{"id":26194,"date":"2007-07-11T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T05:15:28","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T05:15:28","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T05:15:28","slug":"dems_shun_facts_for_emotions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/07\/11\/dems_shun_facts_for_emotions\/","title":{"rendered":"Dems Shun Facts for Emotions"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: The Los Angeles Times on July 9th. We\u2019ve talked to you about the new message maker the Democrats have glommed onto, this guy named Drew Westen. He\u2019s described here as a ‘genial 48-year-old psychologist and brain researcher.\u2019 The Democrats have thrown George Lakoff (rhymes with) overboard, and Lakoff\u2019s not too happy about it, but they\u2019ve glommed onto this Westen guy. He\u2019s talked to what is described here as ‘a rapt liberal audience about the role of emotion in politics, how to talk back aggressively to Republicans, and why going negative is not to be feared. It was Day 2 of the progressive ‘Take Back America\u2019 confab, and those who had crowded into a meeting room of the Washington Hilton were about to discover why Westen, a psychology professor at Atlanta\u2019s Emory University and former associate professor at Harvard Medical School, had quietly become the great rumpled hope of Democrats who believe their candidates should have won the last two presidential elections. … Westen has spent many years training psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers, and his major brush with fame before now had been the occasional commentary on National Public Radio. … In his new book, ‘The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation,\u2019 Westen, who is not affiliated with a particular candidate, lays out his argument that Democrats must connect emotionally with the American electorate &mdash; and that he can teach them how,\u2019 to do it. ”The political brain is an emotional brain,\u2019 [Westin] said. ‘It prefers conclusions that are emotionally satisfying rather than conclusions that match the data.” <\/p>\n

(Gasp!) What a profound admission! Let me read that to you again: ‘The political brain is an emotional brain. It prefers conclusions that are emotionally satisfying rather than conclusions that match the data.\u2019 In other words, lie! If the data is not on your side, lie about it and make people feel good about your lie. That\u2019s how I interpret this. None of this is new. This is what the Democrats instinctively do. The fact that they think they have some psychologist come in and teach them how to do it is hilarious. This is in their DNA, and I\u2019ll tell you what else it does here, folks. This points out why they are so determined to silence people like me on talk radio. They can\u2019t as easily get away with all this emotional garbage when people like me are out there providing the facts in an optimistic and entertaining. Well, I\u2019m not optimistic today because I\u2019m highly irritable and in a foul mood, but most of the time I\u2019m optimistic and of good cheer, and I present facts in that atmosphere. So for their plan to work, fact purveyors have to be ‘dealt with.\u2019 The man running America is a problem and they\u2019ve gotta deal with that problem. Facts, by this guy\u2019s own admission, get in the way of the Democrats\u2019 mission. <\/p>\n

A couple days ago we had that article on female guilt, the Melinda Henneberger story about all these women out there that don\u2019t really like Hillary and it\u2019s tearing them up. They just feel guilty about it, and so dubbed a new term, White Gal Guilt. In that whole story there was not one mention I can recall on her policies or any disagreement on that. It was all emotional. All of the talk, all of the comments that Melinda Henneberger quoted dealt with emotion. In Hillary\u2019s candidacy, nobody\u2019s dealing with facts and figures and all these issues. It\u2019s total emotion. The inevitability. ‘She is owed this. Look at what she did! She saved the Democrat Party. She saved the country by not leaving her husband. She gave up a promising career as a feminist, or whatever, and had to trudge on down to the sticks in Arkansas to mop up this guy\u2019s message for all these years.\u2019 That\u2019s the stuff that\u2019s driving her candidacy. If you look at her issues and things that she\u2019s botched, politically and lawsuits and this sort of thing, there\u2019s nothing to recommend her candidacy — but emotion? So basically let me summarize this. <\/p>\n

