? That’s irrelevant.
It’s only irrelevant if believing it won’t work is not the real reason you’re opposed to it. (And your falling-off-a-cliff analogy doesn’t work either, just in case you care.)
October 1st, 2009 at 4:09 pm
@oboe-yup, i got the secret plan from McCain’s health care proposal. it was also mentioned by the GOP response to obama’s health care speech. shhh, don’t tell anyone else where it is.
@AaLD-I think an individual tax credit would help the uninsured, especially if they are unemployed. But even if you disagree with me, I think it’s silly to presume bad intentions on the part of the GOP. I wish they would’ve reformed health care earlier, too.
October 1st, 2009 at 4:16 pm
@AaLD-I think an individual tax credit would help the uninsured, especially if they are unemployed. But even if you disagree with me, I think it’s silly to presume bad intentions on the part of the GOP. I wish they would’ve reformed health care earlier, too.
It was the deregulation I disagreed with. I don’t see how that could help at all. And I don’t see what’s so “silly” about doubting the GOP’s sincerity. I believe their actions (none, in this case) speak louder than words.
October 1st, 2009 at 4:17 pm
It’s just not true that Democrats don’t talk about issues in moral terms. Obama talks about health care in moral terms all the time; climate change too. No one cares about that.
The rule Grayson is breaking is to tell the truth about the Republicans; his crime is incivility. Politicians are all supposed to be friends who acknowledge differences in opinion in their opponents but not differences in fundamental character. To a certain extent this applies even to Republicans, which is one reason why McCain is beloved by the media but Palin was eviscerated, though of course the threshold of acceptable discourse is wildly higher for the right.
October 1st, 2009 at 4:50 pm
While it’s not true that the Republicans “want people to get sick and die”, they seem to be quite content to let people do so without access to health insurance. Republicans want everything to be cheap. They convince themselves that what Grayson said isn’t a consequence of their attitude. But it is.
@realist: when Obama talks about “moral issues”, he doesn’t do it in an attacking way. He doesn’t go around saying that his political opponents are bad people.
October 1st, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Yes, that’s exactly my point. Obama follows all the rules.
October 1st, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Reading these blogs responses reminds me just what a misguided bunch of no real world ecperience pin heads you all are. Get out of Washington, start a business, get a payroll, employee your fellow citizens and get some pratical experience.
You demagogues are all wrong. God help us, but not one of you has written about how troubling our national debt has become and its impact on the viability of our MANY entitlement programs. Not one of you.
Am I supposed to be swayed by the moralistic comments of the Americanist? This person sounds like an old fashioned “race man”. From the mountaintop speeches channeling righteous indignation and calling african american “negroes”, a term not used in over half a century. Pathetic race baiting. This is all smoke an mirrors. Why haven’t one of you mentioned the fact that the trial lawyers have capitalized on an imperfect justice system whose judgements have affected the practice patterns of physicians for decades? So what if Tort reform is esposued by the GOP, does it make it any less true?
All of you approach healthcare reform in a vacuum. First determine how it will actually be paid for and reverse engineer it back to the best healthcare solutions. Do you all know that the CBO study on the cost of HR 3200, some $1 to $1.6 TRILLION over 10 years, WAS ONLY BASED ON INDIVIDUALS AND EMPLOYERS WITH 50 OR FEWER EMPLOYEES? THIS IS ONLY 23% OF WORKING AMERICANS! 77% OF WORKING AMERICANS WORK FOR LARGER FIRMS OR GOVERNMENT ENTITIES THAT HAVE SELF INSURED HEALTHCARE PLANS NOT CURRENTLY ELIGIBLE FOR THE PUBLIC OPTION. HOWEVER, AFTER THREE YEARS, THE HEALTHCARE CHOICES COMMISSIONER COULD OPEN UP THE PUBLIC OPTION TO ALL SIZED GROUPS – THE OTHER 77% OF WORKING AMERICANS. THAT SKYROCKETS THE COST UPWARDS OF OVER $6 TRILLION DOLLARS OVER 10 YEARS IF OFFERRED TO ALL WORKING AMERICANS, NOT JUST THOSE IN COMPANIES WITH LESS THAN 50 EMPLOYEES OR INDIVIDUALS.
