Conservative pundits: Bush is "framing" SS wrong - talking about "problem"

[NAO]

I heard a few conservative talking heads discussing why Bush is finding his Social Security reform to be a hard sell. They actually came right out and said he was "incorrectly framing the discourse" by talking about a "problem". (They gave no credit to Lakoff, BTW.)

They said that by talking about the "problem with Social Security", Bush was invoking a negative frame. They suggested that he should talk about opportunity and choice instead of problems. We are not "fixing" something that is broken, we have a chance to improve something and give people opportunity and choice, more freedom.

They laughed that by framing the Social Security issue as a problem, they were invoking pain - they said, "a root canal is always a hard sell...especially when you need one in 2041".

[NorCalDem]

1. They've got a point,

but either way it's a stupid plan, and ultimately, that is why he can't sell it.

[noise626]

2. I would think that the comeback to that would be:

"Why do something so drastic as private accounts to fix something that isn't broken?"

But what do I know?

pax
ant

[LittleClarkie]

7. Well, that's okay

because it's been proven that private accounts wouldn't fix the problem that isn't there anyway.

Or something...:crazy:

[Mountainman]

3. Either way it is a lie, they just think one is more believable than the

other.

They want to kill social security and have workers forced into putting money in the hands of brokers who will make trillions off of it.

I say, why add a middle man? Why not let the government hold you money until you retire? Why should you gamble with it and let someone else make money off of your money and you not getting all you would have gotten if you left it in government hands?

How stupid are we anyway?

If there isn't enough money, have more people pay into it. Take back the tax cuts, stop the war and invest in people here. Build up the trust fund by paying back what was borrowed and given away to Bush friends.

The plan is easy. The baby boom bubble is a temporary thing. The population is not growing as fast as before.

[Lexingtonian]

4. No matter the variety of lipstick applied

people have recognized that their plan is a pig.

Btw, Lakoff did not invent anything. Except, perhaps, additional jobs for a few poststructuralist humanities grad students in the political sector for a few months or years.

[NAO]

5. Lakoff reverse engineered the Republican domination tactic

and made explicit the theoretical principles by which they have been able to utterly triumph and dominate the political discourse and electoral system of the United States.

He then took those abstract theoretical principals and fashioned a cognitive/semantic technology for liberals to use to do the same thing and take back our democracy.

Lakoff's work may strike some as being "merely common sense" and at the same time as being overly pedantic pseudo-scholarship, but if you look at the history of the last 40 years, and consider the explanatory power of his theories, I think the significance of his work becomes apparent.

[Lexingtonian]

8. doubtful

Republican domination is not due to mere semantics, it is due to knowing what average white American voters' conception of themselves is in the latter half of the 20th century and the political privileges and prejudices and rationales and assumptions it is propped on.

Semantics is not the problem or the solution. Piecemeal examination and testing and rejection of unexamined, internalized, colonialist social dogma, is.

[snowbear]

6. Remember Zogby's bogus poll that got ZERO traction?

:rofl:

The one he did for some right wing rag recently?

I wonder if he took any heat for that? His poll never made it onto any major media sources.. It made it onto a couple "Newsmax type sources", then quickly faded into the sunset.

I wonder how much they paid him for doing nothing for their cause? :spray: