Watch your language
Republicans have their own language problems. They can do without “anchor babies” and “self-deportation,” which make immigrants sound like chattel. They should abandon “culture of dependency,” which only brings back bad memories of Mitt Romney’s 47 percent and is subject to continual misinterpretation. (Better to say what they favor, namely the “dignity of work” and the “satisfaction of earned success.”) Since government is not remotely small (and won’t be), better to sound like they are of this century and refer to “limited government” or “nimble government.” Instead of the clinical “income inequality” they need to speak about “spreading success” and “expanding the American dream.”
You think this is small stuff? Hardly. The rhetoric and the messenger is most of what ordinary, non-politically obsessed voters take in. If Republicans are angry and accusatory and use language to demean other Americans (“looking for a free lunch”) they wind up behind before the debate gets started.
Republicans are so used to talking to each other via blogs, radio talk shows, conservative conferences and right-leaning think tanks that they seem to have forgotten how to talk to people who aren’t hard core conservatives.
Blowback
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Democrats are communists. Need I more proof than the fact that the Communist Party USA endorsed their presidential candidate the last two elections?
wildcat72 on January 23, 2013 at 6:22 PM
Not a Repub, Jenny.
You get nothing. I get that for free.
Christien on January 23, 2013 at 6:23 PM
What J-Rubes really means is “watch your truth telling.”
steebo77 on January 23, 2013 at 6:24 PM
Ok Jen, so how should conservatives refer to anchor babies, self-deportation, and culture of dependency?
Give us the words to use. Without that, all you’ve managed to say is “Shut up”
BobMbx on January 23, 2013 at 6:28 PM
Meanwhile, Romney gave a woman cancer. Only Republicans are required to be nice.
RedRedRice on January 23, 2013 at 6:29 PM
Rubin’s an amnesty shill. How about that language, Jen-Jen?
Blake on January 23, 2013 at 6:32 PM
Does anyone else find it extremely unsettling that freedom of speech is now an issue?
Galt2009 on January 23, 2013 at 6:33 PM
Jen, Jen, Jen, what difference does it make?
Christien on January 23, 2013 at 6:34 PM
Shouldn’t really surprise anyone. Silly Constitutional rights don’t mean you can be a meanie-poo.
katiejane on January 23, 2013 at 6:35 PM
Revenues!
forest on January 23, 2013 at 6:36 PM
It’s not so much freedom-of-speech as it is marketing.
thebrokenrattle on January 23, 2013 at 6:37 PM
I watched a documentary on North Korea yesterday. I see little difference between the US left and the regime in Pyongyang except for the manner and degree to which they can enforce their will.
Kungfoochimp on January 23, 2013 at 6:37 PM
Hey Jen,╭∩╮（︶︿︶）╭∩╮, does that count?
Flange on January 23, 2013 at 6:39 PM
She’s right. If you don’t think marketing an ideology matters, you obviously weren’t paying attention to the last election.
Caiwyn on January 23, 2013 at 6:43 PM
Ms. Rubin, when those of us on the right are allowed to disagree with the president and his policies without being called “racist”, oppose illegal (and I mean illegal) immigration without being called anti-immigrant, disagree with gay marriage without being accused of hate or homophobia, and opposed taxpayer-subsidized abortion and birth control without being accused of waging a “war on women”, get back to us.
Bigfoot on January 23, 2013 at 6:46 PM
Why does this idiot still have a job? Even the lefty Journ-o-lister who came before her was better.
sauldalinsky on January 23, 2013 at 6:47 PM
I agree. Not only do the Republican use poorly chosen terms all the time, but they actually start adopting the Democrat/MSM BS too.
forest on January 23, 2013 at 6:48 PM
Rubin is the one who beat everyone over the head until they accepted Romney. If she is going to try her strong arm crap again, she is in for a rude awakening.
Blake on January 23, 2013 at 6:48 PM
The American taxpayers, who have to foot the bill for these people, are the real chattel slaves.
Sending someone back to their home country, is not a punishment, it’s where they belong. If we can persuade them to do so on their own, why isn’t that the best solution?
Rebar on January 23, 2013 at 6:49 PM
My collie says:
Ordinarily, I’d tell collie to “go for the throat”, but someone else (on the other side) already did that this past week.
CyberCipher on January 23, 2013 at 6:50 PM
GOP candidates are as free as they ever were to say things like ‘Spanish is the language of the ghetto.’ Her point is that saying stuff like that is unnecessary to the policy debate and alienates potential voters rather than winning them over. It’s a valid point if you are aiming to increase the number of GOP voters and decrease the number of Democrat voters. Semantics matter in elections.
lexhamfox on January 23, 2013 at 6:50 PM
Yeah, I realize that – it was sort of a sideways off-topic sort of comment.
I mean in larger sense that there seems to be a lot of the oppressive agenda that is based on outright lies and fabrications. Lies and fabrications that will not be identified as such by the BSM.
