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Is there any way to scare people about Republicans?

I have more noodling for the new year. Here it is: Republicans succeed mainly by scaring people about liberals. They'll ruin the country with huge deficits. They'll open the borders and let all the immigrants in. They'll make it impossible to be a devout Christian. Crime will surge and the whole country will be a hellhole like California. Etc.

The obvious response is to scare people about conservatives. The target here is not confirmed lefties who already fear conservatives, but centrist voters in swing districts, since they're the ones who will make a difference. But how?

Abortion won't do it. That's up to the Supreme Court. Donald Trump being an idiot won't do it. We have convincing evidence that most people don't care much about that. Conservative refusal to spend more on the poor won't do it. That just isn't scary to most people. Cutting taxes on the rich won't do it. It's not popular, but it also doesn't seem to bother most people.

Of course, there's always the reliable Democratic standby: Conservatives will cut Social Security and Medicare. But Trump was shrewd enough to kill that idea, and conservatives don't talk about it anymore.

Any ideas? Or is scaring people just not something that works for liberals?

74 thoughts on “Is there any way to scare people about Republicans?

  1. illilillili

    Give them what they want. Produce deficit reducing bills that stop transfers of funds to rural conservative areas and which remove regulations that protect rural conservative areas, and heavily advertise these as bureaucracy slimming policies while pointing out how big-government and high-regulation the Republicans are.

    1. randomworker

      Right. Democrats always protect Republicans from themselves. Pelosi or Schumer will provide the needed D votes to avoid plunging tge US into a debt crisis and tanking the economy. There are otger instances of this, but essentially the Rs are insulated from their craziest elements.

      Cut off farm subsidies. I mean, yes you can find a handful of Democratic farmers and it might "hurt" them. This is where Ds fail. The targeted tax missiles launched against CA and NY by the Rs hurt a lot more Republicans than live in the 10 reddest states combined. But they did it anyway.

      No FEMA funeral money for the unvaccinated.

      You get the idea...

    2. chaboard

      Problem is the bulk of the blues state-> red state transfer of funds IS Medicare and Social Security. And running on stopping hose is suicide.

  2. sfbay1949

    Republicans will change your life forever. They are using democracy to change laws, state by state, to allow them to overturn valid elections and put Republicans in power no matter the vote. Your vote won't matter at all. And your rights won't either.

    Forget what you think about the specific laws being enacted in states like Texas. It's the mere fact that Republicans in Texas can do whatever they want, no matter what the majority thinks. This is spreading to all states with Republican controlled state government. They will NEVER give back power. That's called a DICTATORSHIP. And it's the end of the United States as a democracy.

    Vote like your life, and your family's life as free citizens depends on it, because it does.

    How we put that into to useful soundbites will be the problem. But it must be done.

  3. dontcallmefrancis

    Simplest is conservatives want to take the taxes you pay and give them to the wealthy and corporations who pay less taxes than you.

    It's hard to make that resonate though.

    1. cmayo

      Is it, though?

      Just air ads about tax bills paid by the rich and by corporations, side by side with taxes paid by the average American.

      The differences are so stark that you're damn right it resonates.

      Democratic messaging usually tries to get too clever by half.

  4. Greg Apt

    If the GOP’s argument is that the Democrats are a bunch of godless anti-religious Commies, how about the argument that the GOP is a bunch of gun toting religious fanatics that want to bring about Christian Sharia and make us look like Somalia or Afghanistan - no taxes, no restrictions on guns, no central authority beyond a bunch of religious fanaticism?

  5. golack

    Part of the "Southern Strategy" effective makes "conservatism" part of their worldview...i.e. part of their religion. It needs constant reinforcement and citing of creeds (see Fox News). Any difference of opinion becomes sacrilege. Wear a mask? Get kicked out of tribe, garments rendered, and burn in hell for eternity. That is why it is so hard to get them to do the right thing.

  6. DFPaul

    Oh this is too easy. The Republicans will destroy the economy, create mass unemployment, and impoverish the country, you and your family. Biggest "centrist" and "swing voter" scare point you can imagine. The advantage of this point is also that it's completely true and rooted in recent history (GWB and DT administrations both did this). However, it seems the mainstream media really really really really doesn't want to accept this point. The MSM is deeply invested in the idea that Democrats = will give all the money to the poors, and Republicans = hard headed decisions about not spending more than you have + business knowledge + getting rich. It seems that framing is so important to the MSM's view of itself as fair, even-handed, not taking sides, etc, that it cannot actually explain the reality sitting in front of all our eyes.

