Tfgray’s Weblog

In just one day we have McCain trying to bail not only himself out of debating Obama but Palin out of debating Biden, his lying to David Letterman in order to go down the street to talk to Katie Couric (after telling Letterman he was canceling in order to go to Washington to deal with the mortgage thingie), and suspending his campaign on the high-minded pretext of needing to focus on the TARP bill right after he launched a week’s worth of slanderous mud at Obama that leaves him wide open to a retrospective on the Keating 5.

Surely, this marks the end of his presidential ambitions, right? Not quite, according to Jonathan Chait, writing in today’s The New Republic:

Last February, political scientists Brendan Nyhan of Duke and Jason Reifler of Georgia State published the results of an experiment designed to test the effects of political untruths. The results would unsettle any idealist. The first conclusion they found was that lies work. When subjects were confronted with an untrue political claim (President Bush banned stem-cell research; weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq) respondents naturally moved toward those positions. When the lie was corrected, however, the effect of the untruth in moving opinions largely remained. The truth, in other words, is no antidote for a lie.

Their second conclusion was even more disturbing. Subjects who identified as politically conservative were not only immune to the effects of having a lie corrected, the correction made them even more likely to believe a lie. So, for instance, one group of conservative subjects was presented with a news story that depicted President Bush claiming weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. A second group of conservatives was presented with the same thing, along with a paragraph noting that Bush’s statement was untrue. The second group was more likely than the first to believe that Iraq possessed WMDs. The very fact of the press challenging their beliefs seems to have made conservatives more likely to embrace them. If this finding is broadly correct, then the media’s newfound willingness to fact-check McCain will only succeed in rallying the GOP base to his side.

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=71756e51-a09c-4b7d-b270-c6327191b341

If you read my earlier post, What Gives Neo-cons Their Power? you’ll recognize the Authoritarian mentality at work here. According to Bob Altemeyer, who did 40 years research on the subject, about 25% of us are subject to such thinking. Perhaps you’ve noticed that in the past few elections, only about 50% of eligible voters showed up at the polls, and the Right left no stone unturned making sure that the Authoritarian 25% made up half of that total. Add in the 1% or so that actually benefit from Republican policies and you have a recipe for squeaker victories for the Right.

Obama’s got the right strategy. Get out the vote.