5GW and Obama--Long Post

One further thought to the debate on the impact of the "Vote Different" ad, and whether it can be classified as 5GW: The Republicans have employed a form of 4GW for a long time. The Democrats did not field a comparable effort, and are only beginning to develop the capacity right now. Much of what follows is "conventional wisdom," but my attempt here to refocus it into the analytic framework of generational conflict, in the style of Dan TDAXP.

After the New Deal and WWII, the Republicans were faced with a number of seemingly insurmountable problems.

• They were a traditional conservative party, in the European sense. They had stood against the rapid social change represented by the loosening of post WWI social mores, the New Deal, and American internationalism.
  

• A centralized liberal architecture had consolidated control over most important centers of power--i.e the labor unions, the great old old political machines , and the media.
  

• Republicans had no effective base of support to rival this. Religious voters and the much-maligned evangelicals had yet to become the political force they are today.
  

Republicans adopted superficial elements of "Cold War liberal" positions, but merely imitating their adversary was not enough to deliver victory. However, what they did do was develop the beginnings of an intellectual movement, represented by Russell Kirk, Irving Kristol, and the National Review.

The 60's and 70's presented a number of opportunities to regain their lead.

• Liberal involvement in the civil rights movement and the loud emergence of the mainly middle to upper class New Left splinter movement separated Democrats from their working-class base. Southern whites (and some Northern ones, as represented by the Boston busing riots) were uncomfortable with the social change that they perceived was being forced on them. The New Left's anti-Americanism and the general shock of the counterculture alienated working-class Democrats.
  

• The United States experienced a crisis of modernity. The increasing encroachment of technology, media, and consumer capitalism began to erase the last vestiges of what was (perhaps falsely) idealized as classic "American Values." Crime, riots, government abuses and America's defeat in Vietnam contributed to a loss of public confidence in the future of the American Project.
  

• The power and diversity of media continued to grow by leaps and bounds. Instead of the centralized hierarchy seen in the late 19th to early 20th century, with a mass of media producers owned by a Hearst or a Pulitizer, we begin to see the beginning of today's freewheeling information landscape.
  

The Republicans reacted to these changes. The Democrats did not.

• Republicans, once playing the role of conservative isolationists, infiltrated and subverted the liberal foreign policy doctrine by transmuting it into neoconservatism, a extremely muscular form of liberal Wilsonian doctrine.

• Republicans, once derided as out of touch aristocrats, reached back into the era of Jacksonian populism to gain the loyalties of working-class and middle-class voters by appealing to their values. Thomas Frank correctly diagnosed this in his book What's The Matter With Kansas but made a crucial error in his thesis that Republicans fooled Democratic voters into voting against their own self-interests in favor of "moral values."
  

This is because Frank is an economic determinist, perhaps befitting his own left-wing background. Most people do not read long economic policy papers. Neither do they view such things as an accurate predictor of a politician's purpose. Character provides a tool that can be evaluated without a specialist background in policy. It is also something that plays well to mass communication, unlike 500-page Brookings Institute wonkfests.

We do this every day when we evaluate whom we form relationships with, business, romantic, or otherwise. And in a media age, what politicians are essentially doing are attempting to do is create the illusion of a personal connection to the public. In an era of widespread cynicism where people believe they have no influence over the government, one cannot overstate the importance of a politician who tries to make people feel connected to the government.

George Lakoff described this process as "framing," and its true that we can see this, on a superficial level as matter of clever linguistics. In Lakoff's view, Republicans "framed" their opponents as out of touch, wealthy, and deviant intellectuals with a soft attitude towards crime and Communism and a hatred of working-class faith and community. However, what are the purposes of "frames?"

• To isolate the opponent from his bases of support.
  
• To divide the opponent's organization.
  
• To ultimately disrupt the opponent's thinking (OODA Loops) and destroy his resolve.
  

How did Republicans accomplish this? By taking advantage of the communications boom and created a decentralized network of dependent media forms that maintained the illusion of independence from the main party but nonetheless repeated party talking points. Over a fifty year period starting with the founding of the National Review, conservatives built a network that could move faster than the centralized and sclerotic Democratic party and fight by "swarming" from multiple directions.

• Conservative journals, television shows, and talk radio
• Think-tanks, political action groups, and church organizations
  
• Emerging network of foreign policy professionals
  

By doing so, conservatives isolated liberals from every center of power (and created a new one in the emerging religious bloc), disrupted their internal decision-making process, and changed the political environment. Now the Left would have to play by rules that inherently favored conservatives. The Clintonite "New Democrats" and their neoconservative-influenced foreign-policy troop all adopted Republican talking points and framing, much like Eisenhower's GOP had parroted Truman. The hawkish Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) in many ways functions as a Republican center of power operating behind "enemy" lines, disrupting the Democratic decision-making process by feuding with Left elements. And the Democrats have yet to build a comparable media/think tank operation to compete with conservatives.

However, it is increasingly apparent that the internet, which led to the creation of the "netroots," and the Bush-era decline of conservative legitimacy could lead to a similar moment for the Democrats. Stay tuned for later posts on this subject.