On selling the conservative message

Just got done reading this piece Jonah Goldberg wrote for the LA Times about his belief that conservatism is popular in theory but not so much in practice:

The problem is that conservatism, even Reagan’s brand, wasn’t as popular as we often remember it. Government spending continued to increase under Reagan, albeit a bit more slowly. Today, the U.S. population is 30% larger but government spending is 84% greater (adjusting for inflation) than it was when Reagan delivered his 1981 inaugural address. That was the speech in which he declared: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” and vowed to “curb the size and influence of the federal establishment.”

In 1964, two political psychologists, Lloyd A. Free and Hadley Cantril, famously asserted that Americans were ideologically conservative but operationally liberal. Americans loved Barry Goldwater’s rhetoric about yeoman individualism, but not if it meant taking away their Social Security checks or farm subsidies. “As long as Goldwater could talk ideology alone, he was high, wide and handsome,” they wrote. “But the moment he discussed issues and programs, he was finished.”

Still, Goldwater went to Tennessee to blast the Tennessee Valley Authority, God bless him. That was like going to a brothel to denounce prostitution, or to Iowa to denounce ethanol — but I repeat myself. He carried only six states in the 1964 presidential election.

Liberals have an inherent advantage. As long as they promise incremental, “pragmatic” expansions of the government, voters generally give them a pass. And every new expansion since FDR and the New Deal has created a constituency for continued government largesse.

If Hillary Clinton promised to socialize medicine — which, let the record show, she has attempted to do in the past — she would lose. But her current campaign promise to simply expand coverage sounds reasonable enough — even though there’s no reason to think she’ll stop pushing for a national single-payer healthcare system (a.k.a. socialized medicine).

“Liberals sell the welfare state one brick at a time, deflecting inquiries about the size and cost of the palace they’re building,” writes William Voegeli in an illuminating essay, “The Trouble with Limited Government,” in the current issue of the Claremont Review of Books.

Yes, they do – and they do it with the full support and aid of the mainstream media.

I wrote recently about the Democrats’ penchant for emotional arguments that they often “win” specifically because of their demagoguery. Democrats, unlike many Republicans, know the power of words and how to use them – and the media – to their advantage. With the success of talk radio and blogs, Republicans are doing a lot better job at getting their message out but it’s primarily getting out to people who are already sold on it. Quite simply, Republicans need to learn better ways to frame their pro-conservative arguments in a way that appeals not just to the base but also to those who aren’t political junkies, to your average American voter who doesn’t spend most of his free time scouring the newspapers and I’net for the latest goings-on in politics. Republicans are learning how to do this, but they haven’t become masters of how to do it, and until they do – and until they 1) start acting like conservatives and 2) stop throwing up their hands in the air and saying “we give up” (the SCHIP expansion drama is an exception to the rule) – the big government bureaucracy (and the dependence on the government) will continue to grow.

There is a tremendous power in words, if used in the right context. Take welfare, for example. The word itself has a negative connotation to it. Democrats don’t like to use it, and instead have adopted use of the word “disadvantaged” (and other “non-offensive” words) to describe people who are on welfare. Back in the mid 90s Newt Gingrich framed the welfare reform argument in a common sense way, telling people that welfare was hurting many of the people it claimed to be helping, and he assured people that he didn’t want to eliminate welfare altogether but instead implement reforms which would require able-bodied people on welfare to get a job so that only those who “truly needed it” would get it. This persuasive argument, in part, forced Bill Clinton into fulfulling a campaign promise he never intended to: implementing welfare reform. And as we all know, the passage of welfare reform has led to positive results we would not have seen had Bill Clinton and other Democrats had their way about it.

For conservatives, winning arguments about our national security isn’t a difficult thing to do, as we saw happen in 2002 and 2004. Not only that, but militant far left anti-war Democrats made it pretty easy. Where the problem comes in for conservatives is on domestic policy and selling pro-conservative arguments on social/fiscal issues in a hostile mainstream media environment that overwhelmingly favors Democrats. Until more conservatives in government develop a spine, start rejecting the “I give up” attitude towards growing social programs which liberals demagogue, as well as take a stand and say unpopular things that need to be said, and say them in effective and engaging ways that signify that they share the a voter’s concern on any given issue while at the same time confidently discussing their solutions/ideas, we will start seeing more people rejecting liberalism and embracing conservatism and perhaps, finally a return to the small-government ideals that once was the bedrock of conservatism.