The Weak Link in the Iron Triangle

ILLUSTRATED: The key point that the Right is beating us is translating policy into poetry.
I see the Right Wing as a solid triangular flow of power and influence. At one point is the Academy with think tanks and conservative professors who conceive of policies and legal theories. At another point is the media, including talk shows, columns, and of course, a certain cable news channel. The last point is the Republican political establishment, from the precinct captains up to their elected officials. The three points flow well amongst each other. The key point in the value chain is discussed below…
But first the illustration that gave me this paradigm, the Reagan Revolution. In the late 1970s a professor at USC named Art Laffer came up with the idea that a tax cut would so stimulate the economy it would actually increase government revenues. He drew a picture of the “Laffer Curve” on the back of a napkin to Jude Wanniski, an editorial writer of the Wall Street Journal. They came up with the phrase “Supply Side Economics”. The Congressman Jack Kemp ran with the idea and passed the Kemp-Roth Tax Bill of 1981. Laffer developed the idea in the Academy, Wanniski promoted it in the Media, and Kemp implemented it in the Political Arena.
The key point in the value chain is the point where the Right Wing translates policy prose into campaign poetry (that’s what this blog is for, hence the subtitle). The key point was when Laffer and Wanniski drew a picture on a napkin and came up with a catchy phrase. That is the point were the Right Wing is really beating us.A lot is made about “billions of dollars in right wing think tanks in the last 30 years”. I think it is overblown. We have our think tanks: Stanford, Harvard, and Yale. Professors are overwhelmingly liberal, that’s why the conservatives created their fake universities. We need to translate the law review articles and studies from our universities and translate them into plain language. Add your ideas please….