Bottom line, the oppressives won’t like their agenda challenged by the truth.
Galt2009 on January 23, 2013 at 6:57 PM
I think there isn’t enough profanity on the part of the GOP.
Yeah, bible and all that…I don’t give a rat’s rear end .
If a word won’t pass the Hotair filter it is time to use it.
ProfShadow on January 23, 2013 at 7:03 PM
No potential R voter is alienated by the words anchor baby and self-deportation.
xblade on January 23, 2013 at 7:05 PM
Yes, but you have to admit that a great deal of the Left’s oppressive agenda is based on lies.
Lies like you can fund the government by just stealing from the very rich.
Lies like you can protect people by taking away their right of self-defense.
Those are just a couple of the many examples.
Galt2009 on January 23, 2013 at 7:06 PM
Rubin is totally right. leftists have done this for decades, they are disciplined and artful in their words. Rs not so much. Mostly just plain people who assume everyone at least in principle agrees with certain basics of American life.
check out Lincoln’s 1st inaugural. (hint, barry is no Lincoln)
Or check out Coolidge 1926 speech on the 150 the anniversary. (hin barry is no Coolidge)
one of the assumptions that Rs make is that everyone believes in a two party system, each party, each faction with the parties, act as a check and balance as the country adapts to this or that condition.
since barry first used the term post-partisan I knew what he meant. Sadly, most people didn’t..or at least didn’t allow themselves to say in print.
Jen’s husband’s post yesterday was at least correct in the title. A world without political opposition
r keller on January 23, 2013 at 7:11 PM
Ms. Rubin,it may be time to take your own medicine.
For the conservative rank-and-file, this should be instructive. If I’d have told them three years ago that during the 2012 election cycle, they could have a staffer at the Washington Post who would invariably write favorably and sympathetically about the Republican nominee, they’d have celebrated. As it turned out, there were some unintended consequences that they suffered — a dearth of fair-minded coverage during the primaries, a nominee marginally more prone to believing his own bullshit every time it was echoed back to him in the Washington Post, a rank-and-file given information so unreliable that they could no longer assess reality… and for what? A perch at a center-left newspaper doesn’t help conservatives persuade anyone of anything if the person holding it is widely perceived as a disingenuous mouthpiece for her favored candidate. What happens is that conservatives themselves are increasingly the only ones who are misled.
Lest there be any confusion, I am not calling for Jennifer Rubin to be fired. I have a better idea, and if anyone writes angry letters to the Post’s public editor, let this be the demand appended. What I want is for Rubin to go back through all her blog posts from this whole election cycle, and to append corrections, clarifications, and explanations for all the things she got wrong — the factual errors, of course, but also anything that egregiously misled her readers. Along with it, she should write an apology to the conservative rank-and-file for failing to level with them, and a forthright item about how exactly she conceives of her editorial duties. I wonder if she’d be bewildered by the notion that she did anything wrong. I wonder if she behaved as her boss, Fred Hiatt, expected. Regardless, redemption and better journalism are but some soul-searching and a forthright apology away.
Bmore on January 23, 2013 at 7:15 PM
.
NEWT !!!!
ExpressoBold on January 23, 2013 at 7:21 PM
The only language we need to watch is with the handful of SoCon politicians (not all of them) who should bloody well know when to deflect instead of run their stupid mouths.
Everything else, forget it.
Baby killers. Criminal coddlers. Communist wanna-bes. Illegal alien assisters. These and many more are perfectly valid terms for liberals, and that’s before we get into what is truly socially unacceptable wording.
And if American voters are such a bunch of lace-panty wusses that they can’t handle these labels, then by God above I say we deserve everything we are about to get.
MelonCollie on January 23, 2013 at 7:21 PM
Yes, marketing is important. Republicans need to be more like Reagan and less like Rush. Truth may be truth but it’s better to be inclusive than exclusive come election day. However…
You lost me right there. The media consensus is that Obama is a great president and Republicans need not be elected to any public office. Using “the media consensus” to design you strategy is a first order error.
Browncoatone on January 23, 2013 at 7:31 PM
Here are my alternative words:
Anchor Babies: Door Stops (what the anchor baby’s parents use them for)
Self Deportation: Getting the F out of Dodge because the freebies are drying up
Cultural Dependency: Lotsa Julias
As for the phrases “dignity of work” and “satisfaction of earned success”, for those who’d rather be on the dole and suck dry the success of others, I don’t think they really care about the terminology used to describe them.
waterytart on January 23, 2013 at 7:42 PM
Sorry, working, meant to quote.
Bmore on January 23, 2013 at 7:43 PM
Jennifer Rubin should have watched her language in the run up to the 2012 election. Now, nobody give a crap about what she says. In fact, I put her below Frum and Brooks.
besser tot als rot on January 23, 2013 at 7:52 PM
Jen, you ignorant slut!
/Not a Repub, so Rubin won’t mind.
Christien on January 23, 2013 at 8:08 PM