Ted Cruz: The first talk radio presidential candidate

Ted Cruz is the first talk radio presidential candidate, so it's no wonder Glenn Beck has endorsed him. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and others also gush over him.

I say that because Cruz, like a talk radio host, owes his popularity to staking out the "purest" (read: most extreme) views within his party, without any hope of ever getting what he wants. 

Cruz has never compromised in the Senate, he only grandstands, meaning he gets nothing done. He's a shameless self-promoter who has zero endorsements from his Republican colleagues in the Senate, who can't stand him. 

It's amazing that Cruz looks like a strong candidate for the GOP nomination, having just won Iowa. (But not without some dirty tricks.)

It just goes to show that talk radio runs the GOP. Too bad talk radio takes zero responsibility for governing, just like Ted Cruz.

Now if you want a good look at the real Ted Cruz, in his young and striving young-adult years, read this:

http://theslot.jezebel.com/heres-what-happens-when-you-try-and-track-down-a-ted-cr-1752337625 

A few more lessons from Bernie Sanders' run for President

I don't disagree with Jeb Lund on the positivity of Sen. Bernie Sanders' run for President, but there's a bit more to say here.

First, about being the right-looking "blowdried" candidate with a red tie: yes, true, alas. But let's not swoon over Bernie just because he "doesn't give a f--k" about his image. Let's swoon over him because he does give a f--k about the right things. And he actually proposes good legislation: on the minimum wage; regulating the Wall Street fraudsters; and on and on.

I mean, image is a terrible thing nowadays. The Republicans' version of the perfect-image candidate is Ben Carson: a black identity politician whose positions are indistinguishable from anybody else's (insofar as he has stated positions on anything). His bona fides are that he pulled himself up by his bootstraps despite being black and poor, can't stand his fellow African-American Barack Obama, and most importantly, rails against Obamacare. Beyond that, Ben Carson is a cipher... or an empty suit. He doesn't have many policy ideas because, as is blindingly obvious -- and this only adds to his appeal among Republicans -- it never occurred to him to run for President until quite recently, at the urging of Republicans who were out to prove they didn't distrust black people... as long as they believed all the "right" things.  

Second, Bernie's humble economic station is a good thing nowadays; but a politician's wealth or privileged background was not always a predictor of his political leanings or his performance in office. FDR, an all-time top 3 U.S. President and blueblood patrician, proved that. What Roosevelt had was a sense of old-money, old-fashioned noblesse oblige. With the recent departure of Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the closest things we have to old money in U.S. politics today are Jeb Bush and Donald Trump.  

In fact, running for President today -- the GOP presidential nomination, that is -- is not a result of a candidate's wealth and privilege, necessarily, it is a path to wealth and privilege: as a FOX contributor / talk radio host / author / highly-paid guest speaker. Never before was political loserdom a path to anything but a ticket to retirement.  Now with enough Super PAC money and a favorable audience with Sheldon Anderson, a nominee can be plucked from political obscurity and made a front-runner, with his guaranteed payday at the end, whatever the result.

Third, there's something different about a Bernie Sanders or Ralph Nader running for the Democratic nomination, knowing he's going to lose, in the hopes of nudging (or embarrassing) the eventual nominee to move slightly to the Left, and the gaggle of Republican candidates trying to outrun each other to the Right, eastward beyond the horizon.  Because many Democratic voters would be uncomfortable with a Bernie Sanders as a nominee -- "too liberal!" -- whereas, no matter who gets nominated by the GOP, most Republican voters will be dissatisfied -- "he's not conservative enough" -- or even bestow the worst insult imaginable -- "he's a RINO."  

Most Republicans probably don't stop to think why there's no equivalent of the "RINO" label among Democrats. (I wish there were). But if they did, they might realize that we Democrats are a pretty diverse bunch who can't even agree among ourselves what a true Democrat is. On the Republican side, talk radio settled that issue at least 15 years ago; and the media masters of the GOP police their ideological purity mercilessly...even at the expense of losing elections. (Which I grudgingly give them credit for; although they have convinced themselves that they speak for America's "Silent Majority," and when they lose, it is thanks to George Soros and the Lib'rul Media conspiracy, not their ideology). 