Lastly, is it a right to be able to PURCHASE affordable care or is it a right to be GIVEN healthcare? Or maybe it isn’t a right at all? A personal responsibility? Are we a country that embraces the concept of abundance or the concept of scarcity? Do we seek to build up opportunity for all to reach their greatest potential or seek to pull down those whose productivity, hard work and determination made this country great? Careful, your answer may have a direct affect on somebodys freedom.
I fear that the Democrats, who happen to be the paty in power now, may lose huge numbers of seats in Congress if they persist in disregarding just how worried Americans are, down to the marrow in their bones, about their economic future. American’s are embarassed and trobled about leaving their children and grandchildren the burden of paying onerous taxes all their lives to pay for our largess. Its fiscally immoral.
Hopefully you can look out at the vast, unwashed America that lives between the coasts and recognize that Americans possess the wisdom to make their own decisions.
October 1st, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Hopefully you can look out at the vast, unwashed America that lives between the coasts and recognize that Americans possess the wisdom to make their own decisions.
I live in that “vast, unwashed” portion of America, in a city with one of the highest concentrations of urban poverty in the country. That’s one reason why I reject your Randian callousness towards the have-nots.
October 1st, 2009 at 5:17 pm
But even if you disagree with me, I think it’s silly to presume bad intentions on the part of the GOP.
Sure. Why assume bad intentions from the Party of Torture? If there’s one thing the GOP of Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah “Death Panels” Palin, can’t be accused of, it’s bad intentions…..
October 1st, 2009 at 5:22 pm
“Am I supposed to be swayed by the moralistic comments of the Americanist? This person sounds like an old fashioned “race man”. From the mountaintop speeches channeling righteous indignation and calling african american “negroes”, a term not used in over half a century. Pathetic race baiting.”
theAmericanist(#1) is quoting Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream speech”, you goddamn ninny.
October 1st, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Get out of Washington, start a business, get a payroll, employee your fellow citizens and get some pratical experience. ll of you approach healthcare reform in a vacuum. First determine how it will actually be paid for and reverse engineer it back to the best healthcare solutions.
Spoken like a man who truly has no conception that there’s a world outside Pig Waller, AL. Apparently the fact that every other industrialized nation on the planet provides better care, and spends half as much, is just not capable of penetrating the miasma of American exceptionalism and cynicism.
Get a passport.
October 1st, 2009 at 5:27 pm
MY: The rule is that conservatives talk about their causes in stark, moralistic terms and progressives don’t. What a load of twaddle.
Commenters:
Why don’t you write one of those posts in which you say that the reason liberals have troubles selling their policies is that their views are so “nuanced”?
October 1st, 2009 at 5:27 pm
theAmericanist(#1) is quoting Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream speech”, you goddamn ninny.
Rather telling that he didn’t recognize it.
October 1st, 2009 at 5:31 pm
@70
Read the thing again. It’s not about what happens in a comment thread. It’s about the media narrative. You can find it true or untrue but we aren’t part of this theory.
October 1st, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Professionalnotinivorytower,
I too am concerned with the national debt. Which is why I would rather not spend trillions of dollars on Wall Street banker bailouts and endless wars. Plus, real health care reform, such as Medicare for All, will SAVE THIS COUNTRY MONEY.
Health Insurance profits and its attendant bureaucracy suck up 30% of our health care dollars and eliminating this leech from our body politic, as other civilized countries have done, will save us a bundle.
The current death panels, i.e. the mostly-free market system we have now, leaves 50 million or so without health insurance and with inadequate and inefficient care. Since even you free-marketers agree we shouldn’t let a child, say, go without health care, society ends up paying the costs to treat him (in a very inefficient way).
So the reality is that there will be a number of people that will not respond to your free-market Randian magic. 50 million of them currently. Waving your magic wand and making it a totally free market will not make these people “responsible” so that they go out and buy coverage. That’s why it’s best to just admit we will subsidize these people and get it over with.
Plus, it’s much easier for everyone to pay his or her fair share if it is taken out our taxes like medicare. Everyone should get a minimum level of health care (taxed via payroll, etc., so everyone pays a fair share) and if one wants gold-plated health care then he can pay for it out of his own pocket.
Medicare for All is what a smart small businessman would be advocating for.
October 1st, 2009 at 5:33 pm
MY: The rule is that conservatives talk about their causes in stark, moralistic terms and progressives don’t. What a load of twaddle.
