“What you do is crank the heck out of your base,” Howard Dean
declared a few months ago. “Get them really excited and crank up
the base turnout and you’ll win the middle-of-the-roaders.” Dean
got this notion from a left-wing linguist — no, not that one — named George Lakoff. Lakoff, a professor at
UC Berkeley, bases his analysis on a framework of liberals as
“nurturing parents,” conservatives as “strict fathers,” and swing
voters as “bi-conceptuals” who have internalized characteristics of
both parenting models. In Lakoff’s view, bi-conceptuals relate
equally to both sides, and thus swing to whichever side is more
excited.
This is nuts, of course, and Dean’s miserable failure as a
candidate illustrates why. In the context of the Democratic primary
(never mind the general electorate), Dean excited his base so much
that most voters ran in terror to the more respectable alternative
faster than you can say “yeeeeaaagh!” The most bizarre part of the
Lakoff Theory’s saga, though, is Dean’s comment to U.S. News
and World Report that “Karl Rove discovered it, too, but I
discovered it independently.”
Conservatives, particularly recently, would be shocked to learn
that anyone would interpret the strategy of President Bush’s chief
political adviser as “ignore the center, excite the base.” Indeed,
Bush’s base these days has less and less to be pleased about, let
alone excited over. The latest outrage is a major cash infusion for
the National Endowment for the Arts.
It’s a classic feint to the center, a message to suburban
moderates: “We’re not those prudish barbarian Republicans you
remember from the '90s! We support the arts!” To the base, it feels
like a betrayal in favor of more urine-and-sacrilege-based “art” from an agency
that was once a prime target for termination, all the more galling
in the face of runaway spending on everything from space
exploration to prescription drugs to plain, old-fashioned pork.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the White House’s
campaign strategy involves letting Vice President Cheney tout and
defend the major accomplishments of the past three years — mostly
foreign policy so far, but sources say Cheney will be talking about
domestic issues later in the year — while the President talks
about his forward-looking vision. Thus, almost all of Bush’s
election-year message to the right will be about shoring up tax
cuts. The rest will be aimed at the center.
Dean’s campaign is clinically dead; its failures in Iowa and New
Hampshire, and the campaign-manager switch (almost never a good
sign), will, the polls appear to show, be followed be more failure
across the country this week. Dean excited his base at the expense
of all else; it didn’t work. Is Bush in danger of making the
opposite mistake?
It would, at the moment of this writing, appear so, though
admittedly much of the evidence comes from bloggers, talk radio
commentators and other chronic kvetches. Bush’s record on taxes and
foreign policy should convince many, many right-leaning voters.
Just to be sure, though, some base-shoring-up is in order, Mr.
President: Talk up Social Security reform. Make an issue of the
judicial deadlock. Veto a spending bill or two (or better yet,
follow some of David Hogberg’s spending-control suggestions
from last Friday).
Courting his base so much he scared off swing voters, Dean
proved that the Lakoff Theory is wrong. But its converse is also
wrong, and Bush mustn’t risk losing the base by courting the
middle.