    1. cmayo

      Because the MSM is largely:

      1. privileged (white) people, who are in higher tax brackets. The same effect is visible in any highly-paid public profession, e.g. professional athletes.

      2. highly invested in appearing neutral, which means playing a lot of boths-sides and making false equivalencies.

      3. because of (2), sucked into believing and pushing the narrative that deficits matter and that the government should be run like a business (with a neutral or positive budget).

      4. because of (3) and the fact that there are large deficits, government must suck, which is literally the Republican strategy and end-goal.

      I hate most journalists. This echo chamber they're in is highly toxic, is of their own creation, and is one of the prime enablers of the Republican party that is fucking everyone else in this country and on this planet simply so that they can have ever-more-obscene levels of wealth.

  7. bmore

    I remember many years ago when kids were sniffing Wite-out, the company supposedly put out a rumor that huffing it caused acne. The theory was that teens feared acne more than brain damage, etc. So what do Republicans fear more than anything else? And how to put it into a marketing campaign? idk, but something to think about.

    1. cld

      More than anything else they fear other social conservatives, which is why their straw man cartoon of liberals is a projected form of social conservative acting exactly as they would act.

  8. tdbach

    The message: Healthy American conservatism (there is such a thing) is dead, killed by a Republican party that is off the rails, that stands for nothing but fear and loathing, that traffics in lies and fantasies, that no longer aspires to govern, but only to rule. Mad Max America.

  9. KenSchulz

    KD: is scaring people just not something that works for liberals?
    Bingo. And liberals don’ t need scaring. Liberals and progressives actually follow politics, vote reliably and don’t vote Republican, because duh.
    The people who need to be gotten to the polls are the marginal voters, who vote only sporadically. They don’t follow politics much, don’t pay much attention to issues or policy positions, and believe whatever passes for facts in their particular bubble. I think there is research showing that some of these folks think politicians bicker too much, and ‘could accomplish more if they worked together’. His promises of bipartisanship might be why Biden won when many downballot Democrats lost in 2020. Demonizing Republicans will be a disincentive for that group of voters. I sure hope there is a lot of in-house Democratic polling going on to really understand what motivates marginal voters.

  10. Scurra

    Nope. We've got the same problem over here in Brexitland.
    The Right has but one message - "we cut taxes". Anybody who opposes that is already doomed. Even though the entire history of the Right has been that they actually raise taxes on everybody except their funders, "we cut taxes" is the message that sticks.

  11. iamr4man

    If a hard core right winger like Liz Cheney saying that if Donald Trump becomes President again it will be the end of Democracy in the USA doesn’t scare them I really don’t think anything will scare them.

  12. fritzlyounghoff

    It's easy. Put pictures of GOP reps over footage of cops being beat up on Jan 6th and run commercials in every state. They will whine, but I think libs make the mistake in thinking you win by "proving" the other side is "wrong". But it's mostly about controlling the narrative. Make the GOP argue with itself over whether the insurrection was good or not, who does or does not support the Big Lie vehemently enough, and how Democrats are playing politics by using the GOP's antics against them and who the RINOs are. That's how you win: make your adversary panic, and show how trustworthy you are by comparison.

    1. KenSchulz

      Liked!
      Yes, I think the GOP civil war has barely begun, and we need to do everything we can to encourage it. Get the Trump-asskissing nutjobs attacking the fence-sitting nutjobs and vice-versa.

  13. Citizen99

    Kevin, it hasn't worked so far because Democrats don't have the guts to actually DO it. They are still fixated on this notion that telling people "what you are for" is the key, that they don't want "negative messaging" and that they care about "kitchen table issues." But that's already what Democrats do, and if it's not already clear that it doesn't work, it will never be!
    You say people don't care if trump is an idiot. But that's because the swing voters that matter don't actually KNOW it. All politicians accuse their opponents of being idiots. Republicans accuse Joe Biden of being senile. If swing voters were convinced that trump is an ignoramus and that his stupidity actually MATTERS, I think that would be very compelling. In political messaging, repetition is what matters. Unfortunately, Democrats typically try a message for 5 minutes, then run to their pollsters, and when it doesn't immediately work, they mop their brows and change to something else. The Right, on the other hand, engages in attack-attack-attack, and if it doesn't work right away, they attack that much harder.
    And the Democrats have one huge built-in advantage: the truth! Most of the GOP attack messaging is based on lies or distortions. The Democrats don't have to do that; all they have to do is tell the truth about trump and the GOP, but do it constantly and relentlessly.