I’m pretty sure Matt’s point was directed towards elected officials and policy makers, not anonymous people who post on blogs.
October 1st, 2009 at 5:36 pm
But even if you disagree with me, I think it’s silly to presume bad intentions on the part of the GOP. I wish they would’ve reformed health care earlier, too.
Oh, I’m sure they would have loved to, but, you know, I’m sure they had other priorities when they controlled Congress under the Bush regime. Like cutting taxes on the rich, for example, or gutting government services. First things first.
October 1st, 2009 at 5:40 pm
“But moralism from the left is very unfamiliar to American political debates”
So we should have just ignored all that stuff about “torture” and “shredding the constitution”?
Thanks! Noted for next time.
October 1st, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Why don’t you write one of those posts in which you say that the reason liberals have troubles selling their policies is that their views are so “nuanced”?
Uh, read what Yglesias wrote again: “The rule is that conservatives talk about their causes in stark, moralistic terms and progressives don’t.” The “rule” refers to what is considered acceptable discourse in public among elected officials and other politicians. The fact that anonymous commenters on blogs are willing to blast Republicans for their callousness, greeds and lies (see? it’s fun!) in no way undercuts his point that such language is not considered the acceptable norm by media arbiters who will tut-tut and stroke their bears as they ponder what is to be done with this Grayson fellow.
October 1st, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Ostap,
Yes, liberal posters here do a much better job of expressing the facts in a morally stark manner than the Dem politicians.
But we have a perfectly valid argument and it is entirely appropriate to be morally outraged:
1) Republicans would prefer the status quo for health care (as do many Dems, including the President imo)
2) The status quo results in 50 million without health insurance, millions with insurance going bankrupt, out of control health care costs for the rest of us, and 45,000 people a year needlessly dying.
3) 45,000 people a year needlessly dying is a holocaust
4) Ergo, by doing nothing, most Republicans (and many Democrats) would rather tens of thousands of the middle class and the poor die, rather than do something that may mildly impact the huge insurance company profits.
I’m sorry the facts hurt you so much. But you advocate for the continuation of a holocaust. I can see how that would be tough to have that pointed out to you.
October 1st, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Do we seek to build up opportunity for all to reach their greatest potential or seek to pull down those whose productivity, hard work and determination made this country great?
Are we not men? We are Devo.
Fuck off back to Galtsville.
October 1st, 2009 at 5:50 pm
[...] reason why getting your deep-thot from people who haven’t seen 30 yet is a bad idea. Yglesias apparently isn’t aware the last eight years happened: I think the real issue—and the real [...]
October 1st, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Matt, I don;t understand why Sullivan is so depressed that you are defending Grayson. I think you are right on the money. Liberals are at a rhetorical disadvantage against conservatives. Liberals just have to explain things, it is in their DNA, it is what liberalism is all about. Conservatism is about the inerrancy of some faith or ideology so politics is not about debate it is about winning at all costs. And I would think that someone like Sullivan who wrote a whole book differentiating between the conservatism of certainty, which he thought was bad, and the conservatism of doubt would be more understanding of the unfair advantage conservatives have in not having to provide genuine logical arguments for their positions (since they already possess The Truth), I think he would be more forgiving of a frustrated liberal like Grayson just let it fly and expressed his Values the way the right wing does all the time. PS: a big shout out to Rachel Maddow for pulling together all those tapes of Republicans on the House floor accusing Obama and the Democrats of killing old people with their health care proposals. I swear, conservatives are like school yard bullies who immediately go running to the proctor whenever anyone fights back,
October 1st, 2009 at 8:06 pm
Everyone is aware I hope that Grayson is a bit nuts. Nut in the true sense.
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/09/25/have-the-federal-reserve-or-prime-brokers-ever-tried-to-manipulate-the-stock-market/
His heart is in the right place and it’s nice to see them squirm under his rhetoric but by being so over the top he usually misses the mark, or makes a new mark which puts the emphasis in the wrong place.
His first real fame gaining performance was his grilling of Bernanke in July. In it he starts pressing on the swaps the Fed did with foreign central banks. All well and good except he characterizes these as loans which is technically wrong. At least wrong enough that Bernake can dismiss the questions as silly and not worth answering. Just a slight change in Graysons’ rhetoric if based upon technically sound concepts could have been truly devastating.
