I've said it before, but I'll say it again: everything you need to know about movement conservatives, you can learn by watching creationists (and admittedly, there's substantial overlap between the two groups). Think about creationists, and then consider this column by Neal Gabler:
In their postmortems, liberals have placed blame on the way they frame their message, or on the right-wing media drumbeat that drowns out everything else, or on the right's co-opting of the flag, Mom and apple pie, which is designed to make liberals seem like effete, hostile foreign agents.
It's understandable that liberals prefer to think of their subordination as a matter of their own inadequacies or of conservative wiles. Theoretically, you can learn how to improve your message or how to match wits with adversaries, and a lot of liberal hand-wringing has been dedicated to doing just that. But it is becoming increasingly clear that liberals haven't just been succumbing to superior message control, or even to a superior political narrative (conservatives' frontier individualism versus liberals' communitarianism). They are up against something far more intractable and far more difficult to defeat. They are up against religion.
...In short, what we have in America today is a political fundamentalism, with all the characteristics of religious fundamentalism and very few of the characteristics of politics....As we are sadly discovering, this minority cannot be headed off, which is most likely why conservatism transmogrified from politics to a religion in the first place. Conservatives who sincerely believed that theirs is the only true and right path have come to realize that political tolerance is no match for religious vehemence.
Unfortunately, they are right. Having opted out of political discourse, they are not susceptible to any suasion. Rationality won't work because their arguments are faith-based rather than evidence-based. Better message control won't work. Improved strategies won't work. Grass-roots organizing won't work. Nothing will work because you cannot convince religious fanatics of anything other than what they already believe, even if their religion is political dogma.
Does this sound at all familiar? The only issue I have with Gabler is that he underestimates the role of the theopolitical right. Not only is there more overlap than he credits (Max Blumethal's Republican Gomorrah details this overlap), but the mindset, whether 'religious' or 'secular', similar.
This is why framing is not the solution. As Sara Robinson notes in "Cracks in the Wall", people will leave this ideological bubble only when faced with a very personal and intimate instance of cognitive dissonance, such as a betrayal or egregious injustice.
To be successful, we have to countermobilize. Is a clear message important? Sure. Do we want to avoid the unneeded use of 'trigger words'. You betcha, although as the 'death panels' insanity demonstrates, the right will always gin up something. But you don't react or respond to their attacks, you initiate your own.
This requires a political strategy that is much more than hoping to find the magical incantation of phrases that will somehow persuade social conservatives. Framing just isn't sufficient.
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I am not completely with the "framers" but no one argues that you can convince at religious nutcase using rational discourse or by framing things correctly. You can help shift a mass of people leaning away from you to lean towards you. or you can push them further.
I don't think the framers have turned out to be very good at framing, since they mostly are pushing pushing people away from their point that framiing is important, and they also are not doing much to actually frame science for the public. But folks like PZ and Dawkins and Coyne are more about preaching to their own coverted peopl, their own base if you will, than they are about reaching across the isle. At best they will solidify their base, but as we see with the republicans, if you only work with your base, you get small and nutty.
It is important to work in ways to reach further than your own finger tips.
If you wish to "countemobilize" effectively, it is not a question of framing or countering religiousosity, but instead effective use of wedge issues, as demonstrated by the master, Karl Rove. The Republicans have jumped out on the anti-government & anti-Obama limb and it shouldn't be difficult for Democrats to seem more "moderate" and try to win the typically-undecided middle-third of the voters.
For example, target some of the long-term Republican senators and force them to go on record as being for or against such issues as the shouters at the "town hall meetings". If they say they were against them (trying for the moderate Republican votes) then ask why didn't they speak out against them? Were they afraid? Or were they willing to let bad people do their dirty work? Force them to take a stand. And if they won't, politically punish them for their lack of "backbone".
Republican politicians are not necessarily religious but religion was an easy horse to ride to victory. All they had to do was bow their heads and learn the religious buzzwords and they could count on the religious votes.
If Machiavelli were here, he'd would go about finding the proper zealots (religious, gun rights, anti-gay, anti-abortion, etc) and support them just enough so that the passionate fervor of hatred so common in conservatives these days to syphon off 20% - 30% of the Republican encumbants votes and redirecting the moderates to the Democrats.
In essence, don't fight them, encourage their hatreds so that instead of staging a big comeback in 2010, they effectively marginalize themselves as being the party of crazy loons (which we have all suspected for a long time).
Thank you..
O RLY?
Not even necessary. Just do nothing, wait for the Reptilian Party to shore up Failin', Bachmann and/or Joe the Unlicensed Plumber as candidates in 2012, and then make popcorn.
As far as I can see, the US two-party system will become a one-party system in 2012, and then (in 2016 presumably) the Democratic Party will split into a right and a left party⦠really left this time.