Truly pathetic.

You have no future on the defense side of the aisle

It seems to me that Patterico’s position of a carefully crafted message stems from his work as a prosecutor and is the good habit of a legal mind. He isn’t required to win a war of ideas over the long term, his entire objective in presenting a case is to win the tactical battle over one idea, the innocence or guilt of the defendent. Patterico can afford to make concessions in that world to larger principles if it means gaining an advantage in the short term and winning the immediate fight before him.

Jeff on the other hand has no immediate need to convince a small number of people of certain facts or ideas. His scope is the greater political world where grand policy is played out and ideologies fight for supremacy in an ongoing battle. In this world the objectives are reversed, tactical losses in small battles don’t mean anything if you can advance your agenda or message as a whole. Jeff fights against the core principles of the left wing, Patterico fights the day to day battles. A simplification I know, but stay with me here. Different fights require different methods.

For each, their practiced methods are what works in their professional lives and as they do work, they are used as a template for areas where they are perhaps not as suited. My own feeling is that Jeff has the better of this argument for the long term however Patterico’s point of crafting the message for the audience cannot be ignored either. However, message crafting assumes a fair chance to deliver that message past the gatekeepers, i.e. the media. We know this isn’t going to happen though and as such message crafting is largely rendered ineffective because the media will twist those well crafted words into something they never meant. Once you are fighting over your own meaning you’ve lost already. You cannot move forward when you are playing defense. It is a structural problem to be addressed over a generation, not an election cycle.

Conservatives are losing the larger war of ideas and losing badly. Virtually every popular institution (media, Hollywood, academia, etc) is dominated by left wing folks spreading a left wing agenda. Well crafted messages aren’t going to penetrate this wall into the public consciousness because the gatekeepers will not allow it to. Borrowing something I read somewhere else, we need a civil war of ideas and principles to insert conservatism into the public eye. Not the racist, exploiting conservatism the left makes it out to be but genuine, principled, humanist conservatism. This civil war of ideas needs to secure ideological ground in public and popular institutions and only then will a well crafted message be our best weapon because at that point we will have a fair opportunity to present it.

While this is a messy business between two conservative sites it is something that needs to happen, if only to mark out our own positions clearly. Neither Jeff’s nor Patterico’s approach can work if it is the sole means of confronting the left. We need people like Jeff to stick a knife into the body of leftism and twist it around some and we need people like Patterico to convince the soft middle of our principles once the left has been sufficiently weakened to allow us to get our message out fairly.

Seriously, until you can get ol’ Fred Thompson or Rudy nominated over a “liberal” Republican, then please don’t get too giddy.

Fair enough point. Maybe not them specifically, although I’d vote for Thompson in a heartbeat and Rudy if he was the nominee, but anyone like them would be fine. Having character goes a long way.

After all, Obama’a at 64%, three times what George had over the 20 months.

Well, let’s compare at the one-year mark, shall we? Don’t the Dems keep saying to give President Obama more time? If you’re going to pull approval numbers, they should be from the same point in the administration, right? So, I’ll bookmark this and at the one-year point we’ll see how well President Obama’s approval rating stacks up against President Bush’s. M’kay? Thanks.

Maybe next time y’all can elect…

a Republican nominee?

Seriously, until you can get ol’ Fred Thompson or Rudy nominated over a “liberal” Republican, then please don’t get too giddy. After all, Obama’a at 64%, three times what George had over the 20 months.

I don’t know if you’re still reading this thread, but I would take issue with your argument that being vulgar wins elections. I think the 2006 and 2008 examples you gave demonstrate that you can be vulgar and still win elections, IF (and only if) you have the media on your side.

In other words, Democrats can pull it off. Republicans cannot.

Thanks for clearing that up so succinctly.