The Micro-Punditt:  Reframing the language of the GOP

Fellow Scholars & Rogues blogger Sam Smith has been looking recently at the language of the Republican Party and has put up an amazing post about how to reframe the debate so that the GOP is revealed for what it really is - a party of hoarding aristocrats who are exploiting and oppressing everyone else, including most of the rest of their own party, to serve their selfish interests.

The GOP leadership is in power because the rank and file have bought into a lie that is against their best interests.  The lie, that the GOP is the party of wealth, is true only for people who already have wealth - everyone else, including the fellow Republican Party faithful, is just plain hosed.  But the lie works because it’s based on hope, and hope trumps reasoned reality almost every time.

My fellow Scholars & Rogues blogger Sam Smith went after this issue in detail over at S&R.  In a post titled Reframing the Republican lie about wealth in America, Sam talks about how the GOP elites have very effectively claimed the vocabulary of hope and used it against everyone else in the United States.  He also talks in detail how We The People can reclaim the vocabulary and reframe the debate against the old-money aristocracy that makes up the GOP leadership.

I’m happy to note that a lot of what Sam is trying to do ties in well with my own thoughts on reframing the progressive platform, A Proposal for a Progressive Agenda.  But as someone who is working at reframing his own writing to match the new frames, I can say with some authority that it’s easy to create the new frame as a theoretical thing, but working within that new frame every time you write is quite a challenge.

But it’s a challenge worthy of our effort.  It may be our country that we save if we get this right.