Dr. Word: Surprising results in a “political rhetoric” survey

by David Safier (exclusive to El Blog for Arizona)

If I asked you if you have a positive or negative reaction to words and terms like Capitalism, Socialism, Progressive, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights and Family Values, what would you answer?

Pew research asked that question about those and other words, and some of the results are surprising.

Progressive has more positives and fewer negatives than Capitalism.

Socialism scores pretty low, but Militia scores even lower.

States' Rights and Civil Liberties both score with high positives, but Civil Rights beats them both by 10 points.

So if I'm a Democrat thinking about ways to frame my issues, I might consider talking about some of the risks of Unbridled Capitalism, like the abuses we have seen on Wall Street, and how there are Progressive solutions like tough-but-reasonable regulations to help restore the security and prosperity of Main Street.

When Republicans talk about something being a States' Rights  issue, I might answer by showing how the R ideas would violate all of our Civil Rights.

And I might figure out ways to work in talk about Family Values as well.

The nice thing is, all those frames work well with Democratic positions, even — especially — Family Values, which we should own, except the Republicans were smart enough to get there first.

If you want to get deeper in the weeds and see how the words break out among Ds, Rs and Is, take a look at the article.

(h/t to AZ Blue Meanie, who passed this along, figuring it was Dr. Word's turf.)