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Why the RightWing Gets Itand Why Dems Don't [UPDATED] Diaries
by thereisnospoon dKosopedia
Tue May 09, 2006 at 05:52:51 PM PDT Search
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[UPDATE: I wanted to post here the email I received from Josh Trevino on this issue (I have his
permission). I felt it was important for folks to see it for clarification from the man himself... Login
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You got it pretty much right. Nice post, and thanks for the kind words. I'd only add three wide narrow
caveats:
thereisnospoon's
a) It's a method for creating political possibilities, not winning elections or passing
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legislation per se. A lot of your critics seem to miss that.
Heading Left
b) While there is massive overlap between the GOP and the think tanks, it's the latter
Open Left
that originated and use this specific methodology (though not the concept, I think, which
Dday's Blog
is an old one). The party is a bit more shortterm and tactical. I wouldn't wholly conflate
Crooks & Liars
the two.
BlueGal
c) On DHinMI's specific comments, while I can't do anything about his particular dislike
BondDad
for me and it runs deep I can say that in response to his critique of the Mackinac
On the Left Tip
Center, its political kneecapping of the Michigan teachers' union is a signal
The KK Life
accomplishment.
Juan Cole
Most resp.,
Raw Story
Josh Trevino Digby
European Tribune
ePluribusMedia
thereisnospoon's diary :: ::
My 3 Cents (ClammyC)
Far Shooting Politics
I am dismayed, my friends.
My Left Wing
Almost every time a Democratic leader opens his or her mouth I am dismayed. Calitics
I am dismayed because there are two opposing political strategies being played out in America's Political Nexus
politics with two vastly different philosophiesand it's clear that one side is definitely winning. And it
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ain't our side.
I am dismayed because even most of the Progressives here in the liberal blogosphere don't really have
a full grasp of the true nature of what is going on, or don't talk as if they do. I am dismayed because
the authors of wonderful books like Crashing the Gate and OffCenter mistake the realities of the Support Bloggers' Rights!
Republican strategy.
I know that these are bold statements and they are not meant to offend. They are meant as a wake
up calland a call to action. Let me explain to you what I'm talking about. Candidates
We can see this thinking all over the place: in Crashing the Gate and OffCenter, and all over the
liberal blogosphere. From The Economist's View, we see an all too typical encapsulation of this
worldview:
There is also a corollary to this premise: that by playing too far to their base, they will alienate the
unnerved middle of the country. This is the sort of thinking mirrored in diaries like this one, which was
on Diary Rescuebasically arguing that movements like Concerned Women for America will create an
antiGOP backlash. It's the sort of thinking that says that the GOP will never overturn Roe v. Wade.
Both of these ideas are misguided if not deadly wrong. Allow me to explain whystraight from a
Republican operative's mouth
On the contrary: the GOP knows that the middle DOES matter. They know that by playing to their
base in very wellcrafted ways, they can shift the very definition of what the middle is. By introducing
radicalism into the public discourse (and taking initial heat for it), whatever used to be radical within
this context becomes moderate by comparison.
By far the most enlightening thing I have read on the blogosphere in the past two months came from
Republican Operative and founder of RedState.com Joshua Trevino, on Armando's and Trevino's new
blog Swords Crossed. In an incredibly instructive pieceand I encourage everyone to read the whole
thingJosh Trevino does us all the favor of introducing us to the Overton Window. The Overton
Window, in my opinion, is basically the key to the Republicans' success over the past twenty years
and it comes straight from the Republican think tanks. I am posting more of this piece than perhaps
fair use allowsand my apologies to Armando and to Joshua Trevino for doing so (please email me if
you have a problem, guys!), though I hope this will draw more attention to Swords Crossed. At any
rate, the piece goes as follows:
As some may know, I work at a freemarket think tank, and as such, qualify as a full
fledged member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. While places like the Heritage
Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and others are justly famous for their
national level work, it's the network of state level think tanks that are, to my biased
mind, the unsung heroes of the movement.
So, with that being said, and mindful of my businessrelated absence for the latter half
of this week, I'm going to share with you a little strategizing exercise from the bowels of
the VRWC.
The mission of a think tank is to introduce ideas into public discourse and normalize
them within the public discourse. The steps an idea takes to full legitimacy are roughly
as follows:
Unthinkable
Radical
Acceptable
Sensible
Popular
Policy
No nambypambying. This is a systematic, nononsense approach to political ideas and discourse. To
continue, after skipping a bit:
One useful tool is the Overton window. Named after the former vice president of the
Mackinac Center for Public Policy who developed the model, it's a means of visualizing
where to go, and how to assess progress. Let's say, for example, that you want to
make education as free and choice based as it can possibly be. Let's start by developing
a continuum of educational states, from the desired extreme of total freedom, to the
undesirable extreme of total statism. It might look something like this:
No government involvement in education.
All schools private with government regulation.
Voucher system with public schools.
Tuition tax credit with public schools.
Homeschooling legal.
Private schools restricted.
Homeschooling illegal.
Private schools illegal.
Children taken from parents and raised as janissaries.