Bernie Sanders doesn't have to win the Democratic primary to do a lot of good

By Jeb Lund

May 27, 2015 | Guardian

URL: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/27/bernie-sanders-democratic-primary-do-good?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Gmail

Godspeed, Ebola 'czar' Ron Klain!

Am I missing something or is the "unqualified" Ebola czar Ron Klain the most successful "czar" under any U.S. President? No Americans died, Ebola is off the TV and out of the papers, we're all breathing easy again.... I mean, the only possible retort I can think of is that Ebola wasn't that big a deal to begin with; that the CDC had it under control all along; that maybe the GOP and its colleagues on Fox and talk radio just made it erupt into a pants-shitting crisis to win votes and then promptly dropped it mid-November as soon as they had what they wanted -- a Congressional majority...

..But no, no. I can't accept that cynical explanation. I prefer the more positive explanation: that Ron Klain is public health genius on par with Albert Sabin and a saint on par with Mother Teresa.

Godspeed, Mr. Klain!  We thank you for your selfless service to our country!

Ebola czar Klain to depart White House in March

By Anita Kumar

December 8, 2014  | McClatchy Washington Bureau

URL: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/12/08/249390/ebola-czar-klain-to-depart-white.html

5 hysterical myths about U.S. 'border crisis'

Lately I've had the possibility -- nay, the privilege -- to listen to a lot of AM talk radio, and lemme tell you, it's all "border crisis" all the time.

Naturally, since Obama is the Anti-Christ, a cypto-Muslim/Marxist and America-hater, not to mention he's trying to seed America with future America-hating Democratic voters, there are a lot of conspiracy theories surrounding the unfortunate surge of thousands of South American children at our southern border.  

If you're interested in facts, can manage to catch your breath and count to 10, then please read this fact check, courtesy of The Guardian.

Illegals and gangsters and Ebola, oh my! 5 conservative immigration myths of the moment, made sane

By Megan Carpentier, Kayla Epstein, Lauren Gambino, Nadja Popovich and Matt Sullivan

July 15, 2014 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/4vxyg

Rush: 'Don't trust Obama!'...'It's too bad people distrust Obama'

Here's the end of a very long rant by Rush Limbaugh today about Obama's order to close 21 embassies in the Middle East and Africa:

But there's another aspect of this that's dangerous. 

The very fact that there are so many people who are cynical about this, the very fact that there are so many Americans who think they're being lied to about a terror threat, is a really dangerous thing.  It is an unhealthy thing for the country.  It is the surest sign of the wanton lack of respect for this country that has swept all across this country.  This threat may be real.  Everything we're being told could be real.  We could be facing something somewhere as bad or worse than 9/11 -- and I dare say, the majority of Americans think it's a lie. 

What does that tell you that what most Americans think of the people who are telling them about this threat? 

They're liars, too. 

Before I comment on that, here's part of a WaPo op-ed by conservative pundit and NSA-spying defender Marc Thiessen that says basically the same thing:

When President Obama dismisses the IRS’ political targeting of his conservative critics as a “phony scandal,” he is not only stretching credulity — he is undermining our nation’s security.

[...] That collapse is a direct result of the disintegration in public trust that has taken place on Obama’s watch. 

Why are Limbaugh and Thiessen both full of shit?

Because they, and the rest of the GOP and talk radio Axis of Evil, spend all day, every day, seeking to undermine the public's trust in Obama, asserting day after day that he hates America, he's a secret socialist, he persecutes Tea Partyers, and on and on.  Then these same scaremongers turn around and bemoan the public's (alleged) lack of trust in Obama when it comes to national security.

The nerve of these self-serving jerks!  ... The same jerks who urged us to rally 'round the flag in the Dubya years, no matter what we thought of him or his foreign policies -- they've never once rallied to Obama.  Hypocrites. We should have nothing but contempt for them.

UPDATE (08.07.2013):  Speaking of hypocrites, why no mention from the Right about how Tom Ridge admitted he was pressured to raise the terror threat level for Dubya just before the 2004 presidential election?  

Anarchy reigns in GOP House

Nowadays when President Obama is negotiating with Speaker Boehner the process is a sham, because Boehner can't speak for his own caucus.  He is not a real leader.  There has been a complete breakdown in the GOP House.  Each Congressman thinks he's the leader and only he represents the conscience of the Republican Party.

