paranoia

We start with a small story right here at Next Right about how Obama didn't let reporters in to cover a basketball game, but instead sent out a slick media package.  Not long into it, we get the phrase "Ministry of Propaganda." 

Sigh.

And we wonder why conservatives are failing to break through with a broader audience.  It has far less to do with principles, pork, transparency or any of that and a whole lot more to do with how the mainstream conservative media treats everything Obama does as heralding the rise of some sort of Communist/Fascist state. 

We saw Americans speaking up for sanity at tea parties.  Everyone else saw signs with Obama wearing a Hitler mustache or photoshopped in with hammers and sickles.  If that isn't an invitation for an undecided voter to tune out the voices behind the signs, I don't know what is.  You and I know that the people with the nutty signs were a few bad apple Freepers, Ron Paulists and throwback Birchers, but way too much of this paranoid style has seeped into places like National Review and even this site to a lesser extent.

The chicken-littleification of the GOP is a huge roadblock to winning elections.  People see Obama, whatever the policy differences, as an even-tempered guy, not some aspiring tinpot dictator or deluded campus radical.  That impression will not be successfully countered by being louder and making more extreme claims.  There is a big difference between saying that a policy will have serious bad outcomes and that it will lead to the destruction of everything we hold dear.  First of all, people will listen to you if you claim the former.

Let's try some guidelines.

Helpful:

- Obama will reduce available healthcare choices;

- Obama's budget plans have very serious long term consequences for the American economy and our ability to pay for entitlements to which citizens have grown accustomed;

- Obama's open-borders immigration policy depresses wages, increases the possibility of terrorist infiltration and makes a mockery of the notion that we are a nation of laws;

- Obama's national security policies make us less safe and give more free reign to governments hostile to America while decreasing the ability of our intelligence agencies to do their vital work.

Not Helpful:

- The One's lapdog sycophants in the Obamedia are unwilling to investigate his deep connections to Weather Underground terrorist radicals.

- Show us the birth certificate!

- Closing Guantanamo means freeing terrorists in our neighborhood. (as if they were going to get an apartment next door).

- "These events have heralded a new era of partnership between the White House and private companies, one that calls to mind the wonderful partnership Germany formed with France and the Low Countries at the start of World War II." (from David Brooks of all places).

- It is time to send him and his lazy supporters who steal from the people who work and give to the people who don't work, back to their home state or maybe send them to Iran to lived...make sure Al Gore is with them. (Also from Next Right)

Conservatives are smarter than this!

There's been a lot of discussion recently about how the conservative movement and the Republican party can grow, regroup and gain the support of the American people. Blame has been placed in all quarters except, it seems, one of the most important: the paranoiac hysteria which is too common among the Right.

I am not a deeply conservative person, but some of the movement's goals are excellent. Efficient government, national security, individual freedoms - we'd all love to see those things achieved. So why don't these policies get votes?

Social conservatives are being blamed, but a huge number of people are socially conservative.

Incompetent leadership is being blamed, but a huge number of Democratic politicians are incompetent.

More important, I think, is the nature of conservative arguments. Instead of appealing to reason or to values, a vast number of GOP supporters prefer, well, nonsense. Vicious, terrifying nonsense, which drives away far more people than it attracts. Take, for example, the well-known example of the Obama Muslim claims - if you're reaidng this, you're probably well aware that he isn't and never has been a follower of the Islamic religion. However, 23% of people in Texas believe otherwise. They believe he's a muslim because this is what we tell them.

By "we", I refer to conservative voices: pundits, Rush and Hannity, bloggers, low-level GOP campaign operatives and the authors of email forwards. A really depressingly large number of conservative communicators have no respect for facts, but simply assume their opponents must be guilty of anything. Let's take the ongoing Minnesota Senate affair:

Norm Coleman has won re-election in the initial count of ballots, although it was very close and he may lose in a hand recount. It's helpful to donate to his campaign's legal fund, to root for him, and to carefully scrutinise the process.. but it is completely unhelpful to make up bullshit about fraud which isn't occurring. It makes us look like unstable fools. Conservative commentators create sites like minnesotademsexposed.com, purporting to expose electoral fraud taking place - which is vital, right? We have to ensure that the election isn't stolen.

But that isn't what they do. Instead, they are paranoid nuts who get hysterical about 'ACORN' - an organisation which has nothing to do with counting votes in Minnesota - and about the story of 'ballots left in cars'. This story is completely false, but nobody checks that.

People don't check whether Barack Obama is really a Muslim - or if they do, and once they know he isn't, they continue to prevaricate and imply that maybe he might somehow be, because they think it will get them electoral advantage. They're wrong; it turns away everyone who's not an idiot.

People don't check whether electoral fraud is really ongoing; whether the Democrats actually intend to reintroduce the Fairness Directive; whether Obama tax policies are "socialist" compared to those of Regan; whether Hillary Clinton shot Vince Foster or whether Sarah Palin opposed building a bridge.

Our own Soren Dayton, for goodness' sakes, posts mostly hysterical paranoia about ACORN and things Obama will never do. It's not even the content so much as the tone: when we spend our time ranting about things which are mostly lies and entirely trivial, we turn off anyone who doesn't already listen to Rush.

Some of us know this stuff is nonsense, and do nothing. Some of us don't know, because we don't want to look too closely at things which support our world view. And some of us believe it and insist on discrediting everyone else by claiming that our enemy is a gay black supremacist arab muslim radical socialist terrorist illegitimate kenyan election thief! This makes Democrats angry, inspired to fight hard against the right; it makes independents scared, unwilling to associate with the right.

Rather than taking on faith anything that sounds good for conservatives - too good to be true - fact check and ignore the lies. Rather than being complicit with their spreading and allowing the base to be brainwashed into monsters, educate them with real reasons to support conservative values. Why not be the party of integrity, and make the other side look like the crazies for once?