Grayson comes so very close to hitting the mark with this health care thing and the bailout regeime but he is just slightly off which is tragic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0NYBTkE1yQ
October 1st, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Fine. Whatever. As long as he never apologizes.
October 1st, 2009 at 10:08 pm
I think Grayson is crazy like a fox. That’s because, in addition to shocking the HCR reform debate out of its stupor a bit, this to my mind is perhaps much more a statement by Grayson about what consequences of the escalation of rhetoric seen in the last year could be like, if the Republicans weren’t taking full advantage of the Democrats’ quiescence on that front — essentially privatizing the political profits, and socializing the risk based on the assumption that Democrats wouldn’t escalate blow-for-blow. This tirade goes to illustrate for Republicans what politics would look like if they pursued their tactics in a symmetrical political battlefield — one in which the downside to their political escalation might be experienced in some negative way themselves. It’s brilliantly played and timed by Grayson, because of the recent rejection of the requested apology to the House by Wilson. Judging by their fairly chastened response, I actually think Grayson might have gotten through to Republicans in a way that Maddow et al’s warbling about the dangers of political escalation, however much I agree with it, never could.
October 1st, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Wow. This is hilarious. Almost.
Liberals don’t “moralize”? It sounds like moralizing to me when people use language like “global warming denialists just don’t care that millions of brown people are going to die horrible deaths.” It sounds like moralizing to me when liberals say, “Pro-lifers don’t care about babies, they just hate women and want to punish people for enjoying sex.”
It would be equally ridiculous for anyone of any political stripe to make this kind of claim. Libertarians moralize. Socialists moralize. Can you honestly look at an issue of the Nation or Mother Jones, or watch a Michael Moore film, and see them as exercises in quantitative rigor? As devoid of a moral element?
October 1st, 2009 at 10:36 pm
First, it is pretty well established by linguists (Lakoff, Westin) and others who study communication, that we don’t pay much attention to what people SAY unless it is metaphorical. The decisions that we make on voting, buying anything, and who we marry are notoriously linked to our emotional preferences. The GOP data base for voters took on the psychographic approach that business had been using very successfully for a LONG time, long before the Dems caught on. 2008 was the first presidential election we had a psychographic data base to rival the GOP and fortunately, we learned to use it well enough fairly quickly. Think of it this way. The right brain is the intuitive, creative side. The left brain is the analytical, reasoned, symbolic side. Reading and math are very left brain. The right is almost non verbal. But allusions or metaphors allow it to think in more complex ways than the left brain can.
Grayson could refine his specifics but he is on the right track.
PNIT @ 65: my daughter (Jr @ Co School of Mines, National Dean’s List, Tau Beta Pi – National Engineering Honor Society – initiate) is severely dyslexic. She can’t spell without spell check and a Franklin. You are not dyslexic. You just can’t spell or use spell check either. Then there are the facts you are missing, distorting or making up, which makes your reasoning something Rand wouldn’t have responded to. (Being human should earn health care.)
Not surprisingly, the Neocons did to Rand what they did to Jesus. Took what served their purpose and ignored the rest. You may dislike her protagonists but they did have worthwhile values which they actually acted on. Truth is the first casualty of war – and anyone trying to get something they have not earned.
pseudonymous in nc @ 10 and 35, excellent short and to the point labels.
“health Calvinism” (not Health Care) Been an RN for 32 years, I couldn’t agree more. “It sucks to be you.” Just.perfect.
stefan @ 36 has an excellent one too. “the Scrooge plan.”
I think a combo would really sum it up. “The GOP Calvin-Scrooge Health Care Plan. You need not apply if it sucks to be you.”
October 1st, 2009 at 11:41 pm
Sam M, fucking pay attention sometime, will you? For a long time, bloggers and ground-level activists have been doing the moral heavy lifting, while Democratic politicians and policy wonks have been pulling the technocratic solutions.
The truth is that voters don’t really know what they believe, but they want to believe something. So when a politician stands up and has clear beliefs that are a stark contrast to his opponent’s, that attracts votes. The politicians and leadership need to cast this in stark moral tones and make the liberal side the side worth taking.
