My colleagues in rhetoric study logical fallacies and reasoning. Yet, over the years many of them have dismissed the extreme hyperbole of fellow elites on the left. I have heard, far too often, the hyperbole about conservatives and libertarians, accepted as factually accurate. The overstatements of the past are now coming back to haunt media pundits. Now, when we have a presidential candidate worthy of the past arguments, voters are immune to the descriptions.
An August 2016 column appearing on RealClearPolitics and The Daily Beast summarized the problem.
CRYING WOLF:
How Paul Krugman Made Donald Trump PossibleLiberal pundits write viciously about Trump. But they wrote viciously about Romney, McCain, Bush… and they wonder why people outside their circle stopped listening.
KAROL MARKOWICZ • 08.05.16 1:00 AM ET
His convention was called “one of the worst ever.” Chris Matthews deemed him “dangerous” and “scary,” Ellen DeGeneres said “If you’re a woman, you should be very, very scared.” His opponent ran an ad against him portraying him as uniquely dangerous for women. “I’ve never felt this way before, but it’s a scary time to be a woman,” said a woman in the ad.
He was frequently called a “bully,” “anti-immigrant,” “racist,” “stupid,” and “unfit” to be president.
I’m referring, obviously, to the terrifying Mitt Romney.
A simple search of online archives reveals that every Republican since Eisenhower has been evil, as far as the punditry has been concerned. Not wrong. Not misguided. Evil. And if you continue to refer to even moderate Republicans or conventional conservatives as evil, they start to ignore the claims made about every other Republican. (Not that Trump is a Republican, or a Democrat, or anything other than an opportunist.) The problem is you cannot attack people with whom you might disagree in the harshest terms and not expect to pay a price for such hyperbolic statements.
Mitt Romney is not evil. Yes, he is a man of faith. Yes, he is a moderate-to-conservative person. But, he also has a record of compromise and intellectual honesty that should be considered by opponents. Instead, he was vilified. By making a monster out of Mitt Romney, what is left to be made of Donald Trump?
Take Paul Krugman in The New York Times. In Tuesday’s column he wondered how any “rational Republicans justify supporting Mr. Trump.” He concludes it’s about “feelings,” a dismissal of legitimate arguments many people, both Republicans and not, have against Hillary Clinton. But no one is more feelings-based than Krugman when it comes to Republicans. If he wants to know how people can take Donald Trump seriously, he should take a hard look at himself.
How harsh was the left against Romney? Paul Krugman was among the harshest of critics. The world was apparently going to end if Romney entered the White House. Such heated language is not good for democracy because if the opposition wins, how can you compromise and work for what is in the national interest? Once you label a potential president dangerous, what must your voting base believe? You have contributed to the gridlock and partisan hatreds.
In 2012, Krugman called Mitt Romney a “charlatan,” pathologically dishonest, and untrustworthy. He said Romney doesn’t even pretend to care about poor people and wants people to die so that the rich could get richer. Romney is “completely amoral,” “a dangerous fool,” “ignorant as well as uncaring.”
In March, Krugman had a column called “Clash of Republican Con Artists.” In it, he called Trump’s foreign policy more reasonable than that of Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz and said he’s just as terrified of either of those men in the White House as he is of Trump. He wrote: “In fact, you have to wonder why, exactly, the Republican establishment is really so horrified by Mr. Trump. Yes, he’s a con man, but they all are. So why is this con job different from any other?”
Yet a few weeks ago Krugman wondered how Republicans could rally around Trump “just as if he were a normal candidate.” It was exactly Krugman who normalized him! What makes Donald Trump normal to so many is that they’ve heard all the hysteria from people like Krugman before. If you use the most vile language available on a good man like Romney, or on real candidates like Rubio and Cruz, you find you have none left for the Donald Trumps of the world—and no one is listening to you anyway.
If every Republican is always unfit for the presidency then Trump is no different and it shouldn’t be surprising that rank-and-file Republican voters are lining up behind him. They know there aren’t actually any Republicans of which the media approves.
All Republicans are con men? Now that’s a generalization beyond most first-year logic or rhetoric courses. No wonder our nation can’t solve problems via moderate compromise. We’re all looking across the canyon at evil people, not fellow citizens with different views on how to best solve problems.
I’ve attended academic conferences at which keynote and plenary speakers insulted not only Republicans, but also Democrats considered too close to their GOP colleagues. When academics (and Krugman relies on his standing as a professor to support his writing persona) toss about accusations that anyone they oppose is motivated by hate, greed, and is otherwise evil, there is no opportunity for civil discourse on policy differences.
Lumping Ted Cruz with Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney is a mistake. Cruz uses the same hyperbole against his opponents, even within the same political party, that my academic colleagues employ against anyone insufficiently progressive. The perspective differs, yes, but opposition is covered by a blanket dismissal.
If progressives are going to complain about the ridiculous claims of Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, they must also monitor their own language and claims about moderate voices with which the progressives disagree.
You cannot clamor for “reasonable conservatives” if only weeks before you were calling all conservatives unreasonable.
Rhetoricians should ask how political discourse across the spectrum helped inoculate voters against evidence and reason. I’m convinced that calling moderates names and using hyperbole against them has had devastating consequences for the United States and other Western democracies.
Photo by WEBN-TV 