Thursday, April 12, 2012

"ROSEN-GATE" WASN'T ABOUT WOMEN -- IT WAS ABOUT CLASS

I took the Hillary Rosen/Ann Romney dust-up a lot more seriously than most people on the left did. The reason I took it seriously was not that I think it's a huge game-changer (though it did give Romney's campaign a good day at a time when he was continuing to struggle, and it threw the Obama campaign off stride). The reason I took it seriously was that it plays into a narrative that's worked for Republicans in the past, and I can't be sure that it won't work again.

You see, our side talks about fat cats getting tax cuts. Our side talks about the 1%. Average Americans sometimes respond to that talk -- but more often in recent years they've responded to a right-wing redirection of class anger, away from the obscenely wealthy and toward people who are merely well off. The villains in right-wing narratives are people who are very well educated, hard-charging, usually coastal, and not cultural traditionalists -- people like, y'know, Hilary Rosen, Democratic operative, former head of the record industry's top lobbying organization, and lesbian mother.

Republicans have been really adroit at getting heartlanders to look at people like Rosen -- and people like you and me, who mostly aren't movers and shakers but who perhaps eat arugula once in a while -- and make us the Mr. Potters in a warped version of It's a Wonderful Life. In this narrative, we're the ones who wish them ill. We're the ones who make their lives miserable. We're the ones who insult them and work the levers of power so they suffer while we frolic.

It's bullshit, but a lot of people believe it. The key is that it's a way of making sure that heartland anger is never directed at the people who actually run everything. People like, say, the folks at Bain Capital.

I don't know that the Romney campaign can work this narrative consistently. I'm not sure the narrative even has the power it's had over the past couple of decades. But it worked for the teabaggers and Glenn Beck enough to blow the Democrats out in the 2010 midterms (Obama was the Hilary Rosen then, the object of anger not for pro-fat-cat policies but for daring to try to give uninsured people health care, the damn egghead social engineer!). I think the narrative worked for the Romneyites today. Ann Romney, if only temporarily, looks (at least to some people) like an Everymom who happens to be financially fortunate. Democrats look (at least to some people) as if they'd urinate on a Norman Rockwell painting sooner than hang it on the wall.

 I think Democrats have contained the damage (deploying Joe Biden and Michelle Obama was wise), and I think Team Romney just got lucky. But I'm not ready to assume that this can't work for the Romney camp again. I know who really runs America and so do you, but a hell of a lot of our fellow citizens don't. When they get upset, it's still way too easy to make people like us the culprits.

7 comments:

BH said...

To all of which I can only say "yea, verily".

Danp said...

Despite all the politically sensitive, "Rosen doesn't speak for us" stuff, I suspect most women are smarter than politicians on either side give credit for. And many of them are thinking "Ann Romney doesn't understand what it's like to need income, workplace fairness, or medical coverage. Stop the apologies. This isn't about the choice to stay home. It's about not having that choice."

Erik A. Prince said...

You are correct that many (most?) in the GOP base will blindly follow, but as others noted, I doubt it will have much pull beyond the base.

It is rather depressing at times how such a surprisingly large percentage of the populous refuses to engage their brain. Not that I expect them to all agree with me! But to see people blindly follow talking points like intellectual zombies is still a bit astonishing to me. Particularly when the idea they are following is clearly and logically wrong. We can debate different interpretations, but 2+2 still equals 4 and if we can't even agree on that I don't know where you go from there.

Never Ben Better said...

Danp, check the comments under today's CNN story about this kerfuffle and you'll see you're quite correct.

Anonymous said...

One of the advantages the Dems have this time - as opposed to the oughts and running against George W. - is that Romney is just so absolutely friggin clueless as to how to present himself as "just folks." Bush bought his "ranch" one year before running for President, used it as a photo-op for clearing brush for eight years, and once it had served its purpose and his gig running the country into the ground was over . . . sold it.

It was a hell of a commitment to the part, but it went a long, long way toward convincing low-information voters that a millionaire son of privilege, a Yale legacy and a scion of one of the most powerful families in America was "just like you and me."

Romney doesn't have that ability. The one thing even the lowest of information voters know about Romney is that he is extremely rich, and that he made tons of money on Wall Street. (Bush, at least, made his fortune owning oil companies and a baseball team - a baseball team! Of course, the oil companies were all bailouts by Poppy's friends and the baseball money was a huge private conscription of public funds involving the construction of a new stadium, but those are exactly the kinds of details Republican image managers can count on low- information voters not to know.

Romney probably should have tried to take a page out of Dubya's playbook and built himself, I dunno, a hunting lodge or something in Michigan or something. I'm not saying he could have pulled that off, mind you, but he could have tried.

Instead, he is known for being from that very blue state Massachusetts, and for building a seaside mansion with a car elevator in that bluest of states, California.

What I'm suggesting is that the GOP's ability to convince undecided voters that Romney is the middle-class candidate with whom they should identify is going to be extremely (etch-a) sketchy.

(Sorry for that last groaner. Couldn't resist.)

Anonymous said...

One of the advantages the Dems have this time - as opposed to the oughts and running against George W. - is that Romney is just so absolutely friggin clueless as to how to present himself as "just folks." Bush bought his "ranch" one year before running for President, used it as a photo-op for clearing brush for eight years, and once it had served its purpose and his gig running the country into the ground was over . . . sold it.

It was a hell of a commitment to the part, but it went a long, long way toward convincing low-information voters that a millionaire son of privilege, a Yale legacy and a scion of one of the most powerful families in America was "just like you and me."

Romney doesn't have that ability. The one thing even the lowest of information voters know about Romney is that he is extremely rich, and that he made tons of money on Wall Street. (Bush, at least, made his fortune owning oil companies and a baseball team - a baseball team! Of course, the oil companies were all bailouts by Poppy's friends and the baseball money was a huge private conscription of public funds involving the construction of a new stadium, but those are exactly the kinds of details Republican image managers can count on low- information voters not to know.

Romney probably should have tried to take a page out of Dubya's playbook and built himself, I dunno, a hunting lodge or something in Michigan or something. I'm not saying he could have pulled that off, mind you, but he could have tried.

Instead, he is known for being from that very blue state Massachusetts, and for building a seaside mansion with a car elevator in that bluest of states, California.

What I'm suggesting is that the GOP's ability to convince undecided voters that Romney is the middle-class candidate with whom they should identify is going to be extremely (etch-a) sketchy.

(Sorry for that last groaner. Couldn't resist.)

Anonymous said...

Damn. Sorry for the double-post.