    1. Salamander

      Another Repub tactic, which they've been using at least since the Reagan era, is as Steve Bannon says "Flood the zone with shit." (can I type that on WordPress?)

      Don't just pick a single issue and harp on it. Pick lots of issues and keep adding to them, and keep repeating them all, and bring them up constantly, even out of context. Harp, harp, harp. There's plenty of true stuff to hit Republicans with, and you barely have to even look for it.

      Dems (and lib cable news) assume people are easily distracted simpletons, and there is only one story allowed per day. ONE. Everybody rags and and on about it, from show to show to show. This obviously makes the very existence of 24 hour "news" networks absurd, but there you have it.

      Dems need to throw whole basketfuls of Deplorable Acts in every media interaction. They should coordinate regularly on the contents of said basket and frequent additions. Each Dem doesn't need to do the whole basket, but can select a large subset appropriate to the audience at the time. And "Jan 6"? NEVER FORGET. It needs to come up every time.

  14. Spadesofgrey

    Republicans are globalist capitalist elites that need the debt based system and the global rich to finance it. It's pouring scabs across the border, creating huge greenhouse emissions overseas, destroying our American eco system. That is what a left hegelian would say. But we have good libtard social workers here. The system is fine. It sorta leads me to respect when Tyler Durden said we should create oil spills on the beaches we aren't allowed into.

    Capitalism frankly played out by 29. The government Bernie Lomax routine is getting old. Oh yeah, Republicans engage in gay sex.......alot. That is true.

    I triangulate libertarians, the real power behind Trump, their Zionist allies and RNC elites down on the grass level. Progressives are not leftists at all. Just right Hegelian scum keeping the system in play.

    Torturing losers like the hedge fund jew losers who write for crap internet scum like zerohedge, will be fun. Taking Tyler Durden's name in vain(written by a homosexual to boot, yet understood masculinity, a real butch) is not something I take lightly.

    1. varmintito

      What the hell is this bullshit? Whatever point you think you're making about Hegel (there's a name that has a ton of resonance in US politics), all I hear is "jew losers." Please find the fucking egress.

  15. susteph

    You could always put the video of some guy beating up a cop with the American flag on a loop and just keep hammering that this is what Republicans want... Try and find one (beside Liz) who disagrees.

    1. Salamander

      Like!!! (and when will Kevin upgrade his WP commenting system to let us do that? and de-list the tedious trolls?)

  16. cld

    Scaring people is not something that works much for liberals, because social conservatives are more easily scared. Having their hair on fire is their normative state, most especially when they're going overboard to ignore it.

    But you can scare social conservatives about other social conservatives.

    The ideal state for a person is normalcy. Everyone has their own sense of normalcy, but it is understood as a sense of quiet security. 'Middle class' is the standard shorthand for it, especially for people in the public eye, which is why you sometimes see tv personalities who pull down seven figures or more a year blandly telling an interviewer how they're just middle class normal people.

    Offense against the normal state is what alarms people, and today nothing is more offensive to that than Trump supporters.

    Democrats should concentrate on normalness, on promoting the normal state of quiet security Republicans are working to destroy. They can do this because Republicans really are working to destroy it.

    Normality, security and comfort, for everyone, everywhere.

    1. KenSchulz

      But there are districts represented by the likes of MTG and Bieber, Jordan, Mo Brooks, Cawthorn and more, agents of chaos all. Deep red looks forward to apocalypse.

      1. cld

        Exactly, and their chaos is the normative state of people who vote for Republicans, but a large part of those people don't really want the chaos, either, their anxiety simply overcomes their response to anything else.

        Marjorie Taylor Greene wants nothing to do with quiet security or the comfort of anyone. She will harm whatever she can.

        Many people who vote for Republicans can fall back to their actually preferred normative and conservative state of doing nothing, now in the interest of harming chaos, because doing nothing is the easiest thing to do, and most impressive when it causes the greatest disruption.

        1. cld

          If Democrats will address the issue, it's all the incentive they'd need, otherwise conservatives will end up holding the bag, they'll be responsible for an incredible mess.

