Well, in the case of the examples cited attempting it "internally", they are now pretty much lepers to the lion's share of their ideological brethren, so it's hard to see how your assessment is accurate. Change in their case is usually devoid of it, and of the trickle down variety, as is their madness.
This shift in meaning on the right happened mainly because of creative, persuasive, long-term work by conservatives themselves. Only advocates with unquestioned ideological bona fides, embedded in organizations known to be core parts of conservative infrastructure, could perform this kind of ideological alchemy. As Yale law professor Dan Kahan has argued, studies and randomized trials are useless in persuading the ideologically committed until such people are convinced that new information is not a threat to their identity. Until then, it goes in one ear and out the other. Only rock-ribbed partisans, not squishy moderates, can successfully engage in this sort of “identity vouching” for previously disregarded facts. Of course, there are limits to how far ideological reinvention can go. As political scientist David Karol has argued, it is unlikely to work when it requires crossing a major, organized member of a party coalition. That’s something environmentalists learned when they tried to encourage evangelicals to break ranks on global warming through the idea of “creation care.” They got their heads handed to them by the main conservative evangelical leaders, who saw the split this would create with energy-producing businesses upon whom Republican depend for support.
ANd indeed, your "more determined effort not to change" comment is exactly what underlies my analysis of what afflicts the modern "rightwing brain". That "effort to change" necessarily includes recognition of failures in the past and potentially for the future without the change, and there is a great deal in their collective past to be ashamed of.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=conservatives always on the wrong side of history&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDAQFjAA&url=http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/05/11/conservatives-always-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/&ei=RmaxUNalPMqhyAGZ3YCIBQ&usg=AFQjCNHdXR6fFk7jUJKhtckgIavRy3c_bA It's the "why" behind their "rightwing bubble", and their lying, denials, deflections, projections, scapegoating, all the many and varied ways they hide from their shame and self-disgust, and why they are so disgusted with those like you and I.
Morality and politics are inseparable, and their disgust has its roots in the former. The reality they are hiding from, is the sick and twisted one represented by their historical record, past and present, and therefore themselves, individually and collectively. THeir disgust needs to be driven inward like a sharp rusty nail, where it belongs. George Wallace didn't undergo a conversion because he and his kind were coddled, but rather because he knew what he was gonna be identified as without the CONversion.
Forgiveness and understanding after the fact is one thing, but until then, CONdemnation of them is justified. Coddling them provides no impetus for the kinda changes needed or desired. It is if anything, more enabling than anything else imo.
I understand of course your "good intentions", but the dynamics are largely the same as in the "racism" case.
http://www.silentracism.com/sr.php
The simple fact of the matter is, shame has all but lost its effectiveness as a pov-changing, behavior modification tool in the modern rightwingnut, but it's all we have.
ANd if by "internally" you mean by themselves, as opposed to by members of their own tribe, how is that process ever gonna be started without us giving them a heaping dose of it? They sure as hell aren't gonna get it from their own, as you can see from our experiences here.
I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree. I have and will never have more than that to offer to any of them as long as they are in the clutches of their cult.
