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Which Phrases Should the Right Retire?
In conversation with friends this weekend — the group included a couple of members of the Ricochet family — the conversation turned to the shortcomings of how Republicans communicate with the public. One of the participants offered what I thought was a very incisive critique of how the conservative message plays with a broader audience. His argument: a lot of conservative shorthand requires second-order explanations.
For instance, talking about “free markets” works only if the listener has a preexisting appreciation for why government intervention in the economy is generally to be abjured. By contrast, another interlocutor said that, were he running for office, he would position himself as “pro-innovation” rather than pro-free markets, leaving it to his opponents to explain why they were opposed to progress. The key, he argued, was reducing political positioning to the values level — something the left does very effectively through an emphasis on ideas like ‘fairness’ and ‘compassion’ (which, believe me on this, sells better than ‘higher taxes’ and ‘welfare’).
It’s an interesting thought exercise, and one worthy of this crowd. So how about you? What formulations would you suggest for a GOP candidate talking to an audience that doesn’t reflexively share his assumptions about good public policy?
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This is all well and good, but if we are being honest with ourselves, what percentage of voters do we think even knows what the word innovation means?
If the majority of voters do not understand the words “Free” and “market, and/or a combination of the two, then We might as well bury the Republic.
This would work. :)
The problem with “free market” is that it’s read as “callous disregard.” People ask themselves, “ok, but what if I lose?” Even Conservatives do this, which is why when they say the slogan there is a giant asterisk pointing to “except most of the things the government already does.”
I think all slogans have a shelf life. Meanings of words change, slogans eventually sound stodgy, opponents figure out ways to frame it negatively.
So my answer to the question is “probably all of them.” We’ll still lose though, because you can’t dress up what we want to do unless you use the same words the left does. The government doesn’t exist for free markets. It’s, by definition, a market intervention. Pointing a gun a places people don’t want to see the market going.
“Free Markets” is better than “Capitalism,” but I hear you. Nowadays it’s hard to get conservatives to support free markets.
I would retire “Rule of Law.” We know what it means, but to the uninformed it sounds like Nazi Brownshirts.
We should also stop calling the Democrats “bullies.” That doesn’t make us sound like winners.
It isn’t that people don’t understand. It’s that it’s the Un-Solution.
People say X is a problem. The left proposes a solution. The right proposes an Un-Solution.
Solution vs Un-Solution? Who wins?
I’m usually not the one talking down the pessimists, but I think this oversimplifies the case. Free-market economics can be pretty counterintuitive, especially in a society like ours where (A) economic education is much sparser than it should be and (B) the dominant cultural assumptions flow out of the progressive conceit that specialists can be relied upon to solve social ills. When your case isn’t obvious to the lay audience, you have to explain rather than assert. That’s an admittedly difficult task in a sound bite media environment, but still a necessary one.
Since Democrats won’t say “liberal,” “taxes” or “welfare,” we should say those words – about them. The best defense is a good offense.
“Small Business”. Please, please, retire this. Romney drove me nuts with his paens to small business. The trouble with this is that unless you are the owner of one or actually understand its importance in the economy (darn few, I would assume), it is just not that sympathetic or inspiring an institution. Many people have worked for one and found it lacking in many respects. And most people know they do not have the skills and tolerance of risk required to be a small business owner – while nonetheless being productive and civic-minded citizens. So this line of rhetoric likely leaves them feeling unappreciated. I think this is why Romney was able to be dismissed as not being able to relate to normal people.
New slogans without new policies and goals are worthless. Less than worthless, actually, as they just show us as liars willing to say anything.
With that in mind, I’d like to see Republicans use the phrase “level playing field” and the like, and *mean* it. Most folks don’t mind rich people being rich because they worked hard and did something useful (Bill Gates, Steve Jobs). But for a middle class finding themselves squeezed, there’s a lot of disgust out there for those whose wealth seems based on being born in the right families, knowing the right people, greasing the right palms, going into the right businesses that don’t seem to make anyone’s life better while allowing “them” to spend a small mortgage payment on an evening’s meal.
So don’t talk about “free markets”; talk about a “level playing field” where:
1. Taxes are simple enough that ordinary folks don’t need H&R Block for their personal taxes, their employers can hire more field workers instead of compliance people, and there aren’t horror stories about the “rich guys” who end up paying little or nothing because they know how to work all the loopholes.
2. Government agencies drastically reduce their rules, and the rules they have are applied evenly. Promise that with Republicans running things there won’t be EPA horror stories about the handicapped woman who can’t build a house on her own property but the local Walmart got a variance to build in the same endangered species habitat. That kids with lemonade stands in their front yard won’t be slapped with fines for violating food codes. This sort of thing. We’re no longer a nation of entrepreneurs because we don’t want to drown in red tape.
3. End government subsidies and bailouts of businesses. All of them. Again, the perception is that Republicans just want to help out their business friends than actually promote a free market. Pointing out the Democrats are as bad if not worse is neither a defense nor an excuse. The party of the free market, of the level playing field, doesn’t care whose brother-in-law will be out of a job, doesn’t care whose stock portfolio will take a hit, doesn’t care about anything except the fair and even application of law. There is no such thing as too big to fail, only too big to stand without leaning on Big Government.
Until the Republicans actually want to stand for a free market, any change of slogans will be nothing more than trying to put lipstick on a pig. Even if you succeed, it won’t fool anyone.
Conservative principles are not intuitive to most people because they were not included in their education, either in K-12 or at university. Once progressive principles have been drilled into them it is a hard slog to get them to do the hard work of thinking things through to the conservative conclusion.
In fact, it is such people who are most likely to use slogans instead of thinking: war on women; no blood for oil; the 1%; Bush lied, people died; living wage; the science is settled, etc.
