By Michael Kaufman 

Every time I listen to a speech by one of the Republican candidates for president I think of H.L. Mencken’s comment, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” Mencken died in 1956, well before the advent of cable TV, the internet, and the “information superhighway.” But somehow his words seem more applicable than ever. How else can one explain the strong support for Rick Santorum among women voters in Tuesday’s Republican primaries in Alabama and Mississippi?  

An article titled, “The Santorum Strategy: Why the Right Wins Even When It Loses,” posted earlier this week on the commondreams.org website by George Lakoff, provides a few clues. “The Santorum Strategy is not just about Santorum,” wrote Lakoff,  professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Moral Politics, Don’t Think of an Elephant!, and other recent books. 

“It is about pounding the most…. conservative ideas into the public mind by constant repetition during the Republican presidential campaign and guaranteeing a radical conservative future forAmerica.” Lakoff warns progressives against taking Santorum and the other GOP hopefuls lightly, as some do now. “I am old enough to remember how liberals (me included) made fun of Ronald Reagan as a not-too-bright mediocre actor who could not possibly be elected president. I remember liberals making fun of George W. Bush as so ignorant and ill-spoken that Americans couldn’t possibly take him seriously. Both turned out to be clever politicians who changed America much for the worse. And among the things they and their fellow conservatives managed to do was change public discourse, and with it, change how a great many Americans thought.” 

The Republican presidential campaign has to be seen in this light.

“Brain circuitry strengthens with repeated activation,” says Lakoff. Language activates complex brain circuitry rooted in moral systems. “Conservative language, even when argued against, activates and strengthens conservative brain circuitry.” This he says is important when considering the role of so-called independents, whose brains can shift back and forth between conservative and liberal views. “The more they hear conservative language over the next eight months, the more their conservative brain circuitry will be strengthened.” 

Part of the Republican strategy, he says, is to get liberals to argue against them, while repeating conservative language. “There is a reason I wrote Don’t Think of an Elephant! When you negate conservative language, you activate conservative ideas and, hence, automatically and unconsciously strengthen the brain circuitry that characterizes conservative values.” 

This message is lost on those liberals and progressives who talk derisively about the Republican presidential race. Lakoff cites several examples, including Maureen Dowd who gleefully described the GOP candidates as “ridiculously weak and wacky.” 

“I hope that they are right,” says Lakoff. “But, frankly, I have my doubts. I think Democrats need much better positive messaging, expressing and repeating liberal moral values — not just policies….That is not happening.” He thinks this was a major factor in the thrashing the Dems received in the 2010 elections.

For example, says Lakoff, “Consider how conservatives got a majority of Americans to be against the Obama health care plan. The president had polled the provisions, and each had strong public support: No preconditions, no caps, no loss of coverage if you get sick, ability to keep your college-age child on your policy, and so on. These are policy details, and they matter.” The conservatives, however, never argued against any of those specific provisions. “Instead, they made a moral case against ‘Obamacare.’ Their moral principles were freedom and life, and they had language to go with them. Freedom: ‘government takeover.’ Life: ‘death panels.’ 

“Republicans at all levels repeated them over and over, and convinced millions of people who were for the policy provisions of the Obama plan to be against the plan as a whole. They changed the public discourse, changed the brains of the electorate — especially the ‘independents’ — and won in 2010.” 

Today, Democrats continue to miss the big picture. The extreme conservative discourse of the Republican presidential race has the same purpose, says Lakoff “and conservative Republicans are luring Democrats into making the same mistakes. Santorum….is the best example. From the perspective of conservative moral values, he is making sense and arguing logically, making his moral values clear and coming across as straightforward and authentic, as Reagan did.” 

The idealized conservative family, explains Lakoff, is built around a strict father, the natural leader, assumed to know right from wrong, whose authority is absolute and unchallengeable. He makes decisions about reproduction and he sets the rules. “Children must be taught right from wrong through strict, moral discipline. According to Lakoff, this concept extends onto the nation as a whole. “To be prosperous in a free market, one must be fiscally disciplined. If you are not prosperous, you must not be disciplined, and if you are not disciplined, you cannot be moral, and so you deserve your poverty. 

“For conservatives, democracy is about liberty, individual responsibility and self-reliance — the freedom to seek one’s own self-interest with minimal or no commitment to the interests of others.” According to Lakoff, the conservative populism personified by Santorum — in which poor conservatives vote against their own financial interests — depends on those voters having “strict father family values,” defining themselves in terms of those values, and voting on the basis of those values, thus choosing strict fathers as their political leaders.

 And as long as the Democrats have no positive moral messaging of their own, the strategy will go unchallenged and conservative populism will expand. “Moreover,” says Lakoff, “repeating the Santorum language by mocking it or arguing against it using that language will only help conservative propagate their views.” 

Democrats have been gleeful about the Santorum birth control strategy, taken up by conservatives in the House as a moral position that if you want to use birth control, you should pay for it yourself. Democrats see this as irrational Republican self-destruction, assuming that it will help all Democrats to frame it as a “war against women.” But according to Lakoff, the logic used by conservative populists, including many women, embodies some of the most powerful aspects of conservative moral logic: 

•Reproduction is the province of male authority.

•The strict father does not condone moral weakness and self-indulgence without moral consequences. Sex without reproductive consequences is thus seen as immoral.

•If the nation supports birth control for unmarried women, then the nation supports immoral behavior.

•No one else should have to pay for your birth control — not your employer, your HMO, or the taxpayers.

 Having to pay for your birth control also has a metaphorical religious value, says Lakoff: “paying for your sins.” And from this “slippery slope narrative,” the next step is that no one else should have to pay for any of your health care. And the step after that is that no one else should be forced to pay for anyone else….period. Everything should be privatized: education, safety nets, nursing homes, etc.  “It doesn’t take a village to raise a child,” Santorum is fond of repeating on the campaign trail. “It takes a family.”

 “That is what makes conservative moral logic into such a powerful instrument,” says Lakoff. Mock it at your own peril.  

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.