Framing (from the eminent George Lakoff)

Political Wire has a great blurb about some new advice from George "I get it" Lakoff:

Lakoff Says Bush is Not Incompetent

George Lakoff, et al: "Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by President Bush’s plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush's 'failures' and label him and his administration as incompetent... Self-satisfying as this criticism may be, it misses the bigger point. Bush’s disasters -- Katrina, the Iraq War, the budget deficit -- are not so much a testament to his incompetence or a failure of execution. Rather, they are the natural, even inevitable result of his conservative governing philosophy."

"If incompetence is the problem, it’s all about Bush. But, if conservatism is the problem, it is about a set of ideas, a movement and its many adherents." [emphasis added]

Lakoff's latest book, Whose Freedom?, was published this week. The book explores how conservatives and progressives define "freedom" differently.

This is a truly excellent point. Since I read it this point has jumped out at me several times. We need to shift the conversation from bush's failing to the failure of republican ideology. This is our best chance in years to make republican and conservative dirty words. We can do it by burying them with the iraqi deaths, the katrina devastation, and the pump pain that they have caused. We needn't invent connections. No Iraq-->Al Queda nonsense is necessary, they have dug the grave of their ideology, we must only frame the national discssion in a way that permits them an early fall to a deeply dug final resting spot.