Writes Chait [emphasis mine]:

The rational way to view these events is that Republicans have marginalized themselves. But the hard-liners see it differently. In their minds, every bill that passes is a betrayal by their leaders. They know that letting Democrats carry bills through the House has been the leadership’s desperate recourse to avoid total chaos, and since chaos is their leverage, they are now working feverishly to seal off that escape route. This year, an increasing proportion of conservative media is given over to conservative activists’ extracting pledges from Republican leaders not to negotiate with Democrats. In the wake of the tax-cut deal, Republican leaders in both houses had to pledge that they would not engage in any—to quote the ubiquitous buzzword—“backroom deals.” Since all deals get made in back rooms (there is no such thing as a front room, and leaders in Western cultures like the United States habitually transact their business in rooms), this means no negotiation at all.

As usual, we can thank talk radio and the Tea Parties for this sad turn of events: these are two most "active" and "vocal" conservative groups -- you might argue they are just two tin cans connected by the same string -- who also, unfortunately, take no responsibility for their words, and could care less if the country falls over a cliff, so long as their personal wealth is secured.  In the case of talk radio jocks, the closer our country comes to the abyss, the angrier people get, the higher their ratings and book sales.  Our elected representatives find themselves hostages to these zero-responsibility loudmouths and malcontents; or, they are newly-elected rep's born of the zero-responsibility Tea Parties.  These extremists would burn our government down to the ground if they got their way.

Anarchists of the House

By Jonathan Chait

July 21, 2013 | New York Magazine

URL: http://nymag.com/news/features/republican-congress-2013-7/

Ugly liar James O'Keefe pays another ACORN victim

Vile pipsqueak James O'Keefe, a convicted wiretapper and accessory to breaking into a Democratic senator's office, was born in the wrong country at the wrong time. He would have been a wonderful hatchet man for Joseph Goebbels. 

Of course nobody at FOX or talk radio will issue retractions or make apologies for airing as truth O'Keefe's deliberate fabrications and slander.

James O'Keefe pays out to just one victim of his Acorn video deception

By Bertha Lewis

March 12, 2013 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3ec9z

The temporary triumph of the Tea Party

Here's an interesting take on the Tea Party movement:

The twist in the Obama-era is that some of the conservative backlash has been directed inward. This is because the right needed a way to explain how a far-left anti-American ideologue like Obama could have won 53 percent of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes in 2008. What they settled on was an indictment of George W. Bush’s big government conservatism; the idea, basically, was that Bush had given their movement a bad name with his big spending and massive deficits, angering the masses and rendering them vulnerable to Obama’s deceptive charms. And the problem hadn’t just been Bush – it had been every Republican in office who’d abided his expansion of government, his deals with Democrats, his Wall Street bailout and all the rest.

Thus did the Tea Party movement represent a two-front war – one a conventional one against the Democratic president, and the other a new one against any “impure” Republicans.

But I have a slightly different take. 

In politics, power is not always about numbers, it's about intensity. At the base level, at the grassroots of the GOP, the Tea Party movement is still the most intense. These folks -- mostly older white men, well off -- are still attending weekly meetings, publishing newsletters, attending local hearings, scrutinizing candidates, etc.  And they are totally supported by talk radio, which sees in them its core audience who is at once an echo and an amplifier of every disproved and crazy conservative idea to come down the pike the past 20 years.  And so big-time Republican politicians ignore them at their peril. 

Way above them, we have big-money, ego-driven right-wing donors like the Koch brothers, Peter Thiel, Sheldon Adelson, et al, who basically subscribe to the Tea Party philosophy of small government with government-enforced Christian morality. 

In the middle are caught the actual majority of Republicans (let's call them fiscally conservative, morally ambivalent) who are hesitant to criticize the Tea Parties whom they mostly agree with and want to defend against unflattering portrayals in the mainstream "liberal" media; and who either don't understand, or don't see anything wrong with, the big-money donors who wildly skew our politics in their favor.

The upshot is that the Tea Parties are stronger in the GOP than their numbers might suggest because they have the hard-core conservative minority supporting the base, and the nutjob, let's-go-Galt, libertarian billionaires at the top throwing silly amounts of money at elections.  

