Playing the Rage Card

While watching a Sarah Palin rally on television I was struck by the anger and rage she managed to whip up in her crowd. Knowing the Republican machine, I understand that people who attend GOP rallies are often hand-picked and already loyal supporters. The rage I have seen at these latest rallies is shocking even for the true believers.

People in the audience shouting out “traitor” and even “kill him” when Senator Obama’s name is brought up goes way beyond just politics. The McCain/Palin campaign seems to have a new tactic as the polls drop, one that plays to the mob mentality rather than the intellect of the voters. This may actually be a natural extension of the Karl Rove and Frank Luntz school of campaigning.

For those unfamiliar with it here is a brief overview.

The basic thinking goes that people do not make rational decisions when it comes to politics, they make emotional ones. That is most likely a true assumption considering how the brain actually works, and so they play to the emotions rather than the intellect.

The best method they have found is by use of a “narrative” about the candidate. It’s just a story that supports the cause and engages the target audience. For example, during Regan’s rise to power, he repeated the story of the “welfare queen” who drove a Cadillac, had numerous children and collected massive amounts of government money by manipulating the welfare system. It was a compelling narrative and it worked. The fact is, it was not true. It was manufactured from whole cloth and intended as an allegorical lesson in how bad big government was. The problem with that story is that Regan repeated it so many times even he believed it was true and so did America.

The narrative being used in this campaign is about John McCain and more recently Sarah Palin. They are “mavericks” and “reformers” who will ride into Washington and fix everything. Like the welfare queen story it’s also not true. Palin is hardly a reformer and has little experience that would qualify her to govern, but she fits the narrative well. “Hockey mom”, “Pitbull in Lipstick” and “Moose Hunter” are all part of her narrative that you have no doubt heard repeated by the campaign and the press over and over. Why? Because it’s a good story and easy to talk about. McCain has a similar one and it comes complete with the tag “POW” which, though true, is certainly no qualifier for public office. But it makes a good story.

So how do we get from these narratives to the raging mobs that are now showing up at McCain/Palin rallies? Well, they have turned to another old tried and true narrative, the one that uses a scapegoat. When you have to explain a difficult and painful reality, like the economy right now, it’s easier to just find someone to blame rather than a solution to the problem. That is what the McCain/Palin campaign is doing.

By continually trying to associate Barack Obama with “terrorists” they play into that narrative and their audience without realizing it conjures up images of “arab terrorists” and “9-11”. I would bet that most of them have never seen a picture of the 1960’s radical, Bill Ayers (a white middle class professor in Chicago) but if you asked them they would assume he is black. And by emphasizing Obama’s middle name they strengthen the narrative with images of dark skinned fanatics from the Middle East. The scapegoats for all our problems are “terrorists” .

Now, you and I know that the current financial crisis has nothing to do with race or terrorists, but still the people at these rallies lose their reason and become driven by their deepest emotions, and that is where the narratives play best. What you end up with are crowds driven by anger and fear, two sides of the same coin. They are loud and vocal and they tend to respond in ever increasing volume just like fans at a football game. They get caught up in the frenzy and energy of the crowd and the narrative of “blame the scapegoat” keeps them going.

What does this have to do with us? Well, in the past minorities have been the victims of this kind of frenzy. Look at Germany in the 1930’s or Mississippi in the 1960’s. Fear and anger make a potent cocktail and a mob, once drunk on it, becomes unmanageable. McCain and Palin are playing with fire and if they are not careful, lots of people might get burned.