When last I looked, before being interrupted by a planet-shifting major earthquake-tsunami-nuclear disaster in Japan, Middle America was protesting on the streets of Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and Ohio.
In Lawrence O’Donnell’s interview on March 10, 2011 with former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich and columnist Howard Fineman of the Huffington Post he asked both what they thought was the meaning behind Republican governors’ moves against unions. Both said the day Wisconsin Senate Republicans stripped their union-busting bill of budget provisions and voted to neuter collective bargaining rights of Wisconsin’s public workers, they sent a signal from the national Republican party fulfilling one of the goals of their leadership. This was, as Rachel Maddow aptly described, a mission to destroy a principle Democratic-leaning money base — the unions — ultimately destroying the Democratic Party.
This move is a deliberate attempt planned to incense unions and workers enough to overreact, to make them appear radical to moderates, independents and swing voters, with Democrats paying the price in the end game — the 2012 general election.
Politics is a matter of framing the debate, and a means to sell your ideas — exactly like advertising. If your product A is the same as product B, one way you sell it is through negative advertising: ‘better than the leading detergent in getting out grass stains’. ‘Radical’ is not an apology or an admission of a crime. It is a label to sell, used to define the extremity of opinion, perspective, gender or political belief, ostracizing the radical from the rest of the community. The Other.