The other day Jon Stewart had several clips of Republican political types talking about how Palin’s gender/family/experience should be off-limits, juxtaposed with clips where the same folks made similar attacks on Hillary/dem VP possibles.
I realize Dems do the same.
My question is - what do these folks think when they choose to state things that are clearly contradictory to things they have personally said in the recent past?
-Do they not think their statements are inconsistent?
-Are they able to convince themselves that they actually believe in whatever they are saying at the moment they are saying it?
-Do they forget what they said before?
-Do they acknowledge that carrying their party is all that matters, such that they will say anything to accomplish that?
-Do they think the public is too stupid to realize the blatant inconsistencies?
-If they are being honest and forthright now, were they being something else before? - Or vice versa?
I repeat, I do not wish this thread to bash either party. I am seriously curious what is going on in these people’s minds.
Personally, and I believe for most people, I am aware of when I am saying something I do not believe simply to achieve a particular goal. And I have at least a vague recollection of my strongly held positions of a year or so ago such that I generally do not strongly advocate the opposite position - unless something happened in between to change my mind.
A lot of politicians in both parties have yet to figure out that somebody is always recording everything they say for later playback, though the tape recorder is about 65 years old.
Pundits just like hearing their own voices. You couldn’t get a job like that unless you were convinced that every word you spoke was golden.
My take is that it is because unless someone like John Stewart puts the two images together that no one recalls the earlier comment. Now if you are McCain or Obama then of course it will be noticed, but the side players, not so much. It can happen as was done recently on John Stewarts show, but I imagine that a very large percentage of these flip-flops never are discovered. I think most people have a very short memory on these items—if you ‘like’ your guy, you aren’t going to remember it as a flip-flop. And unless you are a total political junky you likely aren’t going to know about the flip-flop unless it is so egregious that it makes the national news.
Their priority is always to support their party/agenda. Many other ethical and moral priorities get subjugated or rationalized away in order to play the ‘game’ of being on the winning team.
And, if ever those direct contradictions are addressed, the person will usually try to explain how they’re not quite the same, because look how nasty the other team is!!!
Likewise, an opposing party will often draw analogies between two issues as an example of contradiction and/or hypocrisy when the two issues are only tangentially similar.
But yeah, they do it intentionally, because the number one rule is “try to get the other guy to lose.” Anything that serves that outcome can’t be wrong or hypocritical, because winning is the only measure of right action.
ETA: so of course the person realizes it, but s/he either a) doesn’t let it keep him from getting sleep at night, or b) is so wrapped up in the game that he truly believes that it isn’t a contradiction, because of [insert reason that makes my position right and yours wrong]
If you asked them, face to face, I’m sure they would have an entertaining yarn about why it was different for their guy and completely different for the other dude. What’s really going on? It depends. Different people have different motivations.
But you know what? The human mind is a thing to behold. It’s like trying to explain how an astronomer can tell you all about the scientific process and on and on about his given field and yet believe in astrology. Compartmentalization can work wonders.
True, but I doubt it matters to them. I would imagine someone like Rove,or Michael Moore the issue is winning the election and spinning your candidate one way and the other candidate the other. I doubt they believe anything they say themselves to be perfectly honest with you. For example I have heard that Rev. Falwell didn’t have the issues on homosexuality that he projected, but that it was what he needed to sell his song and dance.
I would say it is true here as well. I see all these threads lambasting one side or the other and doubt the writer truly feels that way in real life (or if they do, then I truly do feel sorry for them). Most of those posters on the extreme right or the extreme left come off as caricatures–good for a laugh, but not to be taken seriously. But people position themselves to make their point and make it, regardless of the truthfulness of that position. Just my take on it anyways.
I think it is more like not wanting to bite the hand that feeds you. People like Hannity, Rush, Michael Moore, Paul Begala, etc. are all cut out of the same cloth. They have found a particular niche and that niche has made them very wealthy.
They have no other marketable skills to make equivalent money if they piss off the base they have established. Imagine if Paul Begala endorsed McCain, or Hannity endorsed Obama. They would no longer have jobs because their respective bases would disown them.
Their own bottom lines demand that they stay true to what got them where they are…
Excellent question. I had been thinking of starting a thread on this topic myself.
Some people in this thread have already mentioned that a lot of the behavior you describe comes from people who make their living off of supporting their party, so it makes sense that they will be contradicting themselves consciously and not care about it.
The issue, though, is that this is not restricted to the paid pundits. The same applies to peoples’ posts here on the SDMB, to blogs, and, from what we can tell from poll trends, the population at large is swayed by such arguments, even if they contradict what swayed them in the last election.
