Political rhetoric tends to achieve a life of its own, congealing into cant and conventional wisdom, an unexamined shorthand. In a forthcoming book, The Real Majority (Coward-McCann Inc.; $7.95), Political Analysts Richard Scammon and Ben J. Wattenberg take a canny inventory of the nation's political assumptions and vocabulary. They conclude that some of the preconceptions of both Democrats and Republicans need a fresh going over.
Scammon and Wattenberg, who describe themselves as independent Democrats, find that liberals, primarily Democrats, have made the profound mistake of equating firmness against crime and rioting...