Now, obviously, I violently dispute Josh's framing of this issue: when no public education is available,
that's hardly freedom. That's a form of oppression. As a homeschooler myself, I also disagree with the
bulletin points of his continuum, but that's another story.
But the key thing to consider here for a moment is the systematization of these ideas and policies.
To continue:
Now, back when Joe Overton drew up this notional list (which is meant to be illustrative,
so don't get hung up on its particular accuracy), the range of actual, reasonable
possibilities as perceived by the general public in Overton's state of Michigan were the
items bolded below:
No government involvement in education.
All schools private with government regulation.
Voucher system with public schools.
Tuition tax credit with public schools.
Homeschooling legal.
Private schools restricted.
Homeschooling illegal.
Private schools illegal.
Children taken from parents and raised as janissaries.
The bolded items, representing the politically possible amongst all conceivable options,
are the Overton window. The idea is to shift that window in the preferred direction. In
Michigan today, the Overton window looks substantively different:
No government involvement in education.
All schools private with government regulation.
Voucher system with public schools.
Tuition tax credit with public schools.
Homeschooling legal.
Private schools restricted.
Homeschooling illegal.
Private schools illegal.
Children taken from parents and raised as janissaries.
Do you see how this works? Systematically, piece by piece, the GOP takes what had been considered
impossibly radical positions and makes them worthy of consideration just by talking about themand
then makes what had been considered outside possibilities truly possible. Now, I happen to believe
that legalization of homeschooling is a good thing (though there should be oversight) others may
disagree.
But the important thing to remember is that the Republicans are carrying out this same exercise with
every public policy debate todayfrom invading Iran to making birth control illegal to eliminating Social
Security. The once unthinkable becomes possibleand they don't care if they take some heat for it
initially.
To finish:
Step by step, ideas that were once radical or unthinkable homeschooling, tuition tax
credits, and vouchers have moved into normal public discourse. Homeschooling is
popular, tuition tax credits are sensible, and vouchers are acceptable. (On the latter,
they've been soundly defeated in Michigan of late, but the point is that they are a part
of normal public and political discourse.) The de facto illegality of homeschooling, by
contrast, has gone the way of the dodo. The conscious decision to shift the Overton
window is yielding its results.
So there's your tip from the VRWC for the day. It's a methodology that could work for
the left as easily as the right, although I'm not aware of a single leftwing think tank
(and they are few) that operates so systemically. If you're of an analytic bent, and want
to figure out where a legislative or policy strategy is heading, try constructing the scale
of possibilities and the Overton window for the subject at hand. Change can happen by
accident, true: but it is just as often the product of deliberation and intent, and it does
all of us well to understand the mechanisms by which it occurs.
Amen, Josh, and thank you. This is something that the Democrats still do not understand. You win
policy debates by crafting arguments for extreme positionsand then shifting the entire window of debate.
You do not win by trying to figure out which position is most popular among Americans right now.
When Concerned Women for America does its thing, that's exactly what they're doing. They're taking
some heat today, in preparation for tomorrow's very real policy battle. They're priming the public to
even talk about the idea of eliminating birth control. And far from turning off moderate voters,
they're going to sway them. They're going to WIN moderate voters by playing to their base. But
playing to it with careful calculation.
And this stands in stark contrast to the Democrats: When the rightwing attacked the Democrats for
promoting "Hillarycare", and the Democrats started to take some heat, we just slinked back into a
corner and didn't raise the issue again. To this day, we are afraid to talk about single payer health
coverage, for fear of offending the middle.
Meanwhile, the progressives among us insist that our leaders simply come out swinging in favor single
payer health coverage to rally our base without priming the moderate voter for the idea in advance.
Both strategies will fail miserably.
Democrats and Progressives think that winning elections comes down to one of two alternatives: a)
taking a principled stand of leadership; or b) listening to focus groups.
The truth is that we need to do both. It is not an either or scenario. We cannot achieve victory by
playing to the base and ignoring the middle, nor can we win by playing to the middle and ignoring the
base. We need to do bothand the GOP understands this.
Remember that Frank Luntz is the master of the focus groupand that there's many an election they would
have lost without him.
To win, we must take principled stands of leadership using phrases and frames that are calculated to
shift the Overton Window to our side.
To win, we must sway the middle by playing to the base and we must understand that this is a
difficult and heavily calculated process that requires time, money and manpower.
To win, we must realize the power of the Overton Window, and stop kowtowing to the antiquated
thinking that pits the Middle versus the Base.
To win, we must understand that there is no conflict between playing to the middle and the baseso
long as our messaging is clear and well crafted, and our positions are principled, memorable, and
consistent.
It is time, in short, for an evolution in our thinking that matches the subtlety and genius of the GOP
machinewihtout its concomitant evil. Thank you, Mr. Overton!
[Crossposted at my blog There Is No Blog: Bending Left]
Tags: Overton Window, VRWC, Democrats, Republicans, DLC, Armando Llorens, Swords Crossed,
Josh Trevino, Tacitus, framing, Recommended (all tags) :: Previous Tag Versions
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