According to the Democrats' narrative, angry citizens who showed up at town hall meetings were "Astrotruf" (e.g., fake grass roots) manilupated by insurance industry lobbyists. The sole reason behind opposing the president's health care (ahem, health insurance) proposals (depending on who was talking) was either latent racism, or wanting to hand the President a defeat in order to weaken him. Or that Sarah Palin and the Republicans were spreading misinformation about the President's proposals and the American people were too stupid to see the truth being spoken by the President.
In last week's Weekly Standard, Mathew Continetti wrote:
The Angry White Liberal finds it simply incomprehensible that somebody might honestly and in good faith disagree with the Democrats' efforts. On August 14, blogger Steve Benen wrote on the Huffington Post that the "far-right apoplexy is counter-intuitive." After all, "Why would people who stand to benefit from health care reform literally take to the streets and threaten violence in opposition to legislation that would help them and their families?"
Forget Benen's exaggerated claim of threatened violence. Note, instead, that Benen cannot conceive that someone might actually think the costs to the Democrats' program outweigh the unrealized and perhaps unachievable benefits. Hence he divides Obama's critics into five camps: the "partisans," the "tin-foil hats," the "greedy," the "dupes," and the "wonks." The "wonks," we are told, compose the "smallest of the groups." In Benen's view, then, millions of opponents of health care reform have no reasonable grounds for their opinion. That may satisfy the liberal's attitude of intellectual superiority. But it's also awfully condescending.
There really is something to the notion that liberals cannot comprehend the conservative mind. I think the primary (but not sole) culprit is projection.
Liberals tend to project what they know about themselves on conservatives (who probably do the same thing, which is why conservatives give them far too much credit for being sincere). So when Nancy Pelosi dismisses town hall protests of "Astroturfing" she is revealing what she knows to be true of her own movement. How else do "angry mobs" show up at town hall meetings in the middle of the day unless they are otherwise bussed in? That's how ACORN and SEIU do it. This fails to understand that conservatives aren't natural born protesters (most have day jobs in the private sector), and really have to be animated about something before they'll bother to make their voices heard. Besides, who would do the bussing? Not that it really matters, but I'm unaware of any such efforts by FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, the RNC, or anyone else.
To liberals, political positions are largely a matter of gamemanship to be used to obtain political power, and usually not deeply held principles in and of themselves. This is why they can't fathom that anybody could in good faith, oppose, among other things, the public option. Opposition must be because of narrow-self interest, or hatred of the President.
This is reminicent of the Clinton impeachment battle. In October 1998, House Republican started impeachment proceedings against Clinton, but were rudely rebuffed by voters in November who gave the Democrats a gain of 5 seats in the House. This marked only the second time since the Civil War that the party of the president had gained seats in a midterm election.
Democrats were certain this result would discourage Republicans in the House from moving forward with impeachment proceedings against President Clinton. Surely the Republicans would not want to further anger voters, and so the Democrats went to sleep, only to rewaken in December when they learned that Republicans would not be dissuaded. Democrats still can't believe that Republican's thirst for justice had overrode the obvious electoral risks in going forward with impeachment.
On the other hand, consider Code Pink and other groups protesting the war in Iraq while Bush was President. But under Obama, when we still have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (not to mention Clinton's war in Kosovo), their silence has been deafening. It's clear that anti-war protests were much less than about aversion to war than a cynical attempt to use the issue to obtain political power.
Steve Benen classifies conservatives into 5 camps: the "partisans", the "tin-foil hats" the "greedy", the "dupes" and the "wonks." This is because he and other liberals cannot comprend that people (aside from the greedy), would actually vote against their own narrow self-interest. That is, if you're going to get free stuff from the government, you are otherwise irrational if you don't simply shut your mouth.
But many of us enraged by Obama and the Democrats' actions since January take a larger view of self-interest. To us, the principles upon which this country was founded (free markets, limited government, rule of law, etc.) are far more important than any free goodies that the Democrats will try to bribe us with.
Likewise, I always thought that Democrats can be divided into three (not necessarily exclusive) groups: A) the arrogant,those who think they know better than us how to run our lives (e.g., Ted Kennedy); B) the stupid, those who actually believe liberal dogma (e.g., Jimmy Carter and maybe Barrack Obama); and C) the cynics, those who don't believe any of that crap but say it because they know that such appeals to the intellectually lazy will get them elected (e.g., Bill Clinton).
Finally, liberals and conservatives fail to understand each other because most liberals think with their left brain, and to them, an argument's greatest appeal is in its emotion. Most conservatives are less suceptible to appeals to emotion and are more interested in facts or logic. As English writer Horace Walpole famously said: "The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy too those who think."
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