The Wacko Strategy

It's not too amazing that the Republican strategy depends on whipping up visceral passions in an uninformed electorate. It's amazing that they can't help but put it down in writing:

Consider one memo highlighted in a Capitol Hill hearing Wednesday that Scanlon, a former aide to Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Tx., sent the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana to describe his strategy for protecting the tribe's gambling business. In plain terms, Scanlon confessed the source code of recent Republican electoral victories: target religious conservatives, distract everyone else, and then railroad through complex initiatives.

"The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees," Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. "Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them."

This memo suggests that the GOP holds the entire electorate (particularly their base) in contempt, as nothing more than a tool to let them make money and wield power. I don't know how much more plain it can be made to the religious conservatives that vote, volunteer, and stump for their party: the suits in Washington think you're wackos. In a way this is the flip side of what conservative columnists always accuse the Democrats of doing: taking their base for granted because they have nowhere else to go. Have Democratic memos calling African-Americans "wackos" ever made it into the public record of a Senate investigation? I don't think so.

Simply put, the strategy outlined by Abramoff and Scanlon depends on a boisterous Republican noise machine, a quiet and unchallenging press, and an electorate that is not inspired to make any kind of informed decision. Keep half of 'em ignorant and the other half angry. And the saddest part of this is that both the ignorant and the angry will likely never bother to find out what these scoundrels think of them. It certainly won't penetrate the Fox News/talk radio/direct mail filter.

What this country needs is an alternative communication system which opens up the marketplace of ideas, allows anyone with a voice to participate, and gives citizens a choice of ideas from which to choose and make their judgments about the kind of society in which they want to live. Perhaps a series of interconnected networks that opens up the national conversation...

Oh wait, that bill (The Online Freedom of Speech Act) failed in the House the other day. And it did so because of a lot of Democrats got whipped up by lobbyists repeating boogeyman screeds about campaign finance loopholes. They were wrong. Citizen media should be welcomed and allowed to flourish, with the same kinds of protections that traditional media has.