A few weeks ago, I wrote The Mark of Cain, arguing that to destroy Brand Republican, you have to actually attack the brand directly and precisely. Today's post is on a related topic. There will be a little lawyer stuff up front. I'll try to keep it short, so please bear with me.
Folks in, or interested in, the various messaging fields (advertising, PR, politics) hear a lot about "branding". There's a field of intellectual property law which makes branding possible: trademark law. Trademarks are, in essence, a unique word, slogan, or logo which identifies a product. Trademark holders defend their mark against infringement by other marks, and in some specific cases, against what's called "dilution". Dilution, our subject for today's post, occurs when a famous trademark is either (a) tarnished by association with a qualitatively or morally inferior product, or (b) loses its strength because it's co-opted for a use with very different underlying goods (e.g., Nike unfiltered cigarettes).
A couple days ago, riffing on the recent Frank Rich column about the "culture of death", Publius argued that liberals and Democrats should co-opt certain Republican slogans, including the "culture of life" slogan, rather than attacking those slogans directly.* In other words, dilute the mark. This has a lot of intuitive appeal if it can be done well, so that the Republican framing is replaced, rather than adopted. And unlike the commercial case, in which dilution can be stopped by a lawsuit, there is no recourse for dilution of a political slogan in common currency. If you find the right hook and then play the tune over and over again, you can work wonders.
And what's more, co-opting the other side's language (especially by healing the morally crippled Republican language) is really fun. Though it's a small sample size, you really have to read the comments to this post at The Big Lowitzki. The anti-choice Republicans are apoplectic about the correction of the morally crippled term "pro-life" to mean, well, actually pro-life. A word should mean just what they choose it to mean, and the loss of control of one of their buzzwords is a horrifying experience for them.
*Publius does, I think, give too much credit to the Republicans for the phrase "culture of life". They stole it from the Catholic Church, and crippled the phrase in the Republican usage so as not to afflict the comfortable with any of the references to social justice that are found in the Evangelium Vitae and elsewhere in Catholic doctrine.
You're absolutely right in the tactic of co-opting Republican catchphrases. How ... KarlRovian (http://mags25.blogspot.com/2005/04/king-of-smarm.html).
My only caveat is that we'll continue to be assaulted by these buzzwords - from both sides, infuriating everyone, especially the cynical and jaded. But overall, I agree - if we were to think of these things as part of the Republican "brand," taking their language and flipping it on them would be a very aggressive way to shake things up.
Posted by: mags | Apr 14, 2005 at 02:46 PM