In a situation where the Democrats are talking about the most efficient ways to cut costs and the efficiency of universal health care while Senator Grassley is babbling about “pulling the plug on grandma,” for you to blatantly deny that this is the essential dynamic smacks of either dishonesty or wilful ignorance.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:00 am
People that think that Democratic and Left policy makers and elected officials don’t demonize and talking in morality are either dishonest or full of willful ignorance.
Various quotes in recent times:
Howard Dean, on the eve of becoming chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said, “I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for. This is a struggle of good and evil. And we’re the good.”
Find me a Republican elected official who said something like that.
Former senator John Glenn said of Republican campaign rhetoric, “It’s the old Hitler business.” Julian Bond, as chairman of the NAACP, said of the Bush administration, “Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side by side.”
New York Democrat, Alan Hevesi, spoke to graduating students at Queens College. He said that his fellow New York Democrat, Chuck Schumer, would “put a bullet between the president’s eyes if he could get away with it.”
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:03 am
Grayson looks like the illegitimate son of Howard Phillips, the guy from The Conservative Caucus. I object to this. He is a fun anti-Fed demagogue, & I also object to this. But the idea that anything he said merits censure is too ridiculous for words. When he starts shooting up melons in his backyard to prove that Chuck Grassley murdered somebody in the Hart SOB basement, call me.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:13 am
Andrew Sullivan tut-tuts his protege, but I think I disagree. Use of term holocaust to refer to ANYTHING but The Holocaust should be off-limits, but he seems to me to be the first on the left who answers the Right in kind. I think Democrats need a little more of this; GOP a lot less. It’s also good politics. Many fellow countrymen don’t think a person is telling “the truth” unless they use trash language, rant, etc. Let’s take it with irony and as meta-discourse. I like it, at this time, at this place.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:20 am
Al Gore on Republicans:
“They use their color blind the way duck hunters use their duck blinds – they hide behind it and hope the ducks won’t know what they’re up to.”
I mean, if people can tease racist “dog whistles” (what the hell is wrong with shibboleth as a word) out of anything a Republican says, I’m pretty sure people can claim that Al Gore is implying that Republicans (the duck hunters) want to kill African-Americans, or whomever you think it’s supposed to represent.
After all, duck hunters don’t just hide from ducks, they shoot them.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:43 am
Double standard?
Somehow “taking our country back” is obvious code words for racism when Republicans say it.
But of course a perfectly neutral phrase when an entire conference is named that and President Obama says “It’s going to be because of you that we take our country back.”
And who can forget the late Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) when he said that “But you’re going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the President’s amusement…” and “The truth is that Bush just likes to blow things up in Iraq, in the United States, and in Congress.”
But that’s not moralizing, or rough rhetoric, or demonizing your opponent.
Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly used “un-American” and “unpatriotic” to describe such things as a 2006 budget bill.
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:14 am
Yep John, on occasion an elected Democrat has the nerve to stand up to the noise machine and tell the truth. Because, if you didn’t notice, there was nothing even vaguely resembling a rationale for sending kids to Iraqi to get their heads blown off. WMDs? Fuck no. Iraq as a threat to the United States? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Making Iraq into a free nation? Please, that dumb-ass lie didn’t even get started until the evidence was so overwhelming that not even the dumbest motherfucking apologist for the random slaughter of brown people could no longer point to either of the first two lies without breaking out into laughter himself.
Compare and contrast with the constant stream of rhetoric from the Republican Guard – saying that anyone who noticed the Republicans were lying was a traitor? Hell, the entire 2002 election was based on calling Democrats traitors.
You found a few examples where Democrats stood up for themselves? Good for them.
October 2nd, 2009 at 2:24 am
Use of term holocaust to refer to ANYTHING but The Holocaust should be off-limits
BS.
October 2nd, 2009 at 8:27 am
Ah yes, the excuse. “When Democrats call Republicans traitors and un-American and unpatriotic, it doesn’t matter because it’s true.” With that you can justify anything, including the way that Democrats have been questioning Republican morality, justifying their political actions with religion, and calling Republicans un-American and un-patriotic for years. Of course it’s a double standard. The same Members of Congress, like Nancy Pelosi, who defend noisy protests as “democracy in action” when it’s against the war refer to it as “unAmerican” when it’s against health care.
Nope. Citation needed. Find a quote of any Republican elected official saying that. The 2002 election? The one where Democrats pretended that criticizing Max Cleland for voting against a bill, and claiming that voting against the bill was bad for national security is the same thing as calling them a traitor?