Meanwhile, we all know how well Tea Party-affiliated candidates fared in the November 2012 elections.

The upshot for Democrats is: let this crazy drama play itself out. These are the pathetic death throes of a sick, wounded animal. We shouldn't seek to commiserate with the GOP, or advise it, or even hasten its demise... for who knows what will succeed it? 

Nay, we should relish this last "rage against the dying of the light" in the Republican party, since it's sure to garner us a few more elections and delay the advent of the more libertarian-leaning party that will take the GOP's place in U.S. politics and might possibly be much, much worse....

Triumph of the Tea Party mindset

By Steve Kornacki

December 27, 2012 | Salon

URL: http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/triumph_of_the_tea_party_mindset/

Obama worst socialist ever...but what does it mean?

I'm glad to see that people are actually looking up the words "socialism" and "capitalism" in the dictionary, since these words -- especially socialism -- get thrown around quite carelessly in U.S. political discourse. Judging by the number of times you hear the "socialist" label applied on talk radio and FoxNews, you'd think there were more socialists in America today than in Russia circa 1917.

The truth is, there are no real socialists left in America anymore, at least not in government. It's a bogeyman label used to scare independents and keep deer-like Republicans in line. 

There have even been attempts by conservatives to re-define socialism to cover just about anything to the left of Sen. Rand Paul.

President Obama is certainly not a socialist, or if he is, he is the Worst Socialist Ever, as I've noted before. A true socialist in the White House would not allow the One Percent to to take 93 percent of economic gains since the Great Recession, or stand idly by while U.S. corporate profits reached an all-time high.

Lots Of Confused People Looked Up The Word 'Socialism' In The Dictionary Because Of The Election

By Jason Linkins

December 7, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/SDZfIX

Will Republicans pop their media bubble?

Call me a pinko, damned liberal, whatever you want, but I ain't no bubble boy.  I read Fox News and Rush Limbaugh more often than the NYT or Wash Post -- not because these are real or worthy sources of information, but rather, because I want to know what the bubble boys are thinking and what gets them mad.  Eighty percent of the time, I find that it takes no effort at all to refute their self-serving logic and selective use of evidence.  And the remaining 20 percent of the time, well, it just forces me to flex my intellectual muscles a bit, making me stronger and more secure in my left-wing beliefs.

As for my dear Republican friends... I can't tell you how many times they have reacted to something I post with, "Look at the source!  Pffft!" as if that is all that needs to be said.  

We saw how far bubbles, echo chambers and groupthink got them on November 6.  Now all sorts of post-mortems are coming out about what went wrong and how the GOP should reform itself.  I don't care, frankly.  America would be better off without the GOP.  Moreover, I don't think they have it in them to change.  The older ones -- the core of the party nowadays with all the money for donations -- are too crotchety and stuck in their ways.  By gum, they like the way they are.  They like the GOP being nativist, mean and anti-poor.  The party as it is suits them just fine... it's just losing at the polls that bothers them.  

But here's the worst part: they are addicted to their anger. And the pushers who feed their anger habit -- Fox, Beck, Limbaugh, Ingraham, Drudge, et al -- know their ratings depend on liberal villains to keep the whole racket going. Take away their anger and the energy of the GOP evaporates.  It's kind of like -- and I know this is a bit over the top, but... -- the dark side of the Force: Siths and Republicans alike draw their strength from fear, anger and hatred.    

The GOP's media cocoon

By Jonathan Martin

November 12, 2012 | Politico

A long-simmering generational battle in the conservative movement is boiling over after last week’s shellacking, with younger operatives and ideologues going public with calls that Republicans break free from a political-media cocoon that has become intellectually suffocating and self-defeating.

GOP officials have chalked up their electoral thumping to everything from the country’s changing demographics to an ill-timed hurricane and failed voter turn-out system, but a cadre of Republicans under 50 believes the party’s problem is even more fundamental.

The party is suffering from Pauline Kaelism.

Kael was The New Yorker movie critic who famously said in the wake of Richard M. Nixon’s 49-state landslide in 1972 that she knew only one person who voted for Nixon.

Now, many young Republicans worry, they are the ones in the hermetically sealed bubble — except it’s not confined to geography but rather a self-selected media universe in which only their own views are reinforced and an alternate reality is reflected.

