Blowing Smoke: Why the Right Keeps Serving Up Whack-job Fantasies about the Plot to Euthanize Grandma, Outlaw Christmas, and Turn Junior into a Raging Homosexual.
Michael Wolraich, a contributor to Talking Points Memo Café.
© 2010
De Capo Press
Cambridge, MA
ISBN 978-0-306-81919-3
Michael Wolraich makes the strong case that conservatives use an oft-repeated formula that succeeds in getting their right-wing wacko candidates elected to public office. Wolraich uses observations of Pat Buchanan, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O'Reilly to clarify and his ideas.
Quote from page 21: "I call this movement and the tactics employed by its leaders persecution politics. Persecution politics did not begin with the Tea Parties. It did not even begin with Fox News or Rush Limbaugh. Its roots go back to the 1970s, when the election of a black president seemed like an impossible dream."
Here's the Persecution Politics formula in a nutshell:
1. Present the slippery slope argument.
2. Expose a secret plot being conducted by your adversaries.
3. Present yourself as the persecuted party.
I would add a fourth tactic mentioned in the book: Identify the scapegoat.
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