  17. bharshaw

    No, we Democrats are the party of belief in the glorious future, in equality, brother/sisterhood, and freedom, while Republicans are the party of fear, gloom and doom, negativism and doubt, division and prejudice.

    1. mostlystenographicmedia

      Kevin isn’t talking about persuading Democrats. He’s talking about persuading “centrist” voters. And centrist voters are clearly persuaded by fear campaigns.

      1. KenSchulz

        I’ve stated before that I’m more persuaded by the evidence of the marginal (occasional) voter theory. There really aren’t many true ‘swing’ voters, but there are quite a few occasional voters that have a definite party lean; they just don’t always vote. Republican-leaners are probably similar to the Republican base and susceptible to fear-mongering. Democratic-leaners are probably similar to the Democratic base, it just takes something more to get them to the polls. That isn’t necessarily the same thing in every place; that’s where polling has a role.

  18. garytrauner

    Kevin - First, use the KISS principle. Second, who cares if they've stopped talking about Social Security and Medicare. Use it anyway because they still believe it. My view is to talk about SS, MCare and large corporation/Wall Street/CEOs. Hammer it home, along with the fact that Rs have voted against every policy that helps regular working folks. Play on our home field turf, not on their away game turf. Home teams win way more often.

    Also, critically, we need our leadership to be on social media and the airwaves constantly repeating this. Boebert and Taylor Greene may be idiots, but they are constantly on the airwaves and on our devices spouting their nonsense. It works.

    1. Heysus

      I agree with you. Dems need to be loud and clear about SS, MCare and largest corp/WS/CEO's. They need to get out and shout and buy time to show themselves. They need to be loud and clear that R's have been against everything that would help them. Show extreme examples. Time to get out there and make a lot of noise.

  19. cld

    Republicans think we fought on the wrong side in WWII.

    Republicans vote against anything that will help anyone, except a billionaire.

    Republicans vote to cause more catastrophic injury in any way they can, they vote for nothing else, they never have, they never will.

    Republicans vote to do nothing because that's the easiest way to get away with hurting people by preventing anything from being done, but that's no longer enough for them. They want everyone to know who's hurting them.

  20. middleoftheroaddem

    I was raised in a GOP leaning suburb of a rust belt state/still have friends who support the Republicans. Further, I work in finance and definitely have Republican workmates. Based on my non scientific insight, the issues that appear impactful to Republicans:

    - national defense
    - immigration
    - the economy
    - freedom

    IF the aforementioned is correct (I admit this is my observation but I lack hard data) then the GOP understands their audience.

  21. ProbStat

    Democrats are disadvantaged v. Trumpublicans in messaging because Democrats think they're actually trying to do good things for people while Trumpublicans know that they're pulling a scam.

    So Democrats try to lay out their agenda and convince people that it will help them and help the country ... while Trumpublicans warn that Democrats want to force them into gay marriages and to have abortions, all while taking away their hunting rifles and making them take in homeless Black people.

    So what Democrats need to do is to stop being honest: for any truth, there is a plausible lie that is slightly more agreeable to its audience. So lie.

    1. Heysus

      Interesting that liars, cheats, and thieves are loud and most likely heard by the masses and believed. What is wrong with this?

  22. Amil Eoj

    If the relevant demographic* cannot be frightened by "the worst thing to happen in recent years to US politics" then I don't know what else we could possibly conjure to scare them with.

    * Which, at the risk of seeming to quibble, is not really "centrist voters in swing states" but centrist *white* voters in swing states. There are plenty of non-white centrists, after all, who are solidly in the Democratic camp; it's among white centrists in swing states that we tend to lose elections.

    1. Amil Eoj

      FWIW, our political problem seems to me roughly analogous to the political problem of the North in gathering an effective anti-slavery coalition in the early 1850s:

      About 1/3 of the electorate (maybe less) already regards Trumpism as an urgent danger to democracy and the rule of law. There is also a very sizable minority that welcomes Trumpism for this very reason (since, at a guess, ~1/3 of the electorate constitutes a natural constituency for fascism in most rich democracies). Our problem is how the ~1/3 in the middle decides to vote.

      In the early 1850s analogy, this middle 3rd would be the segment of Northern (and to a lesser degree border state) opinion unfriendly to slavery, but not (yet) exercised enough about it to make stopping its expansion a serious political issue--much less *the* political issue of the day.

