The GOP's Job-Killing Message Discipline

I joked earlier:

The Republican party's penchant for meaningless theatrics should be as predictable as their use of the words "job-killing" to mean "Democratic" and "common-sense" to mean "Republican."

I wrote that piece last night, so I had no idea that the epithet "job-killing" would be such a hot topic with all the wonks today. Steven Pearlson kicks it all off with a well-timed rant in the Washington Post. You get the feeling he started the piece just after the moment he broke, since he begins:

Republicans these days can't get through a sentence without tossing in their new favorite adjective, "job-killing."

There's "job-killing legislation," in particular the health-care reform law. And "job-killing regulations," especially anything coming out of the EPA and the IRS. Big deficits are always "job-killing," which might come as something of a surprise to all you Keynesians out there, along with the "job-killing spending binge" and even "job-killing stimulus projects."

President Obama, we are told repeatedly, runs a "job-killing administration" with a "job-killing agenda" carried out by, you guessed it, a "job-killing bureaucracy."

Indeed. Since I've been following Boehner on Twitter for over a year, I crossed that line long ago. Pearlson sums up why this messaging is so cloying:

I wonder how Republicans and their media posse would like it if Democrats started referring to "genocidal" deregulation or the "murderous" repeal of health-care reform. Or if Republican economic policies were likened to the infamous neutron bomb - they kill the workers but leave their jobs intact.

Unfair? No doubt. But no more so than portraying as "job-killing" every regulation, every tax and every dollar of government spending.

There is an unmistakable redbaiting quality to the "job-killing" rhetoric, a throwback to the McCarthy era. It reflects the sort of economic fundamentalism better suited to Afghan politics than American. Rather than contributing to the political dialogue, it is a substitute for serious discussion. And the fact that it continues unabated suggests that Republicans are not ready to compromise or to govern.

This is the central advantage of the Republican Party in electoral politics. Period. Nothing threatens the success of the Democratic Party and its middle-class agenda more than this poll-tested "message discipline" on the right. Greg Sargent argued this point today:

Yes, yes, I know, media FAIL. But let me ask you a question. We now know that Dems have settled on a core set of messages to push back on repeal, mostly centered on the idea that it will take away crucial safeguards and run up the deficit. And that's all very well and good.

But is there a single phrase you can point to that Dems have uttered along these lines in recent days that's anywhere near as memorable as "job killer" or "government takeover?"

I mean, we haven't heard anything pithy summarizing the Dems' message that repealing reform will put countless children at grave risk, and we haven't heard anything along the lines of "deficit busting" or "deficit destroying" or anything like that. Okay, those aren't too good. Anyone else have any better ideas?

Dems simply have to get better at this game.

This is the most important lesson for Democrats to internalize. Most Americans don't actually know about the contents of legislation that gets passed. They vote for the person with the best message. Parties no doubt influence this perception, since they allow voters to fill in gaps with stated principles or party stereotypes -- so the message of both the party and the candidate must be consistent, memorable and compelling. Democrats have succeeded on none of those three points since at least the Clinton Administration.

I started this blog specifically to discuss this aspect of election strategy, so I will expand more on it in the weeks to come. For now, I just want to tweak Sargent's call to arms slightly. I agree that Democrats need to embrace certain aspects of the Luntz strategy of linguistic marketing -- if only so that their message can be identified and repeated reliably. But most Democrats see the Luntz approach as dishonest, so they don't have the stomach to push the program to its limit. They will always be outgunned by Republicans if the race is to be decided by a game of ethical chicken.

Steve Benen models pushback with the right levels of indignance and aggressiveness:

The GOP arguments aren't just wrong, they're backwards.

And yet, they'll continue to use inane phrases because, well, it's easier than thinking. Pearlstein concluded today, "[T]he next time you hear some politician or radio blowhard or corporate hack tossing around the 'job-killing' accusation, you can be pretty sure he's not somebody to be taken seriously. It's a sign that he disrespects your intelligence, disrespects the truth and disrespects the democratic process. By poisoning the political well and making it difficult for our political system to respond effectively to economic challenges, Republicans may turn out to be the biggest job killers of all."

What Democrats really need to do is to find the actual line on the Luntz-continuum that they refuse to cross, and then relentlessly expose everything that crosses that line for what it is: unethical.