Sloganeering

Oliver Willis has a list of "Things That Happen When You Elect Republicans" and The Poor Man Institute chimes in. These are lists with line items like these:

3. They lie under oath and obstruct justice in an investigation about national security violations

[...]

6. They fill vital government positions with political cronies, leading to death and disaster

And so on, and so on. Good points all, but it got me thinking about the new Democratic slogan for the 2006 elections, "Together, We Can Do Better" or "Together, America Can Do Better."

Let's get to the point: these slogans are lame. Really lame. They sound like slogans for a municipal recycling campaign or a self-help program. They don't say anything at all and don't do what needs to be done, which is to remind people that Republicans are so dangerous to themselves and everybody else that no matter what you think of Barbara Streisand or evolution, we need to stop buying the lemons they're selling.

How about "This is what you get when you elect Republicans" as a tagline to a series of ads? Imagine a documentary-style piece about the "Bridge to Nowhere" or perhaps George Will's attack on Harriet Miers, followed by a black screen and the text, "This is what you get when you elect Republicans." Sorta neutralizes those ads they do that say that if you elect Democrats, they'll let ban the bible. These ads run one after another on TV or in the mail during the heat of the campaign season in contested districts. The Republican hyperbole and threat looks especially pathetic next to established fact.

Fact is, Republicans don't deliver on the social wedge issues they say they win elections on. For all but 12 of the 32 years in which Roe v. Wade has been the law of the land, Republicans have held the presidency and done little on the issue. Republican Presidents appointed Justices Souter and Stevens, who voted to invalidate the Texas sodomy law. Like Iraq, the Culture Wars have proven more useful as a political tool than they have been successfully waged in the trenches. What do you get when you elect Republicans? Certainly not anything they promise.

But what about going negative? A lot of Republicans love to give Democrats advice on how to win. "Get an agenda," they say. That will come soon enough. But the presence of a platform doesn't mean the absence of an attack strategy. Remember this little campaign in 1979 that had all a whole manifesto of big new ideas?