As opposed to Howard Dean, who President Obama said was “using religion to divide.”
And here’s some quotes:
“I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for.”
“You think the RNC could get this many people of color into a single room?”…”Maybe if they got the hotel staff in there.”
“I don’t know. There are many theories about it. The most interesting theory that I’ve heard so far, which is nothing more than a theory, I can’t—think it can’t be proved, is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis.” (spreading Trutherism under the “just asking questions” excuse.)
“From a religious point of view, if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created gay people.” – Who’s using moral language and religion now?
“This is a struggle of good and evil. And we’re the good.”
“The last time I saw that, helping the poor was somethin’ that was mentioned 300…3000 times in the Bible; I’ve yet to find a reference to gay marriage in the Bible.” – Hey look, religion again.
“The president and his right-wing Supreme Court think it is ‘okay’ to have the government take your house if they feel like putting a hotel where your house is.” – which is of course utter bullshit, because the “right-wingers” on the Supreme Court all voted the other way in Kelo. It was the “left” and the swing vote that voted in favor of taking houses to give to private developers.
“I’m tired of the ayatollahs of the right wing. We’re fighting for freedom in Iraq. We’re going to fight for freedom in America.” – “Ayatollahs?” In implication, not that different from calling people traitors and enemies. Same with the oft-used “American Taliban.”
But of course a Democrat can say “I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.”
“This president is not interested in being a good president. He’s interested in some complicated psychological situation that he has with his father.” – “Not interested in being a good president” is calling someone un-American and a traitor at least as much as anything said about Cleland.
October 2nd, 2009 at 8:34 am
The 2002 elections, the Republicans pushed the idea “the Democrats positions on national security are wrong and will make us more vulnerable.” That’s not calling someone a traitor. Citation needed of any elected official calling someone a traitor.
If that counted, then the Democrats’ 2006 campaign would count as well, since that was the same message. That’s what happens when you disagree, you feel that the other party’s position would make the country more vulnerable. Of course, from your opinion, one is true and the other false, so it’s completely different.
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:18 am
John, you are too boring to bother with citations. Why? Because you claim
This is laughable. And, of course, the fact that Bush assaulted the innocent Iraqi people and had gone out of his way to inflame Muslim anti-American sentiment was apparently something you completely missed.
By the way, you appear to be too stupid to notice that your hero, George W. Bush (the guy appointed by a bunch of hacks in black robes who decided that the United States Supreme Court was better suited to judge Florida Election law that the Florida Supreme Court – even when such rulings from the USSC contradicted black letter Florida Statutes) was a direct recipient of funds using Eminent Domain. This was always one of the funniest things to me about the right-wing noise machine’s “opposition” to Kelo.
My favorite though is your quoting Dean pointing out that the Republicans don’t have much minority support. That’s just fucking priceless. Do you know how many cars it would take to drive the House+Senate Black Republican Caucus to dine at the White House? Want a hint? They don’t need a very big limo….wait, they could all fit in a VW, so long as it was already full. And you think you deserve citations. What a fucking clown.
You are good for a laugh, for a moment. But the fact that you have to stretch so far to claim equivalence should shame you even in your own mind – if you had the capacity for shame.
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:31 am
Tyro:
Maybe it’s time for you to pay some fucking attention. For instance, you might bother reading the post.
“The rule is that conservatives talk about their causes in stark, moralistic terms and progressives don’t.”
It is my understanding that some people who aren’t elected officials are conservatives, and some are liberal!”
The post later talks about elected officials, but the basic premise is that coservatives moralize and liberals don’t. Which is obviously bullshit. Quick: Why did Democrats in Congress discuss changing the name of the healthcare bill to the Kennedy bill? Because it was a quantitative improvement over the old name? Maybe it was shorter, saved ink, and therefor helped avert global warming?
Do I need to go through Lexus/Nexis and find moralizing statements from politicians regarding abortion, the war in Iraq, the War on Poverty, etc?
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:19 am
By the way, John, just because I stumbled upon it and I’m still laughing at how far you stretched your quotes:
DeMint:
That’s what we’re talking about. Not some random yahoo like you or Sam M, an actual elected official making a quite clear reference to Nazi Germany with regard to the President of the United States. He stumbles here because he, because he’s a moron, confuses National Socialism with “social democracy.”