Hence the initial denial and subsequent shock on the right that the country would not only reelect President Barack Obama — but do so with 332 electoral votes.

“What Republicans did so successfully, starting with critiquing the media and then creating our own outlets, became a bubble onto itself,” said Ross Douthat, the 32-year-old New York Times columnist.

“The right is suffering from an era of on-demand reality,” is how 30-year-old think tanker and writer Ben Domenech put it.

Citing Kael, one of the most prominent Republicans in the George W. Bush era complained: “We have become what the left was in the ’70s — insular.”

In this reassuring conservative pocket universe, Rasmussen polls are gospel, the Benghazi controversy is worse than Watergate, “Fair and Balanced” isn’t just marketing and Dick Morris is a political seer.

Even this past weekend, days after a convincing Obama win, it wasn’t hard to find fringes of the right who are convinced he did so only because of mass voter fraud and mysteriously missing military ballots. Like a political version of “Thelma and Louise,” some far-right conservatives are in such denial that they’d just as soon keep on driving off the cliff than face up to a reality they’d rather not confront.

But if the Fox News-talk radio-Drudge Report axis is the most powerful force in the conservative cocoon, technology has rendered even those outlets as merely the most popular destinations in the choose-your-own-adventure news world in which consumers are more empowered than ever.

Facebook and Twitter feeds along with email in-boxes have taken the place of the old newspaper front page, except that the consumer is now entirely in charge of what he or she sees each day and can largely shut out dissenting voices. It’s the great irony of the Internet era: People have more access than ever to an array of viewpoints, but also the technological ability to screen out anything that doesn’t reinforce their views.

“The Internet amplifies talk radio and cable news, and provides distribution for other sources like Newsmax,” said Trey Grayson, 40, the former Kentucky secretary of state and the current head of Harvard’s Institute of Politics. “Then your friends, who usually agree with you, disseminate the same stories on Facebook and Twitter. And you assume that everyone agrees with you!”

Grayson continued: “It’s very striking for me living in Cambridge now. My Facebook feed, which is full of mostly conservatives from Kentucky, contains very different links to articles or topics than what I see in Cambridge. It is sort of the reverse up here. They don’t understand how anyone would eat Chick-fil-A, watch college sports or hold pro-life views.”

“Social media has made it easier to self-select,” added 45-year-old GOP strategist Bruce Haynes. “Who do you follow on Twitter, who do you friend on Facebook? Do they all look the same and say the same things? If so, you’ve created a universe for yourself that is wedded to its own self-fulfilling prophecies.”

Like Grayson, Haynes and many of the approximately two-dozen young Republicans interviewed for this story noted that Democrats have their own self-reassuring echo chambers.

What worries Republicans, though, is that their Kaelism may be harder to overcome in the short term.

“Unfortunately, for us Republicans who want to rebuild this party, the echo chamber [now] is louder and more difficult to overcome,” said Grayson.

That’s partly because of the difference between the two cocoons in the two parties.

First, the Al Sharptons and Rachel Maddows of the left don’t have the same influence as their counterparts on the right. There are as many, if not more, NPR-oriented liberals as MSNBC devotees on the left; the Democratic media ecosystem is larger and more diverse.

Further, and more importantly, the Democratic Party has a leader in Obama who for over four years has sought to appeal to a majority of Americans for the obvious political reasons.

“Being a Democrat means being identified with Barack Obama, not Ed Schultz and Martin Bashir,” said Douthat, citing two liberal MSNBC hosts.

Conversely, for nearly six years, since President Bush’s second term went south, Republicans have been effectively without a leader. And into that vacuum has stepped a series of conservative figures whose incentives in most cases are not to win votes but to make money and score ratings by being provocative and even outlandish.

“Their bottom line is their main goal, but that doesn’t mean they’re serving the population that buys their books,” said Domenech.

And this, say next-generation Republicans, is where cocoonism has been detrimental to the cause.

The tension between the profit- and ratings-driven right — call them entertainment-based conservatives — and conservatives focused on ideas (the thinkers) and winning (the operatives) has never been more evident.

The latter group worries that too many on the right are credulous about the former.