I think there are two fundamental reasons
Many people live “the unexamined life”. If you live without critically analyzing your life and what you hear and experience, it is easy to miss contradictions. I think this explains a vast percentage of the population.
Whether they live the unexamined life or not, people are irrational, and doubly so when it comes to politics. Here is a study that shows this very clearly: “Democrats and Republicans both adept at ignoring facts, brain scans show”
Some excerpts:
"Researchers asked staunch party members from both sides to evaluate information that threatened their preferred candidate prior to the 2004 Presidential election.
‘We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning,’ said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. 'What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts.’
The test subjects on both sides of the political aisle reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted, Westen and his colleagues say.
Then, with their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix, Westen explained.
Forget politicians, look at Great Debates. There are innumerable instances of people shown by overwhelming evidence to be wrong, but most people (especially those with strongly held positions) can always find some reason to show that they are actually right… or put it another way, find something to show that they weren’t wrong.
It just so happens that folks in politics almost invariably have strongly held opinions, and thus the field is populated with basically the cream of the crop of the GD-style debaters. Lying and inconsistency doesn’t enter into the picture, because no matter what others may say, these people are always right, no matter what.
Relevant Pit thread I started: Those who ascribe to a principle for desirable outcome. They are adopting a philosophical or political take on these matters because they are momentarily expedient (i.e., they allow them to say "the candidate from MY party is doing it correctly). Which means they are in my sights in that pit thread.
I really don’t think that people of average intelligence are aware of how inconsistent they are. They hear the arguments and repeat them without thinking them through. Thus:
The candidate that they are against “has too little experience.”
The candidate that they support “is a Washington outsider.”
Most people don’t reason their way to a conclusion. They decide on their conclusion, and reason their way out of it. So, using Jon Stewart’s clip as an example, someone sees Hillary Clinton doing something. They don’t like Hillary Clinton, so they invent a reason to explain why what she’s doing is bad. Some time later, Sarah Palin does the same thing. They like Sarah Palin, so they invent a reason why what she’s doing is good. The dichotomy never strikes them, because the the reasoning isn’t what motivates them, it’s a disposable tool to justify their conclusion.
That, and a lot of people are just lying, conniving bastards.
-Do they not think their statements are inconsistent?
They do not in any way seem aware that their views are going to be seen as inconsistent. Most of them do not seem to put much thought into anything they haven’t said in the past five minutes.
-Are they able to convince themselves that they actually believe in whatever they are saying at the moment they are saying it?
I think they always firmly believe in what they’re saying.
-Do they forget what they said before?
No, but they hope very much that we will. What they said in the past is no longer imporant, you know, the statement that matters is the one they are making right now. It’d be much more convenient if they could use MiB style memory wipers on voters.
-Do they acknowledge that carrying their party is all that matters, such that they will say anything to accomplish that?
Personally, or publicly? I’ve never heard anyone admit they’re partisan, have you?
-Do they think the public is too stupid to realize the blatant inconsistencies?
Yes. I don’t understand how this could be questionable.
-If they are being honest and forthright now, were they being something else before? - Or vice versa?
They are always being honest and forthright, at least in their opinion. It’s easier when you have different standards for Them than Us.
All of the above is one of the reasons it’s foolish to vote for someone based on them telling you they’ll do things that you’ll like, rather than voting for people who have a history of doing things you like. Few pols say anything you should accept as the unvarnished truth, no matter how earnest their delivery.
IMO, they just assume people probably won’t notice, either because they won’t hear both contradictory statements or because they will have forgotten the first one when the second one is uttered.
They also assume that even if we notice, we’ll just shrug our collective shoulders because we’ve somehow come to accept that politicians will lie, flip-flop or contradict themselves whenever it’s convenient for them to do so.
And most unfortunately, they’re right on both counts.
But you also have to remember that if they change their views tomorrow someone will play back the clip of them pushing their old views in 2004 and call them a flip-flop or inconsistent, and this is much more noticeable (to them) “oh, I’m changing a major part of my policy, what if I get attacked?” This even happens on occasion for changing to popular opinions. Luckily most people don’t make a big deal out of this, but when (for instance) The Daily Show is in a slump for material they’ll play these things up and it can get annoying because (imo) it stifles change due to the fear they’ll be seen as not having “strong views.”
The reality is that the politicians know it doesn’t freakin’ matter.
Let’s say that tomorrow, Obama talks about how he supports the surge in Iraq. Obama supporters, are you going to change your vote or instead attempt to justify (or at worst ignore) his statements?
McCain supporters, if he does the same thing (let’s say he starts talking about Bush’s mishandling of Iraq, are you going to change your vote or instead attempt to justify (or at worst ignore) his statements?
Independents, would either of these scenerios set your mind as to NOT voting for a candidate?
