If you're trying to understand how the anti-abortion movement got this extreme, one of the key parts of the story fell in place in 2015 with a series of political attacks on Planned Parenthood, suggesting it was mainly in the business of harvesting fetal tissue. Below are our three posts commenting on the events in real time. I remembered they were relevant, but it wasn't until I reread them today that I realized just how direct the through line was.
This section stands out in particular: [Emphasis added]
Fetal tissue research will make most people uncomfortable, even those who support it. If you were a Republican marketer, the ideal target for these Planned Parenthood stories would be opponents and persuadables. By contrast, you would want the videos to get as little play as possible among your supporters. With that group, you have already maxed out the potential gains – – both their votes and their money are reliably committed – – and you run a serious risk of pushing them to the level where they start demanding more extreme action.
Reading these, it's also important to remember that the press was bending over backwards to help Fiorina (bias is OK as long as it's not helping a Democrat), even if it meant turning a blind eye to some pretty ugly positions.
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
When the channeling of information goes awry
Conservatives have joined the fight with relish, under the not-insane assumption that Planned Parenthood’s allies would lose the ensuing public opinion battle, creating an opportunity for the right to advance pro-life causes, or (more feasibly) to punish Democrats. What they’ve done instead, using ghoulish propaganda, is convince myriad religious conservatives that Planned Parenthood is making a business of harvesting baby flesh, and that something must be done to stop them. Against the backdrop of the presidential primary, this is turning a public relations nightmare for Democrats into an intractably escalating political crisis for Republicans.
...
Anti-abortion zealots are now demanding that Republicans in Congress refuse to appropriate money for government operations unless Planned Parenthood’s funding is abolished—a new test of Republican pro-life bona fides. To force Congress’ hand, they’re admonishing Republican presidential candidates that the anti-abortion vote will only follow those who support the shutdown effort. The purpose of Erick Erickson’s above tweet, alerting the candidates to his question days in advance, is to eclipse the instinctual aversion many of them will have to promoting a government shutdown, and get as many of them on the same page as possible.
When working from a customer database, marketers frequently try to divide consumers into three basic groups:
Those will not buy your product no matter what kind of marketing you use;
Those who will always buy your product regardless of what kind of marketing you use;
And those who can be moved from the non-buying to the buying camps with the proper approach.
These distinctions become particularly important when talking about
things like price cuts and coupons, but even with traditional marketing,
you can see the disadvantage of spending money on either the first or
second groups.
It looks like we have something similar here, albeit a bit more complex.
I would argue that, in terms of political issues, a party would like
its opponents to be a zero on the passion scale, but would prefer for
its supporters to be an eight or nine out of ten. Eights and nines are
maxed out in terms of showing up to vote and giving you money but they
are less likely to demand extreme positions that cost serious political
capital compared to the tens .
And obviously you want to persuade the persuadables.
Fetal tissue research will make most people uncomfortable, even those
who support it. If you were a Republican marketer, the ideal target for
these Planned Parenthood stories would be opponents and persuadables. By
contrast, you would want the videos to get as little play as possible
among your supporters. With that group, you have already maxed out the
potential gains – – both their votes and their money are reliably
committed – – and you run a serious risk of pushing them to the level
where they start demanding more extreme action.
With all of the normal caveats -- I have no special expertise. I only
know what I read in the papers. There's a fundamental silliness
comparing a political movement to a business -- it seems to me that in
marketing terms, the PP tapes have been badly mistargeted. They have had
the biggest viewership and impact in the segment of the voting market
where they would do the least good and the most damage (such as pushing
for a government shutdown on the eve of a presidential election).
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Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Planned Parenthood, channeled information and catharsis
Here's what we had to say about the GOP reaction to those videos a month ago.
Facing a Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government, GOP leaders in both chambers decided they would fast-track standalone anti-abortion bills in an effort to allow conservative Republicans to express their anger over a series of “sting” videos claiming to show that Planned Parenthood is illegally harvesting the tissue of aborted fetuses. The leadership hoped that with those votes out of the way, the path would be clear for long-delayed bills to fund the government in the new fiscal year, even if those bills contained money for Planned Parenthood.
But anti-abortion groups and conservative House members are not backing down from their hard line. They are reiterating that they will not vote for bills that include Planned Parenthood funding under any circumstances, despite the maneuvering by leaders to vent their outrage over the videos. If anything, anti-abortion groups are amping up the pressure on lawmakers not to back down from the fight.
[I really should have said "causing supporters to push," but it's too late to worry about that now.]
Fetal tissue research will make most people uncomfortable, even those who support it. If you were a Republican marketer, the ideal target for these Planned Parenthood stories would be opponents and persuadables. By contrast, you would want the videos to get as little play as possible among your supporters. With that group, you have already maxed out the potential gains – – both their votes and their money are reliably committed – – and you run a serious risk of pushing them to the level where they start demanding more extreme action.