What Drew Westen is telling Democrats (and what they already think anyway because they do this; they really don\u2019t need to be taught this) is they\u2019re basically saying that their potential voters are idiots, derelicts, stupid poltroons. If it\u2019s that easy to ignore facts and cover up facts with the right kind of satisfying emotion, then you\u2019ve gotta be dealing with lunatics. You have to be dealing with idiots. Their voters are stupid, and they need to appeal to voter emotions because it doesn\u2019t make sense to argue an issue using facts and figures. It actually says this later on in this article. ‘It doesn\u2019t make sense to argue an issue using facts and figures and to count on voters to make choices based on sophisticated understandings of policy differences or procedures.\u2019 Oh, really? Tell that to Ronald Reagan. Anyway, avoid the facts; just go right for the heart and lie. Don\u2019t bore your constituents with facts. Just tell \u2019em whatever makes \u2019em comfortable, warm, happy, and fuzzy. Tell \u2019em that the people that own Ferraris ignorant be owning them for very long, and the people that have yachts are not going to have them very long and make them feel good. Play into their resentments; play up class envy, and we\u2019ll take care of you. Don\u2019t worry your pretty little empty heads. The Democrat Party will take care of you, and that\u2019s their message. As I say, I\u2019m struck by the fact they need somebody to come in and teach \u2019em. <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: One of the newspapers today, it\u2019s either the Los Angeles Times or maybe the Washington Post, said that this interim report, the Petraeus report, the pre-Petraeus report on September 15th, the interim report shows that Iraqi troop numbers and deployment have reached their benchmarks. I don\u2019t want to be confusing about this. It\u2019s the political dimension that isn\u2019t there, and some are saying, ‘Well, yeah, Bush set those benchmarks so high, they were impossible to meet. Maliki, nobody could have hit them,\u2019 and that\u2019s going to be the excuse for getting out. That\u2019s Democrats floating that around, hoping that that is a rumor that takes hold and will be used to force Bush into some sort of withdrawal policy because they don\u2019t have the votes to force it in either the Senate or the House. Now, remember, the Democrats were all over. They were just as critical as they could be of the fact that the Iraqis were not stepping up. The military of the Iraqis, the training wasn\u2019t going well, remember all that? <\/p>\n

Why, Kerry was talking about it in the \u201904 race (summarized): ‘The training is not going fast enough. We need Iraqis defending their own country. Iraqis are going to be dying for their own country. Why is it only US treasures going to help, our precious treasure, and all that.\u2019 Well, the Iraqis have ramped up, and despite all these claims that the Iraqis can\u2019t do it, they\u2019re not going to do it, now they are that charge and focus not going to be availability to them anymore because the Iraqis are out there dying for their country. They are in the field. Democrats said it doesn\u2019t happen. Democrats said it wasn\u2019t going to happen. Democrats said it was happening too slowly. Now they\u2019re out there saying, ‘These benchmarks, why, none of them have been met, the political, the governmental benchmarks. Oh, they\u2019re horrible. These Iraqis, they\u2019re not worth it.\u2019 It\u2019s the same refrain that they\u2019ve been saying for four years. You know, the Give Up Caucus, the White Flag Caucus: Democrats in both the House and the Senate. <\/p>\n

RUSH: Jim in Chesapeake, Virginia, I\u2019m glad you waited, sir.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Rush, thank you for taking my call, and it\u2019s an extreme pleasure to talk with you. This problem with the Democrats and basically the Congress\u2019 failure to see what\u2019s happened before in the Iraqi theater and just Middle East in general, is killing me. I don\u2019t want to have the support to pull out and have the people pay the ultimate sacrifice again to take the same ground just to protect our country and our children.<\/p>\n

RUSH: What do you mean, by going back?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Oh, we can go back all the way to when we sent the message to Libya, to the Iran hostage debacle, to the USS Samuel B. Roberts, the Stark, all the incidents in the area, the Beirut bombing of the Marine barracks, and even of the current areas. It it\u2019s amazing how the only thing we hear about is it is unfortunate and sad loss of life for this particular encounter in Iraq over the past couple years, but they neglect to consider what happened in Desert Shield, Desert Storm and before and after. I never heard them cry about the loss of life.<\/p>\n

RUSH: What you\u2019re saying is a good point. That this is a problem, and at some point it\u2019s be going to be dealt with. If we quit now we\u2019re just going to have to deal with it in some other form, maybe some other place, in a bigger theater, who knows what? That\u2019s an excellent point.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Rush, it\u2019s not just a bigger theater.<\/p>\n

