Subscribe to RSS
Subscribe by Email
I really liked Mark’s post about how people who think all policy analysis is just rhetoric are suspicious of, or even angry at, anyone who points out a fact that is inconsistent with their ideology. It leads me to re-post the bulk of my earlier explication of what RBC does and does not do:
Archive for the ‘Rhetoric and Framing’ Category
November 14th, 2012
Category: Rhetoric and Framing
Imagine that a politician announces a plan to cut local/state/federal taxes on income up to $20,000. Is this policy: (A) A tax cut for struggling working class Americans?, or (B) A tax cut for all Americans? Now imagine a different politician announces a plan to cut local/state/federal taxes on income up to $200,000. Is this [...]
September 24th, 2012
A survey that’s being glossed as showing that voters are thinking subjunctively in fact shows that they’re voting sociotropically (voting based on what they see as the country’s economic condition, not their own).
September 6th, 2012
Why is there no Republican who can explain policy as well as Bill Clinton does? Jonathan Bernstein knows the answer: if there were, Republicans wouldn’t want to hear it. And this explains a lot about Romney.
August 10th, 2012
Category: Campaign 2012, Rhetoric and Framing
Like the big three automakers of thirty years ago, GOP campaign messaging has pursued short-term political advantage at the expense of Republicans’ long-term reputation for quality. They now have a problem.
August 4th, 2012
Category: Politics and Leadership, Rhetoric and Framing
Mark Kleiman is uncomfortable with Harry Reid’s accusation about Romney not paying taxes, Jonathan Zasloff counters by endorsing an LBJ-style “make him deny it” approach. There is another option, which is for the President to talk about his own tax disclosures in a fashion that sticks closely to observable facts, but also heightens the contrast. [...]
July 25th, 2012
The New York Times today reports on casino mogul and probable-foreign-government-briber Sheldon Adelson’s latest attempt to get his buddy Mitt Romney elected president: $6.5 million dollars to the Republican Jewish Coalition to get more Jews to vote for Romney. Whatever. We’ll see. But it might just work if J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami, whom I [...]