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:58 pm
[...] Matt Yglesias correctly pointed out that – by the conventions of American politics – liberals simply aren’t permitted [...]
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:32 pm
No, we should pay a great deal of attention to “all that stuff,” because it proves Matt’s argument quite nicely.
Even when discussing something as abhorrent to any decent mores as the torture of a helpless human being, liberals in a position of influence frame their arguments in a bloodless, technocratic, pragmatic manner. Torture doesn’t work, torture is illegal, torture violates this treaty we signed, really, don’t you understand that torture violates the values we all share, my good friend?
As opposed to coming right out and saying, “You are a god damned disgrace, and you will rot in hell for what you are doing. Torture is evil, and those who utilize it are unworthy of the respect of their fellow Americans. Nazis torture. Communists torture. You have shown us who you are with your disgraceful endorsement of this monstrous evil. We must not torture. Period.”
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Indeed, that was the same message – and the vastly disparate manners in which the two parties deployed that message could not be a clearer demonstration of Matt’s point.
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Dick Durbin apologized on the floor of the Senate for pointing out, quite correctly, that the torture practices employed by the Bush administration were similar to (in fact, taken from) totalitarian regimes like the Khmer Rouge, the Nazis, and the Soviets.
On the other hand, more Republican officeholders than I can mention have proudly asserted, without even the slightest backtracking, that providing something as humanitarian as medical care for the poor via tax dollars is comparable to Naziism.
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Hooray for Grayson! Fight fire with fire. That’s a better cure than mumbling about how hard this is, as Reid and Pelosi have done. Get up on that soapbox and give back as hard as the Repubs put out.
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:40 pm
When I was first able to vote (a long time ago, in a galaxie far, far away…), the major difference I noted between Ds and Rs, or Progressives and Reactionaries, was that the Ds viewed politics as a collegial exercise of reasoning and rational discussions while the Rs viewed politics as a win-at-any-cost, scorched earth, take no prisoners crusade.
Well, time has shown one can’t reason with the unreasonable or irrational. Re. Grayson’s explanation of the Rs “health plan”, complete with the necessary visual aids, was an accurate yet moderate emulation of R politics. And it obviously made a point and stuck home.
Good for you, Rep. Grayson.
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:48 pm
[...] Yglesias thinks this characterization is somewhat polemical, and I think that’s probably true, but as he notes, so what? A Republican accusing the [...]
October 2nd, 2009 at 2:33 pm
[...] Guess who got more attention.) It isn’t the message so much as it is the delivery. As Matthew Yglesias points out, the reason Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) got so much attention for his “Die [...]
October 2nd, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Matt, do you have any evidence, or even a broad range of anecdotes, to back this up? I mean, does Al Gore not moralize about global warming? Does Nancy Pelosi not do the same? And your point about Ted Kennedy borking Bork is supposed to be the exception that proves the rule, but the actual moralizing points he made are now standard liberal lines. So it’s not an exception in that context. The reason it is remembered as exceptional is in the context of judicial confirmations, which should be obvious. It was a different level of partisan moralizing in that context – that’s what set it apart, not the fact that it was moralizing coming from a liberal. You also seem pretty cavalier about the facticity of Kennedy’s speech against Bork, but let that go. The point of that as an exceptional event is not that a liberal spoke up in that tone, but that he did so in a judicial confirmation hearing. Duh.
In general, why do we even have the cliche, “bleeding heart liberal”? Why is the left associated with social protest? The signature achievements of the left, by their own lights: opposition to Vietnam, support of the civil rights movement, the New Deal and the Great Society. Are you seriously suggesting that these causes were not proposed as fundamentally moral matters? Do liberals not get moralistic about Wall Street, about the rich in general, about considerations of equality and discrimination? Yes, yes, yes. That’s incredibly obvious.
Something is confused here. There is, to be sure, a difference between the types of issues conservatives and liberals typically moralize about. But I think you’ve fundamentally misidentified the relevant contrast.
October 2nd, 2009 at 3:40 pm
This is a fallacy, and seeing that is key to seeing why Grayson’s statement is false. Try this:
1. I claim that the morning star is Venus.
2. The morning star is also the evening star.
Therefore 3) I claim that the evening star is Venus.
False. This is Frege’s celebrated example to show the distinction between sense and reference.