      That obviously changed very quickly. When & how? I think most historians would say that the intrusive strengthening of the Fugitive Slave Act (that came along with the Compromise of 1850) contributed significantly. But the match that really lit the fire was of course the Kansas-Nebraska Act (repealing the Missouri Compromise). And the gasoline that turned that fire into a full-scale conflagration was the Dred Scot decision.

      In other words, events are what moved Northern opinion in a more militantly anti-slavery direction--events tending to demonstrate that the warnings of the more radical anti-slavery elements had been right all along.

      Where are we on this spectrum now, with respect to how the "middle third" feel about the Trumpist anti-democratic movement? Where will we be by the time the 2022 midterm campaigns get under way in earnest? We'll find out soon enough.

  23. Crissa

    Conservatives kill people.

    Conservative run states:
    Have higher gun violence
    Higher infant mortality
    Higher maternal mortality
    Lower life expectancy
    Lower median wages
    Higher COVID deaths
    More traffic deaths
    Lower high school graduation rates
    Lower college participation

    There's pretty much no statistic that conservatives do better on, including some actually scary ones.

  24. sevair

    The Democrats could advocate for a flat tax of all income types . There would be no deductions, it would kick in just above the poverty level.The rate could be set so its revenue neutral when compared to what the current tax policies raise ( or it could be set somewhat higher, with the difference going toward reducing the debt)
    The Democrats can then run as the party of fairness, where everyone pays their fair share . The Republicans would, of course ,oppose this . Democrats could then argue that the Republicans only favor the rich , and will continue to tax and treat the middle class unfairly . Nothing gets peoples attention like when their paychecks are affected. The public would, I believe, respond to this .

  25. Justin

    I hate republicans and I wish trump would be… gone, but there is no reason for me to fear them personally They might give me a tax cut. But if I were a lefty person in the media or politics I would be worried. They are so going to put you all in concentration camps.

    1. Jasper_in_Boston

      I hate republicans and I wish trump would be… gone, but there is no reason for me to fear them personally

      You don't fear living in a totally shitty autocracy? That's not personal for you? America is very far indeed from perfect, but Americans still enjoy a lot of freedoms. Americans are still free to criticize the government. They're still free to read whatever they want. They still have access to a government-provided safety net. America has environmental regulations, and laws that protect various, traditionally persecuted groups from arbitrary discrimination. Americans still enjoy the presumption of innocence in a court of law. American streets are still free from military patrols.

      These and many other attributes of a democratic polity would vanish if the country descends into fascism. I live under a fascist regime. You do not want that.

  26. drickard1967

    Follow the examples of Cara and other WW2 propogandists: use Republicans' own words against them. Make ads out of Gozar's "Kill AOC" video, Cawthorn's "be armed and dangerous" video, MTG's posts calling for assassinating leading Dems, all the calls for jailing Fauci, all the [redacted]holes' "Christmas" cards featuring armories, etc.

    1. Jasper_in_Boston

      Not many voters will be swayed by this sort of thing because they don't care if some member of Congress or government oficial they probably don't even like is threatened.

      Whatever you go with has to be personally menacing to or feared by the voters themselves.

  27. royko

    I mean, they lie a lot. I don't think you could create that much fear without a lot of lying. Which, presumably, we don't want to do.

    But there is something to the idea that fear works better for conservatives given their core demographic (old white people) and their agenda (eliminate government programs/benefits, especially the ones that help undesirables.)

  28. Dana Decker

    Kevin's italicized portion of what Republicans say to scare people about liberals:

    They'll ruin the country with huge deficits. They'll open the borders and let all the immigrants in. They'll make it impossible to be a devout Christian. Crime will surge and the whole country will be a hellhole like California. Etc.

    Are lies (although there *is* a significant contingent for politically toxic open borders). Yet his musing about what to say to scare people about Republicans is absent falsehoods.

    1. KenSchulz

      How significant is the contingent among Democrats that favors open borders? I just did some searching, and the initial names that turned up were right-libertarians or economists of unstated political affiliations. None were Democratic officeholders or aspirants, or major Democratic donors, or party officials or activists. A New York Times article titled “The Open Borders Trap” discusses the positions of the 2020 Democratic Presidential candidates, zero of whom advocated for open borders. Accusing Democrats of favoring open borders is simply another Republican lie.

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