I briefly mentioned this in my post from earlier today, but Atrios said something similar, so I thought I’d flesh it out a bit. (Just a bit; taking off to do some book-writing tonight.)
I’ve written before that I think part of the problem that conservatives/Republicans face is that their mythology has become a bit too complex for mere mortals (people who don’t listen to Limbaugh and read The Corner obsessively) to comprehend. They reference rogues’ gallery of enemies and various “bad things” that most people have never heard of. Simply trying to navigate through the various wingnutty minefields while throwing out the appropriate red meat has become difficult to do, and the result is incomprehensible to most of the country.
Volcano monitoring! High speed rail!
I said something similar last night after the speech to Marc—-the amount of code language that Republicans have to use to communicate their ideas is getting so thick as to be incomprehensible. Even in 2004, when Bush was talking about Dred Scott during a debate as a way to hint at his extreme anti-choice views without coming out and saying it, things were better. Soon it’s going to be so bad that they’ll have to give their speeches entirely with “You knows” and hand gestures. Conservatives have a major issue. The reason they feel under attack is that the dominant values of the country are officially liberal—-it’s bad to be racist, sexist, or homophobic, it’s bad to suggest poor people are subhuman, etc. Couple that with the perception, often correct, that the actual dominant values of the country are sexist, racist, homophobic, anti-poor, etc. (Though less so all the time.) People don’t like to be thought of as sexist or racist, but they want to hang onto their beliefs, and Republicans need to communicate with those people. But how to do it without coming out and saying it?