Oct. 1, 2006
 
COMMENTARY: GOP Wonderful at Words of Mass Distraction
 
By Robert Whitcomb
The Providence Journal
 
Geoffrey Nunberg's book "Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show" (PublicAffairs, $26) -- whew! -- is delightful.
 
The dubious art of creating straw men to suit one's political and economic needs is an old one, but has reached impressive levels with the rise of the modern political consultant. As you'd guess, Nunberg is a liberal Democrat, but he performs an intellectually rigorous analysis of how the Republicans have done a far better job than the Democrats of mastering the use of buzz phrases to mislead and distract. In doing so, his book has garnered praise even from such right-wing wordsmiths as William Safire. As Nunberg notes, the Republicans have been much more disciplined than the Democrats in staying on message with their rhetoric, and hence much more successful.
 
One of Nunberg's ideas is that the interests supporting big business and rich people get citizens to vote against their own economic self-interest by distracting them with social targets and expressions (e.g., the menacing "death tax," for the estate tax) that are often bogus -- a kind of rhetorical bread and circus. They also associate with Democrats such elements of luxury living as Volvo driving, Brie eating and white-wine drinking, when it's the rich Republicans who most scarf up this stuff. Not that there's anything wrong with that ...
 
The terminology has been successful in cutting taxes for the wealthy and reducing programs that particularly assist the middle and lower classes. More generally, it makes Americans forget that the socio-economic walls are getting higher. Meanwhile, although traditional GOP views have included (to me admirably) balancing the budget, the budget deficits swell and areas of government grow like Topsy (in part, of course, because of 9/11), but the "conservative, small-government" Republicans don't seem particularly self-conscious about that. They can change the subject to, say, gay marriage.
 
Nunberg's book reminds me of one of the strange paradoxes of American life: While the "liberal states," in the North, Upper Midwest and Northwest, are said to harbor dangerously degenerate, "elitist" phonies, the data of social dysfunction -- illegitimacy, poverty, divorce, crime and so on -- tend to be heavily concentrated in the states that call themselves "conservative" and rhetorically adhere to ballyhooed "traditional values." That the Republicans' campaign chieftains have been so successful in obscuring this paradox, hypocrisy, or whatever testifies to their brilliant use of language and marketing.
 
And in assigning the monicker "elitist" to East and West Coast intellectuals and, well, Democrats, some media people, and others, the Republicans have diverted attention from the much greater political and social power of the business elite and the rich, who tend to be Republicans and who certainly richly, so to speak, benefit from their policies.
 
Nunberg, who teaches linguistics at Berkeley (that leftist stronghold), manages to discuss all this with great verve, and more drollery than anger. And he doesn't fail to note that the left, as well as the right, can grossly pervert language. But the latter has been more successful at this game during the past generation.
 
The Democrats, as Nunberg notes, need to do a lot of language "reframing." I'd also suggest that they remember that people are not entirely economic animals -- that to many, religious and other moral values might be far more important than their standard of living.
 
"Talking Right is a useful addition to the stack of books that should include George Orwell's Politics and the English Language, and a handy -- and funny -- guide to navigate through today's campaign verbiage.
 
Robert Whitcomb is The Providence Journal's editorial-page editor.
 
Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.