With all of the normal caveats -- I have no special expertise. I only know what I read in the papers. There's a fundamental silliness comparing a political movement to a business -- it seems to me that in marketing terms, the PP tapes have been badly mistargeted. They have had the biggest viewership and impact in the segment of the voting market where they would do the least good and the most damage (such as pushing for a government shutdown on the eve of a presidential election).
I haven't followed the press coverage that closely, but based on what I've come across from NPR and the few political sites I frequent, I get the feeling that the center-left media is more likely to discuss the doctoring of the tapes than to focus on the gory specifics of harvesting fetal tissue. I'd need to check sources like CNN before making a definitive statement, but it appears that the videos are having exceptionally little effect on what should have been their target audience.
Instead, their main impact seems to have been on the far right. The result has been to widen what was already a dangerous rift. The pragmatic wing looks at defunding as a futile gesture with almost no chance of success and large potential costs. The true believers are approaching this on an entirely different level. It has become an article of faith for them that, as we speak, babies are being killed, dismembered and sold for parts. They demand action, even if it's costly and merely symbolic, as long as it's cathartic.
I've been arguing for quite a while now that we need to pay more attention to the catharsis in politics (such as with the reaction to the first Obama/Romney debate), particularly with the Tea Party. Conservative media has long been focused on feeding the anger and the outrage of the base while promising victory just around the corner. This has produced considerable partisan payoff but at the cost of considerable anxiety and considerable disappointment, both of which produce stress and a need for emotional release.
There's a tendency to think of trading political capital for catharsis as being irrational, but it's not. There is nothing irrational about doing something that makes you feel better. That's the real problem for the GOP leaders: shutting down the government would be cathartic for many members of the base. It would be difficult to get the base to defer their catharsis, even if the base trusted the leaders to make good on their promise that things will get better.
For now, the Tea Party is inclined to do what feels good, whether it's supporting an unelectable candidate or making a grandstanding play. It's not entirely clear what Boehner and McConnell can do about that.
_____________________________________
Friday, September 18, 2015
A natural experiment in journalistic objectivity (or at least a chance to draw a sharp comparison)
There's a big difference between holding a position and showing bias against those with different positions. Not only can we not assume that people in group A discriminate against not-A, it can often break the other way. For instance, perceived biases can be over-corrected for. This is particularly true in fields like political reporting where the stakes are high and there's a serious potential for push-back. Another possibility is that the acknowledged factor correlates with another factor where the bias runs the other way. For example, the New York Times is, by many metrics, a liberal paper, but it tends to identify strongly with the one-percent, which can sometimes produce a de facto liberal bias
This week's GOP debate has given us an excellent opportunity to test some of the assumptions about the way the press does or doesn't favor liberals over conservatives.
From Talking Points Memo:
Carly Fiorina on Thursday morning defended claims she made during the CNN Republican presidential debate that the Planned Parenthood sting videos showed a kicking fetus as employees discussed harvesting its organs. However, reports indicate that the videos recently released by the anti-abortion group The Center for Medical Progress did not include the scene Fiorina described.Here's the operative quote from Kliff's piece.
During the debate, Fiorina told her Democratic opponents to look at the videos and "watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain."
During a Thursday morning interview on ABC's "Good Morning America," host George Stephanopoulos asked Fiorina if she incorrectly characterized the videos.
"Analysts who have watched all 12 plus hours say the scene you describe - that harrowing scene you described -- actually isn't in those tapes. Did you misspeak?" he asked.
"No, I didn't misspeak, and I don't know who you're speaking about in terms of watching the tapes, but I have seen those images," Fiorina responded. "I don't know whether you've watched the tapes, George. Most people haven't. Certainly none of the Democrats who are still defending Planned Parenthood have watched those tapes."
Stephanopoulos then referenced a report by Vox's Sarah Kliff, who said that she watched all of the videos released and that she did not see the scene Fiorina described.
Either Fiorina hasn't watched the Planned Parenthood videos or she is knowingly misrepresenting the footage. Because what she says happens in the Planned Parenthood videos simply does not exist.
A few years ago, Al Gore received a flood of negative coverage for false statements about his personal and legislative record. (All of these turned out to be the result of misreporting but let's put that aside for the moment.) We know that Gore was generally disliked by the Washington press corps -- Many of the reporters actually commented on this at the time – even though most members were in general agreement with his center-left positions.
By comparison, Fiorina doesn't seem to have staked out any notably moderate, let alone liberal, positions, even by the current GOP standards. Not on taxes, not on foreign policy and certainly not on abortion. Ideologically, there doesn't appear to be any common ground between those positions and those of the editorial board of a paper like the NYT. In terms of style and personality, however, the paper (and the press in general) has been very friendly to wealthy ex-CEOs.
If the press really does have a strong pro-liberal/anti-conservative bias, we should hear a lot more about Fiorina imagining organ-harvesting than we did about Gore inventing the internet (and more about her campaign financing violations than about Hillary's emails).
Anyone care to wager which way the results will break?
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