You might well conclude that they have if you listen to what conservative (somewhat disillusioned conservative) journalist David Frum has concluded about this presidential race. He goes right back to Deborah Tannen, the brilliant linguistics professor at Georgetown, for an explanation of Newt Gingrich's rocket ride to the top of the ticket (but now, predicted fall).
Here's part of a funny interview with Frum on NPR this morning:
NPR: You've been very critical of Newt Gingrich, and yet you've written in recent days that you think he understands this party very well. What is it that Newt Gingrich understands very well about the Republican Party?
FRUM: Well, Mitt Romney - who's a candidate I like a lot more - has a kind of technocratic cast of mind. There's a linguist named Deborah Tannen who says that one of the ways that men and women go wrong is that a woman will tell a man about a problem she's got, and the man will immediately begin to offer a solution. And she doesn't really want the solution. She can think of the solution for herself. What she wants to hear is some kind of understanding and validation of how she feels. Don't be so quick...
NPR: I've been in this conversation.
FRUM: OK, don't be so quick to offer the answer Mr. Smart Guy. Just listen for a few minutes first. Well, I think that in many ways what we're having here is a Deborah Tannen moment between the Republican base and Mitt Romney.
The Republican base says: We're angry. We're frustrated. We're embarrassed. And Mitt Romney says, OK, I've got my, literally, 59-point plan. And by the way, it's a very smart plan, but that's not what those primary voters are really expressing right now.
NPR: And so Gingrich understands that and is able to tap into their unease, if that's the right word.
FRUM: Exactly.
NPR: Bret Stephens, who writes for the Wall Street Journal, wrote an incendiary article, an angry article saying that the GOP deserves to lose this election. He was not complimentary of any of the remaining candidates, and he referred to Mitt Romney - the one you say you like a lot better - as a hollow man.
FRUM: Yeah.
NPR: Is that fair?
FRUM: That's not fair. Look, Mitt Romney has the kind of qualities that I think a lot of us would like to see in a president. He's judicious. He's very smart. He's cautious, and he makes decisions based on a wide range of information.
The reason people will describe him in this way is because he's not able to channel the rage that is felt by many of Republicans, because he doesn't feel that kind of rage. But I tend to think that that's one of the things that I like about him. I mean, the passions that you're hearing from the Republican base are not good descriptions of reality and they are not good guides...
NPR: What's an example of what you are talking about?
FRUM: Well, I did a radio show the other day with a very Republican radio station, and the host was telling me, this country is on the edge of an apocalypse. You know, look, actually, the country's sort of climbing back from an apocalypse. An apocalypse is kind of strong and that kind of overwrought feeling that yeah, there's nothing ahead but decline and extinction for America. That's no way for a candidate to think, because it's not true.
NPR: You were arguing that in order to express the anxiety that a lot of Americans feel, you can most easily do that by saying things that are just not factually true.
FRUM: Well, the great politicians, the great leaders are people who, at moments where the country has real reasons for fear and unease and resentment and anger, take those feelings and they re-channel them, redirect them in ways that can lead to solutions.
And at the end of that process, the people can look back and say that the leader - and the reason we admire these leaders is, yeah, we had a lot of feelings in 1933 or in 1981 that could have taken this country in an ugly direction. And you responded to the way we felt, and then you led us to a positive place, not to a negative place.
NPR: When you said 1933 and 1981, you're talking about President Franklin Roosevelt, Present Ronald Reagan.
FRUM: That's right.
NPR: And you're acknowledging that Mitt Romney just isn't there?
FRUM: Well, Mitt Romney has the answers. I mean, the challenge for Romney is he's not good at connecting with the feelings, but he would be very good at leading the country to a more positive space. But the reason that a lot of the Republican base is having trouble with him is he's not connecting with them.
Frum is dead wrong about Romney, I'm pretty sure. But he gets the apocalyptic anger on the right and he makes a good connection to Tannen's theory about "it's not the damn facts I want, but validation for how I feel!"
That's how liberals and progressives been dumb when they insist on countering the girlish hysteria on the right with those macho statistics, with history, with truth -- all of which only drive the aggrieved little ladies crazier! Just giving Roosevelt credit as a leader -- just that! -- may send them over the edge!
The tea partiers and their allies need a stretch in the Betty Ford Center or perhaps a more secure setting for about ten years.... until they get over it.
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Just one more comment. It's becoming clearer and clearer to this reader that one of DC's most odious newspeaks is "Look!..." preceding a categorical statement. But watch out, it doesn't really mean "look closely." It means don't look too closely because I'm going to try to convince you of something I'm not sure of myself." Maybe Deborah Tannen will write something about that...
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