Today In Republican Identity Politics
By Ramblin’, Gamblin’ Bill Bennett:
This was the drumbeat of the Obama campaign. To women they said: Republicans are waging a “war on women,” trying to outlaw abortion and contraception and would take them back to their rights in the 1950s. To minorities they said: Republicans are anti-government services, cold-blooded individualists, and cannot represent minority communities. To middle and low income Americans they said: Republicans are the party of the rich, who will slash taxes for only the richest Americans and cut social safety nets for the poor.
The thing is, with a little strawman-adjustment this is a perfectly accurate summary of the Republican platform and the positions House Republicans have voted for. The official Republican position would pass a constitutional amendment making abortion first degree murder in all 50 states, and would limit access to (although perhaps not ban) contraception. The Ryan budget would savage the safety net and slash taxes for the rich, although they might accept some tax cuts for the non-rich to accept this. (My qualifications, as far as I can tell, don’t respond to anything Democrats actually argued.) So what’s Bennett’s response to this?
Rather than offer a broad sweeping vision for the country, Democrats played identity politics.
Ah yes, “identity politics,” the new “politically correct.” It’s dirty pool for Democrats to accurately describe how Republican policies would affect people. Despite the fact that Bennett has no actual rebuttal — his strategy is to assume that the Republican platform is so unattractive nobody could believe that it’s real — he proceeds to argue that people believe the truth only because they’ve been brainwashed. Sure.
Relatedly, Mitt Romney think it’s dirty politics to actually help people.
[Bennett link via.]