#86: The Democrat “Don’t Shout at Me!” Strategy

January 18, 2011

I remember that as a young man I recognized a number of peculiarly “girly” or, now, “Oprah” power maneuvers. One of them was the pre-emptive strike, “You’re just trying to assert your masculinity!” This was intended to put a man on the defensive and blunt his ability and willingness to disagree. Another big one was “Don’t shout at me!” This shifted the argument from its substance to its manner of delivery. It was a win-win for the woman. If the man took on the “shouting” argument, he was off-message and no longer arguing about what pissed him off to begin with; if, in order to remain on message, he lowered his voice, then the woman had taken control of the discussion, she was controlling how he could express himself.

The fact that the Democrat Party has now taken possession of the second of these argument strategies tells us exactly who they are wooing: women and the ever growing metro-sexual barely-male population. The “civility” argument coming from the Bungler-In-Chief  (“BIC”) is nothing other than the ladies’ “Don’t shout at me!” argument.

In the wake of the Loughner killings a number of Leftists gleefully accused Conservatives of “causing” the murders by “creating a climate for violence.” Since Loughner turned out to be far more a Leftist than a Conservative, this political strike failed to gain traction. However, Obama made a similar move that has surprisingly not been challenged by Republicans. Obama managed to segue somehow from the Loughner murders to the topic of “civility” in political discourse. Obama took the opportunity, too good for him to waste, to wrap himself in sanctimony and to ask from his morally elevated location that everyone now become “civil” in disagreement.

Forget, for the moment, that Obama was himself one of the worst offenders as far civility was concerned; forget, for the moment, that there was no call for “civility” before the recent massive Democrat defeat; forget, for the moment, that the most extraordinary venom has characterized Leftist rhetoric for the past 50 years; forget, for the moment, that political discourse has NEVER been civil (not even during the Revolutionary War and after); and focus just on this one question:

What exactly do the Loughner murders have to do with the civility (or lack thereof) of national political discourse?

The answer is: absolutely nothing, but the emotions of the moment are simply too useful to be wasted. The Left has to find a way to harness those emotions. Since the facts of the case made the Loughner case incompatible with an explicit connection to the Tea Party, the connection had to be made indirectly and by association.

The “civility” move in the memorial speech had three major objectives: 1) imply indirectly and by association that Tea Party “lack of civility” caused the murders (without actually saying it), 2) distract from the BIC’s disastrous domestic and foreign policies, and 3) cripple the opposition’s critiques with a guerrilla war on it’s choice of words (can’t you just hear Barney Frank lisping angrily “Don’t you shout at me! I won’t listen to you!” ).

The puzzling thing is the Republican response. The appropriate thing to say in response is, “OK, BIC, you focus on finding the nicest words, and we’ll focus on fixing the incredible mess that 80 years of creeping (or creepy) Socialism has brought upon us.”