Beating the Repubs at their own game

My friend Michael sent me a link to an article about why Sarah Palin shouldn't be under-estimated. The aritcle discusses George Lakoff's assessment of Republican strategy. My reading of his argument is that , while the Democrats may have a better grasp of reality, the Republicans are able to connect to the hearts and minds of voters.

I think it's a brilliant analysis, but with fatally flawed conclusion, it seems to me. Having correctly I think diagnosed that the campaign is not about reality but rather about symbolism, he then posits what is essentially a reality-based response, which is encapsulated in his sentence --

Democrats, in addition, need to call an extremist an extremist: to shine a light on the shared anti-democratic ideology of McCain and Palin, the same ideology shared by Bush and Cheney.

But that sort of reality-based, truth-invested approach is what he says doesn't work --- and it clearly doesn't where the populace is asleep in a shared dream of Reagan's hometown Amerika.

I don't think people like Lakoff or people like us can really accept what is necessary to nullify the Repubs -- and that is to be as dirty, unprincipled, dishonest, manipulative, sleazy, and generally uncaring about anything but winning as they are. And I don't advocate it either, because I think if you decide you can borrow the Devil as a kind of hired thug -- just for a short while -- the next thing you know you are the Devil.

What I realized last night -- just from hearing second-hand about the Repub convention -- I couldn't bear to watch it -- is that Amerikan conservatism, especially since Reagan, makes me feel ambivalent about the right of free speech and makes me empathize with how authoritarian governments can get themselves into the no-win battle of suppressing dissidents, sending them off to gulags, confiscating their writings, etc. What we have in the Repubs is what the Russkies used to call reactionaries and counter-revolutionaries. I can't help feeling from time to time that a Jacobin-style purge would be a good thing. Much as I know it's wrong (do I?) there would be something at least temporarily satisfying about sending them all to the guillotine. But, then, of course, see my comment about the Devil above.