COMMENTARY
Rod Watson: GOP’s debate vocabulary has shrunk
Updated: 09/25/08 7:43 AM
Finally, it’ll be a pleasure to listen to the presidential debates that start Friday — or whenever John McCain stops posturing — just for all of the things we won’t have to hear anymore.
After years of hectoring, lecturing and sloganeering, Republicans have made bumper-sticker politics a high art. So it’ll be a relief to watch McCain and Barack Obama without having to turn down the sound, confident that certain catchphrases and code words are no longer part of the lexicon.
For instance, we’ll tune in without ever having to hear about “family values.”
The folks who went apoplectic demonizing the pregnancy of a fictional single woman — TV’s Murphy Brown — have suddenly been silenced by the pregnancy of a real-life unmarried teen. The Revs. Dobson, Robertson, et al, have been rendered mute, as if struck by lightning, in the wake of Sarah Palin’s revelation about her daughter.
The normally un-Christian right apparently has learned compassion for families hit by unexpected circumstances.
Of course, it’s impossible to imagine a similar reaction if the Obamas had an unmarried, pregnant teen, or to imagine that the Democratic nominee would have been allowed anywhere near a major- party ticket. His only ticket would have been one-way, out of town, as all of the stereotypes about minority promiscuity and bad parenting would have filled talk radio, with repentant pill-popper Rush Limbaugh leading the drumbeat.
But with state figures showing 1,745 teen pregnancies in Erie County — 1,164 of them in Buffalo — in 2006, lots of parents here can empathize.
So as we await the wedding — shotgun or otherwise — we can thank the Palins for the devilification of pregnant unwed girls. We can credit them for the return of empathy and compassion for kids who make mistakes — and for taking “family values” off the air during debate season.
Likewise for those other GOP cliches, “unfettered free market,” “trust the marketplace” and the ever-popular “get government off our backs.”
With Americans just short of jumping from tall buildings as Wall Street melts down and taxpayers pony up, “oversight” is no longer a dirty word. Those old signs proclaiming Buffalo the prototypical “All America City” take on new meaning as other towns become just as poor as we are in a financial landscape that will stop even John McCain from trumpeting “deregulation.”
Similarly, with Palin wrapped in a media cocoon to protect her from unscripted encounters with the press, “straight talk” is off the table for a campaign that won’t let her talk at all.
Ditto for “flip-flop.” This is a ticket that will be remembered for logic such as “I was for the ‘bridge to nowhere’ before I was against it” and “I was against regulation before I was for it.” The Republican duo makes John Kerry look like a model of consistency.
And with the Palins ignoring subpoenas in Alaska’s “troopergate” controversy, you can scratch “law and order” from this year’s talking points, too.
Gee, that doesn’t leave much, does it? In fact, with the twin pillars of modern Republicanism — family values and deregulation — off the table, I can’t imagine what McCain and Obama will have to argue about.
Friday night’s event could be unprecedented as the two major-party candidates debate which one can, in effect, be the better Democrat.
Of course, there’s still one GOP staple we can count on hearing lots about.
The party in charge of both the nation and New York City when the Twin Towers fell still claims one traditional area of GOP expertise: national security.
