Right Face, March!

When I heard Rachel Maddow using some graphs from a political scientist at the University of Georgia, I knew I would have to come home and watch them on the internet. You should too. She does a much better job of explaining it all, so I’ll just shut up and let you watch.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

If this concept intrigues you -- this shifting of the center to the right -- I’d highly recommend you read this blog post from What Would Vannevar Blog?. (BTW, I’m pretty sure I recommended this particular blog post before.)

RHETORIC, THE GOLDEN MEAN, AND THE OVERTON WINDOW

”So let’s say you work at a think tank, and you have a Client who has a Cause. Their cause is way out of the range of what’s acceptable in public discourse. In fact, the Cause is Unthinkable.

You make a few press releases about Concept-B , of things even more extreme than the cause. You’re setting new boundaries on the spectrum. You’re talking in a way that makes people a little bit nervous. All of a sudden, people are thinking that your ideas (which were once unthinkable) are now simply radical.

You come up with an even crazier concept, Concept-C, and you get some grad students to start protesting and blogging about it. Now, they’ve defined a new extreme. Their Concept-C is Unthinkable, Concept-B is Radical, and your client’s cause is now moving into Acceptable.”

Yes, big thinking is taking place over there at WWVB. There always is.

If you would like to take a look at the source data for Rachel’s segment, I took the time to find that too. Fair warning, that site makes my head hurt more than WWVB does.

voteview blog

Don Brown
March 1, 2012