Llewellyn

King

Read Llewellyn's bio and previous columns

November 10, 2008

End Game for Ideology

As President-elect Barack Obama drops the names of his first Cabinet members, political wonks, bereft of big pronouncements, are debating what kind of country we have become.

Nowhere is this debate more acute than in conservative circles, and on the most conservative and politically conscious network, Fox News Channel. Brit Hume, longtime Washington editor for Fox and a man who learned his trade as a reporter rather than a pundit, declared that America, which had been a center-right country, was now, on new evidence, a center-left country. Shock! Horror! Creeping socialism!

Bill O'Reilly, a man who learned his trade as a radio pundit, would have none of that. He told his ever-adoring audience that emphatically the United States is a center-right country, and that is that.

It is appropriate that this debate should take place on the right because the right, more than the left, has found strength and failure in the politics of label. With some help from word warriors like Frank Luntz, conservatives have been peerless in hanging labels around the necks of their opponents – the better to identify them for political stoning. Ergo “the liberal media,” or any media which carries news or opinions that you do not agree with. Or the all-purpose bogeyman “socialist.” This is applied to any social policy, like health care, that is not to be arbitrated by market forces until they fail.               

There is an certain imperial quality to the forces co-opting language. The “liberal media” is being replaced by the “mainstream media.” In short, anything you hear or read that hasn’t been approved by O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh is suspect and slanted to the left. How the mainstream slants the news out of Darfur or the eastern Congo, we have yet to learn but expect it.

The technique was explained by conservative writer Matt Labash of The Weekly Standard:

“We bring the pain to the liberal media. I say that mockingly, but it's true somewhat. We come with a strong point of view and people like point-of-view journalism. While all these hand-wringing Freedom Forum types talk about objectivity, the conservative media likes to rap the liberal media on the knuckles for not being objective. We've created this cottage industry in which it pays to be unobjective. It pays to be subjective as much as possible. It's a great way to have your cake and eat it too. Criticize other people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. It's a great little racket. I'm glad we found it actually works.”

The labeling of the media is one of the great successes of the right, almost on a par with seeing the hand of billionaire George Soros behind every non-Republican think tank.

Europe is also a place of infamy, listed as “surrender monkeys” in the right-wing lexicon. First and foremost, it is socialist, favoring state-funded health insurance and public transportation. Also, European countries favor limited defense budgets and speaking to Russia, Syria and Iran. Add to those “sins” the eating of unpasteurized cheese, letting dogs into restaurants and allowing teenagers to drink. Why does the whole European enterprise not implode?

While the Republicans are masterful at defining their opponents by label, the Democrats are not – all the labeling they try fails. They use scorn and derision, but it is imprecise. Even as George W. Bush is the most financially profligate president in history, the Democrats have not been able to throw off the label of “tax and spend.” They bow to the liberal media distortion, and cannot effectively attack the almost total right-wingedness of talk radio.

Maybe Democrats should not worry too much about the labeling issue. Not now. But the Republicans should worry about it – and then worry some more. The catchy labels reflect underlying ideology, and the modern Republican Party has been snared in ideology. It is a self-satisfied party, rigid in its beliefs and sure of its virtue.

Rigidity hurts in uncertain times, especially times of economic uncertainty. Too much of the GOP believes if you get the dogma right, good things will come to pass. Alas, Bush has dismantled that comforting belief zone.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

Click here to talk to our writers and editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.

To e-mail feedback about this column, click here. If you enjoy this writer's work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry it.

This is Column # LK072. Request permission to publish here.