Monday, April 25, 2005

Some Good Press for the Democrats

Check out this article from today's Washington Post.

This is the type of piece we're used to seeing run on the GOP - the author uses words like "persistence" and "resilience." We also get "relentless" and "stubborn," along with "solidarity" and "loyalty." Very strong positive associations with those words (except perhaps stubborn, which can go either way but in amongst all those others is pretty clearly positive as well.)

Meanwhile the Republicans are "frustrated," making moves that are "unwise" and "deeply unpopular." The article alleges that "some Republicans" give the Dems "grudging credit" for their pluck, but the quotes they get from John Thune (the only Republican quoted in the piece) don't really back that up.

In short, it's the type of feel-good, empty language piece that has contributed to George W. Bush's weird status as an all-around nice, competent, regular-guy president, despite his repeated demonstrations of his own elitism, meanness, and complete inability to direct or even understand the most basic elements of American government.

In this case, though, I'm bout it bout it.

2 comments:

RBP said...

Now Bush wants Tom Delay to go to one of his "Let's Privatize Social Security" pep rallies. So let's get this straight: Privatizing social security = unpopular.
Tom Delay = unpopular.
Put the two together = Bush wants to use Delays unpopularity as political cover for social securities unpopularity.

This is pure Rove. Bush can show loyalty to his embattled bag man in Congress, and at the same time cover his own ass vis-a-vis social security.

What happened to all that so-called *political capital* gained after the election?

Unknown said...

Well, it's a funny thing about capital. In order for it to do you any good, you have to employ it intelligently.

You beat me to the punch, BTW - I was going to post something very much like this comment this morning. Involving Delay in the SS privatization scheme makes little sense unless Bush is planning to throw both privatization and Delay overboard and blame them on each other. Seems a bit too Orwellian to actually work, but then again...