The battle isn’t to find the right slogan. It is to take back the schools and universities. We are raising a race of people who no longer value freedom and self-reliance.
In sales, we talk about the difference between a feature and a benefit. A feature is an attribute of a product, and features don’t sell products. A benefit is “how the product will benefit the customer,” and this is what moves the merchandise. Sometimes the link between them is obvious enough that the feature seems to sell, e.g. “lower tax rate” is the feature, but the benefit is “more money in my pocket.”
We have to sell the *benefits* of a free market, not the features. Who cares about a change to hybrid car subsidies or the alternative minimum tax? Who cares about reducing the USDA regulations on lettuce from hundreds of thousands of words to a couple pages? Who cares about tariff levels and coal tower scrubbers and ethanol requirements and the other million minutia of the federal government? No one but the pointed headed wonks who’ve already made up their mind.
A simpler tax code (even when revenue neutral) means more money in your pocket. It means more money for your boss to hire workers instead of HR people. Fewer regulations and free trade mean cheaper food, cheaper gas, cheaper products, cheaper houses, and more jobs. To be the party of the free market is to be the party of cheaper and more. This has to be the message, and the policies have to match it.
“Dynamism” “Innovators” “Start-ups” “Firms” and all other Economics/MBA terms for economic growth. They betray a corporate mentality that cares more for balance sheets than the people themselves. Worse, they’re more than a little self-adulating. Finally, they play to type–conservatives as corporate drones.
Your comment is right on. I take issue only with the above sentence. When I hear “level playing field,” I hear protectionism. We don’t need that on top of everything else.
The speech writers, staffers and maybe even the politicians themselves need to get out and break bread with the people in the same manner that Peter Robinson did in West Berlin in 1988. I would dare say that the political class (of both parties) is as removed and foreign to average Americans as he was to the Germans back then.
They not only need to stop using the same phrases they’ve used since 1980, they need to find out what the issues are out here. (Yes, health insurance is still an issue. Yes, Obamacare made it worse. No, simple repeal is not a panacea.)
Surely the good citizens of Ricochet would be happy to host a dinner or two.
Well, I tend to think we should reciprocate tariffs in the interest of that level playing field. I remember in the 90s a bunch of complaining about how Americans car companies weren’t able to compete in Japan because of safety regulations that seemed to exist only to edge out Americans.
My preferred trade policy would be no tariffs at all (and watch the sugar prices drop!), but to reciprocate other countries’ tariffs on American goods with equivalent tariffs on their same foreign goods — a geopolitical “play fair with us and we’ll play fair with you, try to screw us and we’ll screw you” stance.
No one should say “entrepreneur” or “entrepreneurship.” Sounds fancy and furrin. And becomes very difficult to say after a cocktail.
And back pain medication.
We should keep the phrase “Big Government” and use it on the Democrats relentlessly. We need to keep telling people that this lengthy recession is something that was imposed on us by the government. It didn’t “just happen.”
“Tax cuts”
Whatever the merits of an argument for specific cuts, such as for the corporate tax, all people hear anymore is “tax cuts for the rich”.
The Left owns “tax cuts” and they are always something bad.
Except when other countries are being dumb, the rational response is not to act similarly. Tariffs only hurt yourselves. The last thing we need is more propping up of car manufacturing at the expense of everyone.
GOP already has “innovators” and “entrepreneurs”. For more than a few women, all that free market talk sounds like the business-related excuses their ex-husbands used to explain why they were never home.
Instead, the dialog has to be: How do we get more income for families? How can we create opportunities for flexible good pay for parents? What kind of climate generates new options, choices and services from work-from-home jobs to more day-care options? How can we create a labor market where employers have to compete? How do we create wealthier, more secure lives?
Not by giving more power to people whose job it is to limit, control and regulate. Not by sending more money to politicians and hoping they send some back.
A growing economy brings people together. A shrinking economy pushes people out into lonely dependency. Growing businesses hire and reach out. Shrinking companies fire people and go to Washington for handouts and deals for the top guys.
Growth means secure futures, opportunity, dignity and community and provide for us all. A shrinking, regulated, taxed and corrupt economy is only for the powerful and connected.
I always liked Mark Steyn’s proposition of being the party of Big Liberty vs Small Liberty. Pointing out the asinity of government regulations run amuck is much better for the cause than singing songs of adulation about small business owners and “tax cuts.” Try “tax simplification,” then worry about lowering them.
Exactly. And talk about the cutting out the headaches and reducing the paperwork and skipping the expensive trip to H&R Block or the hours trying to get TaxCut to find all the right little deductions. Those are real frustrations, not abstract notions of government nudges and behavior modifications.
“Tax reform” is absolutely meaningless. More often than not, the term is used to label minor and temporary cuts (or “cuts” to proposed hikes) and not to fundamental changes (like the Fair Tax or elimination of a specific tax).
I think that would backfire. I don’t think the opponents would have to explain why they were opposed to progress, but rather would simply say that they’re also pro-innovation, thereby eliminating any substantive difference between the candidates. One might as well say nothing if one prefers using meaningless weasel words instead of promoting real substantive differences between one and one’s opponent.
Obama was incredibly pro-innovation. That’s why he bestowed his friends in the high-tech/enviro industry with so much taxpayer cash.
You can never go wrong with “Hard Working American Families”.
That label includes entrepreneurs as much as it does salaried workers. The only people it doesn’t include are those who receive more from the public purse than they contribute.
“Tax simplification” can pretty easily be spun to mean “tax hikes on the middle class”.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Mitt Romney (and for that matter Meg Whitman when she made her bid for California Governor) reminded people too much of a detached, upper-manager uttering platitudes of little immediate significance to the rank-and-file. This may be unfair, but as we say in sales, “Perception is reality.”
Ditto.