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Politics : Right Wing Extremist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sandintoes who wrote (54258)	6/12/2006 11:16:52 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 59480

In 1985, shortly after Ronald Reagan's reelection landslide, House Democrats retreated to the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia to lick their wounds. Richard A. Gephardt, then the leader of the House Democratic caucus, told reporters that weekend, "We're not soul-searching and we're not in the wilderness and we're not without ideas." Ten years later, when he had to hand over the gavel to newly sworn-in Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), none of the above was true. At that meeting, Democrats heard from adviser-to-multiple-presidents David Gergen and motivational psychologist Ira Weinstein. Weinstein told the Democrats they had to learn from Reagan's success the importance of developing a product and packaging it. "Reagan was sold as a unified product brilliantly," he told them. Twenty years later, even before losing to President Bush in 2004, Democrats were turning to Berkeley scholar and linguist George Lakoff for similar packaging advice; he offered them such concepts as "frames," "framing" and "branding" in their wars with the Republicans. "If you're a Democrat, you want to really change the frame," Lakoff told the liberal Web site AlterNet.org. "The problem is that there is no existing frame out there. You have to create it." Not all such advice is welcome or accepted. Weinstein's appearance led to hoots of derision (privately, of course) from many House Democrats at the Greenbrier retreat. Lakoff has detractors, too, who see his prescriptions as peripheral to more fundamental problems that affect the attitudes of ordinary Americans toward the Democratic Party. Still, envy of Republican campaign techniques is a staple of Democratic soul-searching. After 1984, Democrats complained that Republicans understood the use of modern technology in a way Democrats did not. Then it was exploitation of television to create powerful visual images. "The Republicans have professionalism," The Washington Post quoted an Arizona Democrat as saying after the Reagan landslide. "They buy it and use it. We are losing our capacity to make our party work, and as long as we just sit here and do 1930s politics, we're going to deserve what we get." After 1988 and 1994, Democrats lamented that they were still behind the curve in exploiting wedge issues and public grievances. After 2004, Democrats discovered (again) the power of technology and databases. "Metrics" and "microtargeting" became the new buzzwords as Democrats struggled to compete with the Republican turnout machine. "The Republicans were . . . smart," Terence R. McAuliffe, the Democratic National Committee chairman, said after Bush's reelection. "They came into our neighborhoods. They came into Democratic areas with very specific targeted messages to take Democratic voters away from us." ...... If that happens and the Democrats fall short on Nov. 7, they will ask, "If we can't win under these conditions, when can we?" The first panel will convene at 9 a.m. on Nov. 8 at the Press Club. Live on C-SPAN. The topic: "Paradise Lost: How the GOP's Midterm Victories Demonstrate the Enduring Power of the Democratic Message." balzd@washpost.com Dan Balz covers national politics for The Washington Post.