RUSH: We cannot hide and we cannot pretend it doesn\u2019t exist, and we can\u2019t leave these people alone and expect them to leave us alone. They\u2019re fanning out all over the Western world via immigration and other things, and getting into these Western societies that they so despise.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yes, sir, and, Rush, it\u2019s not just that. I\u2019ve been in and around that theater over 20 years of service, and it\u2019s not just there. If we don\u2019t toe the line there and do what we did with Japan after we did have victory there and after we did have victory in Germany —<\/p>\n

RUSH: No, I understand what you\u2019re saying. You\u2019re right, too.<\/p>\n

CALLER: — we\u2019re going to be paying the price on our shores. We\u2019re going to be fighting them here again.<\/p>\n

RUSH: It\u2019s amazing that doesn\u2019t move people. They can\u2019t fathom that. They can\u2019t fathom what they see on television and Gaza or in Baghdad happening in Manhattan.<\/p>\n

CALLER: No, Rush, they view them as you would your neighbor, and they are raised differently. The lifestyle, the level of education, the value system is different than ours, and we can\u2019t impose our value system on them. That\u2019s something they\u2019re going to have to acquire and learn and strive for and sacrifice for by having their people take and secure their cities.<\/p>\n

RUSH: No, I understand. I was commenting on the fact that you said, ‘If we don\u2019t fight \u2019em there we\u2019re going to have to fight \u2019em here,\u2019 and when you say to the American people, ‘Well, if we don\u2019t beat \u2019em there we\u2019re going to have to fight them here,\u2019 most Americans are not moved by that argument because they can\u2019t imagine terrorists coming here and causing havoc day in and day out in this country and in their cities. They just don\u2019t believe it. Maybe they\u2019ll bomb the World Trade Center and the Pentagon now and then, but they just can\u2019t believe that that\u2019s going to happen all the time. I\u2019m just commenting on how this argument doesn\u2019t move people sufficiently. I don\u2019t know how you get more emotion than that! How do you get more emotional than: ‘Well, we better beat \u2019em over there, or we\u2019re going to have to fight \u2019em here.\u2019 Somehow that doesn\u2019t work, it doesn\u2019t play, because people don\u2019t want to consider the possibility. See, there\u2019s still too great an opportunity here — not great, much opportunity. There\u2019s… There\u2019s… <\/p>\n

What\u2019s the word? You can ignore it. If you\u2019re in this country and you don\u2019t want to get all caught up in the horrors and the hellholes around the world and pay attention, you don\u2019t have to, because it isn\u2019t happening here. People don\u2019t stop to think why, or who\u2019s doing what\u2019s right. But what if it did break out here, and when will that happen? Are we prepared to deal with it? We\u2019re not if our solution to all this is just, ‘Well, you know, it\u2019s just those people over there, different values than us, and leave \u2019em alone, and they won\u2019t bother us. Once they find out we don\u2019t mean them any harm…\u2019 That\u2019s not how it works, but too many Americans still have that freedom, that luxury. That\u2019s the word I\u2019m looking for: luxury. They have the luxury to put their head in the sand and pretend that there\u2019s really no imminent threat to us, and that\u2019s not the case. You couple that with the distorted propaganda from the Drive-By Media, the Democrat Party about how none of this was even necessary. ‘Bush lied! There was no reason to go over there. Iraq had nothing to do with it,\u2019 blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So people in this country have ample opportunity to ignore it if they want to. That\u2019s where leadership comes in and we\u2019re getting none of it from several Republican senators, and zilch from the Democrat Party as a whole.<\/p>\n

END TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

*Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: The Los Angeles Times on July 9th. We\u2019ve talked to you about the new message maker the Democrats have glommed onto, this guy named Drew Westen. He\u2019s described here as a ‘genial 48-year-old psychologist and brain researcher.\u2019 The Democrats have thrown George Lakoff (rhymes with) overboard, and Lakoff\u2019s not too happy about it, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nDems Shun Facts for Emotions - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/07\/11\/dems_shun_facts_for_emotions\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Dems Shun Facts for Emotions - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: The Los Angeles Times on July 9th. 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