Preparing The Ground

by digby

I’m sure that most of you read Daily Kos and have come across this diary by thereisnospoon, but if you don’t you really should check it out.

Do you see how this works? Systematically, piece by piece, the GOP takes what had been considered impossibly radical positions and makes them worthy of consideration just by talking about them–and then makes what had been considered outside possibilities truly possible. Now, I happen to believe that legalization of homeschooling is a good thing (though there should be oversight)–others may disagree.

But the important thing to remember is that the Republicans are carrying out this same exercise with every public policy debate today–from invading Iran to making birth control illegal to eliminating Social Security. The once unthinkable becomes possible–and they don’t care if they take some heat for it initially.

I would love to see bloggers on our side engage this issue because I think we might just be able to influence how certain ideas bubble up into the zeitgeist over the long haul, and this is a very interesting way to think about it.

I have long felt that one of the things the right does well is prepare the ground for ideas that are not considered mainstream. The ideas themselves … well, that’s another story and their ideas often fail on their own merit. But they are very good at bringing their ideas into mainstream dialog and making them sound comfortably familiar. And with each success, they move the goalposts farther to the right.

I was struck by this when I was reading an old article about Newt Gingrich from the mid-80’s. The writer went on at some length about his crazy, freaky idea to change social security to a privatized “IRA” type system. The tone was of stark disbelief that anyone could come up with such a crackpot scheme. But, of course, this idea became quite mainstream within a little more than a decade.

I just think there is merit in thinking about the right tactics for advancing big ideas that may not be on the radar screen right now, but could be if we are tactically intelligent about advancing them. And I think the blogosphere may be a good place to get these ideas percolating.

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