“Dick Morris is a joke to every smart conservative in Washington and most every smart conservative under the age of 40 in America,” said Douthat. “The problem is that most of the people watching Dick Morris don’t know that.”

The egghead-hack coalition believes that the entertainment-based conservatives create an atmosphere that enables flawed down-ballot candidates, creates a cartoonish presidential primary and blocks needed policy reforms, and generally leave an odor on the party that turns off swing voters.

It even fosters an atmosphere in which there’s a disconnect with the ostensible party leaders.

Consider: In the fall of the past two presidential campaigns, those in the conservative cocoon were talking about, respectively, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Obama as a black radical, and the seemingly impeachment-worthy scandal surrounding the deaths of U.S. officials in Libya. Meanwhile, on the actual campaign trail, John McCain and Mitt Romney showed little interest in even mentioning either topic.

And the entertainers’ power isn’t just with gullible grass-roots activists who are likely to believe whatever nefarious rumor about Obama is forwarded to them in an e-mail chain — it’s with donors, too.

Outside of Washington, New York and state capitals, the big conservative givers are as likely to have read Ed Klein’s Obama book and seen Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary “2016,” and generally parrot whatever they just heard on Fox News as the old lady stuffing envelopes at county GOP headquarters.

“One of the reasons the entertainment complex has the influence they do is because the people who are supposed to be responsible figures in the party, those who fund the campaigns, have bought into this apocalyptic world view,” said Douthat.

More than a few Republicans said it was such donors whom Romney was trying to impress when he infamously riffed about the “47 percent,” a variation of the makers-versus-takers world view that has become popular in the conservative cocoon (Rush Limbaugh has called Obama “Santa Claus” since Election Day).

The tension between entertainers and operatives-thinkers may have come into sharpest relief in the prolonged, and for many Republicans, painful 2012 GOP primary. The thinkers and the operatives cringed at the umpteen debates and carnival-like procession of candidates with little chance of landing in the Oval Office.

“Look at Newt Inc., [Herman] Cain and [Michele] Bachmann,” sighed Haynes. “What’s the purpose of entering a presidential primary anymore?”

Suggesting the incentives for getting in the race now owe as much to fame as to winning the job, Haynes added: “If that market didn’t exist, what would our primary look like?”

The sexual harassment scandal around Cain offered a vivid example of the different goals of the two groups. To the entertainment-based right, it was a great opportunity to rally the faithful against a purportedly liberal media targeting a black conservative. It touched almost every erogenous zone for the likes of Rush Limbaugh. But for the operatives and thinkers, the story threatened to tarnish the GOP with a sex scandal and make a martyr out of a marginal figure they were already cringing over before POLITICO reported the harassment charges.

Long after the primary ended, the entertainment-based right was still promoting figures that many in the GOP believe are harmful to the party’s brand. Take Donald Trump, who made regular appearances on “Fox & Friends” all year and delighted in pushing the discredited idea that Obama wasn’t born in America. Why energize black voters and turn off moderates broadly by elevating a buffoonish figure questioning the president’s legitimacy? Because it’s good box office. (To be sure, other nonpartisan outlets, including POLITICO, not to mention Romney himself, did their share of enabling Trump).

“It’s like a weird version of identity politics for people who like trash culture and reality TV,” said Douthat of Trump.

This same financial-political tension also arose two years ago in one of the most high-profile GOP Senate primaries in the country between Grayson and Rand Paul. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, worried that his hand-picked candidate wasn’t getting equal time on Fox to make his case, called Fox President Roger Ailes to ask that Grayson get similar treatment as the oft-interviewed Paul, according to a source familiar with the call. Ailes, who consulted on McConnell’s first Senate race, had tough news for his old friend: Paul was just a better draw.

Some younger conservatives worry that the effects of cocoonism are just as evident after the race as before — and not only in the disbelief that Obama won. The knee-jerk reaction by some on the right to Romney’s poor performance with Hispanics has been to simply say that all will be well with the party if they pass an immigration bill and elevate Cuban-American Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

But to many next-generation Republicans, this smacks of tokenism and is more than a tad patronizing.

“They just want to put a sombrero on the Republican elephant,” said one Latino GOP operative, who didn’t want to be identified discussing such a sensitive topic.

