By Becky Gillette – Sharon Spurlin of Berryville recently gave a presentation to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Eureka Springs, “Where do we go from here?” She gathered information from a number of different sources, primarily George Lakoff’s Do Not Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate to explain what has made Republicans so successful that they now have a majority in the House and the Senate.
“It is not an accident that conservatives are winning where they have successfully framed the issues,” Spurlin said. “They’ve got a forty- to fifty-year head start, and more than two billion dollars in ‘think tank’ investments. And they are still thinking ahead. Democrats are not.
“Progressives feel so assaulted by conservatives that progressives can only think about immediate defense. Democratic office holders are constantly under attack. Every day they have to respond to conservative initiatives. This leads to politics that are reactive, not proactive. It is not just public officials, but the same thing happens to advocacy groups around the country like Planned Parenthood. They are under attack all the time, and they are trying to defend themselves against the next attack. They do not have time or money to think long-term.”
A big issue is the amount of money the wealthy right wing gives in large block grants and endowments. At some colleges, the salary of professors is paid for by large think tanks that advocate fewer environmental regulations, opposition to minimum wage and unions, and lower tax rates for wealthy corporations and individuals.
“The right wing think tanks get large block grants and endowments, millions at a time,” she said. “To counter this, we need to provide funding for progressive think tanks to hire intellectuals to build human capital for the future.”
On the left, the highest value is helping individuals who need help. So, if you are running a foundation, what makes you a good person? You help as many people as you can.
“As the public budgets get cut, there are more people who need help,” Spurlin said. “So you spread the money around to the grassroots organizations and therefore you do not have any money left for development. And so you perpetuate a system that helps the right. And the result is that the right is privatizing the left. More budget cuts mean you have to get your money from the private sector for what government should be supporting. Suddenly, there is not enough money for anything like social programs or environmental programs.”
Lakoff has the following recommendations for what can be done about this:
- Talk about issues from progressive values, not theirs.
- Think strategically. The right is very good at this.
- Fight tort reform, which is a top priority for Republicans, because in one stroke you prohibit all potential lawsuits that are the basis of future environmental legislation and regulation. Lawyers who make significant investments in such cases will no longer make enough to support the risk, and corporations will be free to ignore the public good. That is what tort reform is about. In addition, if you look at where Democrats get much of their money in the individual states, it is significantly from the lawyers who win tort cases.
- Republicans have used linguists for years. Frank Luntz has been very active as a linguistic consultant to the GOP making the verbiage of Republican politics more palatable. He changed the name of inheritance tax to death tax, and even the news media and Democrats use it. This is a tiny example of the huge impact he has made. He makes a living knowing what words mean to certain categories of people and how to spin to win.
- Open more think tanks to flesh out the progressive policies and help us our point. Use think tanks to train, educate, and sway the public.
- Put teams on the ground in rural areas to find people to lead the people in organizations, media, education, etc., to support a liberal/progressive agenda.
- What about fake news? What do we do to expose that a lot of the “news” on the Internet is false?
Who are the richest people in the world who believe in a liberal agenda? How do we come up with the money to balance the messages of those with the money?
Ten things Lakoff suggests a progressive can do:
- Notice what conservatives have done right and where progressives have missed the boat. For example, don’t let the right wing get away with claiming the liberals control the media when the opposite is true.
- Don’t think of an elephant. If you keep their language and their framing and just argue against it, you lose and reinforce their frame.
- The truth alone will not set you free. Just speaking truth to power does not work. You need to frame the truths effectively from your perspective.
- Speak from our own moral perspective at all times. Progressive policies follow from progressive values. Get clear on your values and use the language of value instead of the language of policy wonks.
- Understand where the conservatives are coming from. Get their strict father morality and its consequences clear. Know what you are arguing against. Be able to explain why they believe what they believe.
- Think strategically across issue areas. Look at large moral goals, not in terms of programs for their own sake.
- Think about the consequences of proposals.
- Remember that voters vote their identity and their values, which need not coincide with their self-interest.
- Unite and cooperate.
- Be proactive, not reactive. Play offense, not defense. Practice reframing, every day on every issue. Don’t just say what you believe. Use your frames, not their frames. Use them because they fit the values you believe in.