Monday, April 07, 2008

False Platitudes & Dirty Words

marjorie says...

Happy Monday. But let's back up a few days first. There's some excellent blogging about the Rick Davis speech here in Albuquerque last Friday. Rick Davis, in case you were wondering, is John McCain's campaign manager, and he was here to speak to the Republican National Committee gathering at Santa Ana Pueblo (John McCain was at the commemoration of MLK's assassination in Memphis Friday, apologizing for being against the creation of an official holiday for MLK. Rightly so, he was roundly boo'ed during his speech).

Ali at Clearly New Mexico, who was actually present during the Davis speech, goes deep in her brilliant nugget of a blog, reflecting on the serious contradictions that often occur when privileged interest groups target outsiders. A lack of self-awareness combined with plenty of self-interest creates a lot of false platitudes and rampant tokenism. Sadly, what she describes is true from left to right…but I figure the Republican National Committee is at the top of the heap given the obvious demographics of that party.

Barb over at DfNM gives us a run-down of who we’re really dealing with here: Rick Davis…the ultra big-money lobbyist running the campaign of the supposed “money out of politics” maverick politician. Now there's a contradiction. Or, maybe just a clarification.

Barb has a great picture of a chart used during the Davis presentation. It purports to show that the American public increasingly views Obama and Clinton as pesky (here comes the dirty word) “liberals,” and states that this makes them well-left of center. By Republican logic, does this make “conservatives” well-right of center? That aside, Barb gives a great breakdown of the liberal values we know are pervasive in our society:

Davis might be surprised to learn that polling continually shows that the majority of Americans agree with the core values held by LIBERALS. They're strongly for ending the quagmire in Iraq. They're demanding universal health care in no uncertain terms, and schools that turn out well-rounded, articulate human beings rather than test automatons. They want greedy, bottom-line obsessed financial institutions and corporations reined in to serve humans instead of the other way around. They want to be paid a living wage. They want to switch to renewable energy and clean up the environment. They want unrigged justice and a level playing field for all. And they want to keep the lobbyists like Davis as far from the political process as possible.

In his speech, Davis identified five groups of voters that the R’s need to target: youth, Face-book independents, Latinos/Hispanics, Wal-Mart Mom’s, and something called a “Rehab Republican.” Are these the voters that the Republicans think are most likely to forget about our economy in crisis, the one that is losing jobs by the minute while hemorrhaging billions to Iraq? I don’t buy it—all five of those demographics, in fact, probably get it better than most. Youth and “Face-book independents” are pretty savvy free-thinkers, Latinos/Hispanics have long demonstrated they have solid liberal values, Rehab Republicans are disaffected for a reason, and those Wal-Mart moms are generally part of a group most impacted by the serious problems we’re having with the economy.

You know, I heard Jim Scarantino say on New Mexico InFocus last Friday that he believes New Mexico will go for John McCain (did I hear that right?). Well, if there was ever a moment when an election was the Democrats to lose, this would be the one.