The point is, even if it’s true that health care reform will net thousands of saved lives (note the word “net”) over the status quo, if Republicans think otherwise, then they are not advocating a Holocaust. This is called an intensional context in philosophy of language lingo. And this, btw, is exactly what’s wrong with saying that Obama is advocating for socialism, EVEN IF the one saying that believes firmly that Obama’s policies will lead to socialism (which is pretty crazy, but besides the point here). It doesn’t matter what I believe about where Obama’s policies lead, and it doesn’t even matter what the truth of the matter is – if Obama doesn’t think they will lead to socialism, then it’s FALSE that he’s advocating for socialism.
You might think that’s nitpicking, but it’s certainly relevant to the post I just quoted. With regard to Grayson, he might be saying that Repubs are culpably ignorant if they think health care reform won’t save thousands of saved lives over the status quo, but that is precisely the kind of claim that’s at stake between proponents and opponents of reform (and I’m talking about the educated ones, not crazies talking about whatever). And in fact, there are educated policy thinkers who believe a public-option type plan, for example, would net a negative number of saved lives over the status quo (Megan McArdle, for example, who isn’t even a Republican). So it not only doesn’t follow that Repulicans are advocating for a holocaust, but the background assumptions that would make something like it follow, are question-begging.
October 2nd, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Let me boil this down: You don’t come to a street fight with library books!
October 2nd, 2009 at 8:04 pm
[...] Matt Yglesias wrote yesterday: [...]
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:20 pm
The vast majority of the people who have posted on this issue have proved that they are angry closed-minded true believers in progressive policies — in other words, FUNDAMENTALISTS.
I challenge you people to go read Greg Mankiw’s blog or the Becker-Posner blog on healthcare issues and then ask yourselves candidly whether you have ever had the intellectual capacity or interest to grapple honestly with the arguments they make. (That’s assuming you even know who Mankiw, Becker and Posner are).
If not, then you’re just a bunch of true believers — taking the progressive gospel on faith.
When you say you need to resort to emotions to advance your cause, centrists ask — doesn’t that mean you’ve conceded that you can’t compete with the conservatives on an intellectual level?
As far as asserting the moral imperative goes, I’m old enough to remember “progressive” fellow students at Yale in the ‘Sixties screaming the moral imperative to justify armed militias (the Panthers), bombings (the Weathermen) and genocide (Mao’s Cultural Revolution) and have learned to be healthily skeptical of such substitutes for rational analysis.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:31 pm
Let me give you a single example of DENIAL of manifest facts that has characterized many of the posts above:
You assert that it is a lie or fabrication to assert that proponents of the various Democratic healthcare plans wish for the healthcare system to withhold certain treatments from people of advanced age, but:
1. Isn’t this precisely what Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel has proposed?
2. Isn’t this precisely how the British national healthcare system allocates treatments?
Yes or no — who’s the liar here?
I’m really looking forward to your responses….
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:46 pm
[...] He was recently on bloggingsheads.tv, a great website where wonks and cultural critics exploit modern technology to amplify their message, discussing the book. The end of the interview, where he talks about the effects of an alcohol tax, is most relevant to this blog. My internet is not cooperating right now, so I can’t link to it, but his argument is that doubling the tax on alcohol would only cost about $.10 per drink, which is nothing to a light drinker. The people an alcohol tax negatively effects are the heavy drinkers, the ones we don’t want drinking because they get in fights, drive on the roads, and have large negative health costs. Rightly, he aligns himself with the reality-based community; it’s a charged term, but progressives won’t win without being confrontational and emotional. [...]
October 3rd, 2009 at 11:09 am
I challenge you people to go read–
Shorter East: fapfapfapfapfap.
(Mankiw: hack. Becker: hack. Posner: oddball. Worshipping hacks is quite unseemly.)
October 3rd, 2009 at 12:27 pm
1. Isn’t this precisely what Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel has proposed?
2. Isn’t this precisely how the British national healthcare system allocates treatments?
1) No.
2) No, and irrelevant. The US spends much more per patient than the UK and no one is proposing anything remotely similar to the UK’s national single-payer system.
Next you’ll be arguing that Stephen Hawking would never have made it under British health care. Oops.
October 3rd, 2009 at 1:46 pm
[...] Matt Yglesias wrote yesterday: [...]