The Worm Turns

by digby

Greg Sargent at TAPPED sees what’s important about the emerging new and improved conventional wisdom about the Feingold resolution:

Lockhart speaks out in an interview with Chris Lehmann in his entertaining piece on Feingold in this week’s New York Observer. Lehmann writes:

[Lockhart] sees no political downside to Senator Feingold’s proposal – and likewise sees much desperation in the Republican spin that it would be another self-inflicted Democratic wound that would haunt the minority party in the fall elections. All the G.O.P. bluster about an early vote on the Feingold proposal to smoke out weak-sister Democrats for elimination in November, Mr. Lockhart said, “is complete nonsense.”

He said: “One simple rule of politics is that the more ferociously you’re pushing your talking points, the less you believe in them. The Republicans jumping so hard on this tells you that they believe they’re in a really vulnerable position – that this issue is not the winner they thought it was.”

Whatever you think of censure, Lockhart’s hitting on a really critical point that can’t be emphasized enough. Reporters and commentators have grown conditioned to believe Republicans when they say an issue’s a political winner for them — mainly because Democrats too often act as if they’re convinced they’re going to lose. When Karl Rove threw down the gauntlet in that speech about NSA wiretapping, few if any commentators even thought to imagine that Rove might be bluffing, even though it was perfectly likely that he was trying to psych out moderate Dems and get them to break ranks. And of course, some moderate Dem thinkers immediately followed Rove’s script.

This is exactly right. They’ve been conditioned over the course of many years. During the Clinton era the Republicans ruled the discourse with non-stop scandalmongering which the press eagerly aided and abetted. During the 2000 campaign the press trivialized and derided Al Gore despite George W. Bush’s clear lack of qualifications and helped the GOP character assassination squad at every turn. Since 9/11 the Republicans have held the line with brute intimidation tactics accusing anyone who disagreed with lack of patriotism or cowardice. I know it’s been tough and I salute the Democrats for taking the amount of invective that’s been hurled at them all through these dark years. Nobody who faces Republican thuggishness day after day can be called cowards.

But times have changed. The Republicans are being hoist on their own hubris and it’s time to recognise that people are sick of their tired cant and want to hear from us again. Listening to George W. Bush’s speeches for the last five years, particularly after 9/11, is like having someone sing “It’s a small world after all” over and over and over again. It was bad the first time. Now it makes you want to stab your ears with a letter opener. The press, forced to listen more often than anyone else, seems to have reached its limit as well.

Make the argument, Dems. People are ready to listen.

Read all of Chris Lehman’s article if you haven’t had the chance. It’s great.

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