Major right wing tactics of being "obnoxious" and "controlled controversy"..maybe not so right wing

madfloridian

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Sun Jun-01-08 01:42 PM
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Major right wing tactics of being "obnoxious" and "controlled controversy"..maybe not so right wing

I was thinking yesterday about how this primary has turned into something amazing. It has turned into a primary in which the rules of the Democratic Party, duly formed in committee as has been done through the years...are being mocked. Mocked in public and loudly.

We think of these as Rovian type tactics, but Rove actually only borrowed and built on them from earlier leaders. These methods are still going on today, and they are not only used by the right wing.

We have seen some of these tactics in action the last two months in protests at the DNC. The one in April was aptly named by MSNBC as a a "spontaneous manufactured event." Video.

It is getting people riled up at what should really be a non-issue. This picture from yesterday reminded me of the purple heart band-aids worn by Republicans in 2004.

It was meant to cause anger, the media picked and chose from the most mean spirited protestors to feed this rage in our party. It is a culture of divisiveness that has permeated this primary race since February.

More about these tactics.

Controlled controversy and "obnoxious" tactics.

Much of the concept came from Huebeck's New Traditionalist Movement. Their goal was to be highly provocative, to cause anger and outrage.

We will use guerrilla tactics to undermine the legitimacy of the dominant regime. We will take advantage of every available opportunity to spread the idea that there is something fundamentally wrong with the existing state of affairs.

This was from Huebeck years ago...but it is still alive today. We have been made to feel like there is something innately wrong with "party rules". Yet there is nothing wrong with having rules at all. They are necessary for survival of a group or even a species.

However, we will not consider ourselves above appearing "unseemly" or surrendering some our personal dignity. We must be willing to shake people out of their complacency--which means being obnoxious if the situation requires it--because given the fact that the dominant leftist culture is safely ensconced, complacency only serves the interests of our opponents.

Being obnoxious. About party rules. Like yesterday and April 30. Making it seem like there is something bad about rules.

One of the biggest proponent of the tactics of outrage was the Leadership Institute.

Two of the most famous/infamous graduates were Karl Rove and Jeff Gannon.

Yet Blackwell's foundation, the Leadership Institute, is not a Republican organization. It's a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) charity, drawing the overwhelming majority of its $9.1 million annual budget from tax-deductible donations. Despite its legally required "neutrality," the institute is one of the best investments the conservative movement has ever made. Its walls are plastered with framed headshots of former students -- hundreds of state and local legislators sprinkled with smiling members of the U.S. Congress, and even the perky faces of two recently crowned Miss Americas. Thirty-five years ago, Blackwell dispatched a particularly promising 17-year-old pupil named Karl Rove to run a youth campaign in Illinois; Jeff Gannon, a far less impressive student, attended the Leadership Institute's Broadcast Journalism School.

..."Unlike chapter-based political organizations, CLP clubs are unaffiliated with either the Leadership Institute or each other. According to Blackwell, this trait offers a serious advantage: "No purges." The clubs' independence also comes with the benefit of plausible deniability. "You can get away with stuff that you would take a lot of flak for doing in the College Republicans," says CLP director Dan Flynn. "Because we're independent, we can do activities that push the envelope," agrees University of Miami senior Sarah Canale, whose CLP-organized Advocates for Conservative Thought threw an affirmative action bake sale last year in which the price of a cupcake varied according to the race of its buyer. That it was controversial, she believes, was a victory in itself.

...."The Leadership Institute teaches the same principle. Controlled controversy -- making your point in a manner so bombastic that your opponents blow their cool -- is a Blackwell specialty. Before the 2004 Republican Convention, the conservative elder personally went to a drugstore and bought little pink heart stickers, bandages and purple nail polish. At home, he made the "Purple Heart Band-Aids" that he later distributed in Madison Square Garden to mock John Kerry's war wounds. From Blackwell's perspective, the Kerry camp's outrage at the gag was a tactical disaster. Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe, Blackwell says, kept the story alive for days by "running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

I never thought yesterday would bring any end to things. I got a couple of emails from local Democrats wondering what I thought about yesterday's meeting. I did not even bother to answer, because I know it would just stir up things best left to rest.

I have lost respect for some very major players in our party. I have seen them lose their credibility to stand against something they never had a problem with before...party rules and tradition.

The two protests at the DNC were meant to be "obnoxious", and they were meant to anger us and push us to the point we would "blow our cool." They are the tactics begun by the right wing. They have been deliberate. The tactics have caused many in the party to question the rules and tradition. This is said by those doing it that it is a good thing. It is not.