Similarly, Haynes fretted that “the mistake Republicans are going to make is thinking this is a demographic and political problem and not a social and cultural problem. You can’t fix this with Orca (the Romney campaign’s ill-fated GOTV software) or iPad apps or to some extent even running Hispanic candidates.”

To young Republican strategists and writers, a fundamental shift of how the party communicates is required. That doesn’t mean delegitimizing hugely popular and powerful outlets on the right, but rather transcending them.

“Communicating to the country’s changing demographics and outside of the Fox News echo chamber is a strategic imperative,” said GOP operative Phil Musser, 40.

“The rise of conservative media has been one of the best things to ever happen to the conservative movement. It has helped us reach new voters, has helped with voter persuasion and even motivation,” said GOP strategist Todd Harris, 41. “But with all the positives, there is this fact: If all you did was watch and read the conservative media, you were probably pretty shocked at what happened Tuesday. There’s a huge and ever-growing segment of the vote that Republicans just aren’t talking to and in some cases didn’t even know existed.”

The good news, say the young Republicans, is that there’s hope for them to appeal more widely. They look no further than to 2004, when liberals were in disbelief that America had reelected George W. Bush. “Jesusland” was the name of the famous map of the country showing where Bush had won.

But instead of inveighing against the purported theocracy the country had become, Obama and his aides began to plot how they could appeal to a broad coalition of voters.

Younger Republicans are confident that they, too, will take over the party and reorient it to accommodate a more tolerant country.

“I expect that in the years to come, a class of young and up-and-coming Republican practitioners will exert a greater degree of influence on how the party’s outreach to key groups is handled and ensure that the tone and tenor of our message is reflective of today’s society,” said Jon Downs, 35, a Republican media consultant.

But these Republicans know a degree of self-examination is required.

“In some communities, like with African-Americans, it’s simply unacceptable to be a Republican. This is a cultural phenomenon,” said Haynes. “Who do you go to church with, who do you send your kids to school with? Are enough Republicans socially and culturally engaged with folks who don’t look like themselves?”

Or, as Domenech put it: “Conservatives may be content to stay in a bubble and yell about Benghazi, but it doesn’t help the cause in the long term.”

What’s needed, he said, is to develop new institutions that will engage conservatives on the issues that the broader country is focused on.

He cited the much-buzzed-about piece in The Atlantic earlier this year about whether women can have successful careers and devote ample attention to child-rearing as a conversation conservatives should have gotten in on.

“We need to play the long game on how people engage in culture and society,” Domenech said. “Conservatives and the right generally have a lot to say, but it’s going to require more than a place to discuss the latest campaign or the New Black Panthers.”

You don't want to be this woman

To all my dear, terribly misguided Republican friends, I say this:  I hope you can do better than this woman:

This is what happens when you live in a talk radio/Fox echo chamber: you repeat words without knowing what they mean; you forget the "facts" but remember the conclusions, because we all agree on them anyway.

Humoring these people, pretending they're salt of the earth, or "average" or whatever, and engaging them in a "conversation" that the reporter knows is retarded, is just another form of condescension.  It's patronizing.  And it's bad journalism. Cheers to Chris Matthews for not doing it. He asked her straight-up questions, she answered... and then, feeling defensive, she condescendingly accused Matthews of "not doing your homework, buddy."  Instead of engaging her stupidity, he just walked away.  He'd shown what he wanted to show, and she did all the work.

It's better for the media to just tease out the average conservative's stupidity, and then broadcast it back to the masses, just like he did.

P.S. -- I may have missed some developments in the modern vernacular, but I don't think "study it out" is English.  

GOP 'media candidates' stoking party civil war

Gee, great minds think alike. I just posted on this topic and here I see somebody saying the same thing: the GOP is in soooo much trouble right now.

Trying to don my moderate, apolitical hat for a moment, I'd argue that this is not a good thing for America. We've only got 2 parties, which even on a good day is inadequate; but with 1 party on a metaphorical acid trip lost in the woods, that leaves the other party to run things pretty much as they see fit. That's great if you have total faith in that party and see no good that could come from a loyal, reasonable opposition. But it's not so great if you have big misgivings about the effects of absolute power -- and absolute access to lobbyists' campaign donations -- on America's money-driven political process.

Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh Stoking GOP Civil War

By Eric Boehlert

November 11, 2009 | AlterNet

It's not easy to flip a congressional district that's been Republican since the late 1800s, but after being willingly hijacked by the right-wing media -- after getting steamrolled by Fox News' embrace of third-party candidate Doug Hoffman -- Republicans managed to hand Upstate New York's 23rd District to Democrats last week. And they did it just in time for the newly elected Democrat to help (barely) push health care reform through the House of Representatives during Saturday night's historic vote.

Doug Hoffman was, first and foremost, a media candidate (a media creation), which means we are entering a very new and different realm in American politics. We're entering a sort of Fox News Era where media outlets -- where alleged news organizations -- essentially co-sponsor political campaigns. We've moved well beyond the time when Fox News, for instance, leaned right and gave conservative candidates more air-time and tossed them lots of softball questions. We're now watching unfold a political reality where Fox News literally selects candidates and then markets them through Election Day.

There's a reason Hoffman described Glenn Beck as his "mentor" and pledged his "sacred honor" to uphold the "9 Principles and 12 Values" of Beck's 9/12 Project. There's a reason Sean Hannity wanted to "declare" Hoffman the election winner, and why Fox News' on-screen graphic read "Conservative Revolution?" when Hoffman was being interviewed (i.e. prematurely crowned) by Hannity on the eve of Election Day.

Hoffman's outsider bid, originally opposed by the Republican Party, was a media production, plain and simple, which means his loss was a media loss, as well.

Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich had it right when he told The Washington Times that Hoffman's rise as a third party candidate was the "result of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Fox News." Gingrich, who originally opposed Hoffman's candidacy, added: "This was not an isolated amateur; this is an entire movement."

Indeed, it's a media movement that's doing it's best to obliterate the line between journalism and politics.

As I've been noting for some time, Fox News has transformed itself into the Opposition Party of the Obama White House. So it makes sense that, as a purely partisan player, Fox News would immerse itself in backroom horse-trading. It makes sense that rather than covering the campaigns and the candidates, Fox News would insert itself as a political player within Republican contests and throw its support behind a specific candidate, the way it did in NY-23.

The looming problem for the GOP, though, is that the right-wing media can't pick winners and stands poised to rip the Republican Party apart. (Did you notice how Limbaugh last week claimed "Newt" had "screwed the whole [NY-23] thing up"?)

It's yet more evidence that during President Bush's pro-war tenure, far-right radio and TV talkers, along with fringe bloggers, convinced themselves they represented the mainstream -- the majority -- of the GOP. But they don't. They represent the radical CPAC wing of the GOP, and it shows on Election Day. We saw that in 2008, when bloggers and talkers opposed Sen. John McCain in the GOP primaries yet were completely unable to sway Republican voters in the process. In the immortal words of Republican strategist Mike Murphy, "These radio guys can't deliver a pizza, let alone a nomination."

What's different now, though, is that the right-wing media have become even more powerful within conservative circles, while the Republican National Committee and traditional Republican leaders have receded even further into the background. (Does anyone really see Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as the leader of anything?) That power vacuum means it's Fox News that sets the conservative agenda in America. It's at Fox News where partisan strategies are hatched, rallies are marketed, and smear campaigns are launched. And it's Republican politicians and traditional Beltway professionals who are forced to play catch-up to the conservative media.

In other words, in just the last 12 months, the balance of power within the conservative movement has completely swung in the direction of the right-wing press, which is stoking the flames of the GOP civil war. It's a partisan press corps that no longer documents internal Republican squabbling; it initiates the infighting.

National political parties go through all kinds of evolutions; all kinds of natural expansions and contractions over time. (Barry Goldwater, for instance, oversaw perhaps the GOP's most radical contraction in modern times.) It's quite rare, though, for the catalyst of that change to be external media forces. Sure, permanent Beltway insiders such as Bill Kristol have routinely hopped back and forth between "the role of Republican flack and alleged journalist without changing even a comma in his prose 'style'," as columnist Eric Alterman noted last week.

But what we're seeing unfold in 2009 is something entirely different. This isn't a few conservative pundits dipping their toes into Republican political waters during election cycles and trying to generate an electoral wave. And this isn't like 1994 when AM talk radio morphed into an RNC echo chamber and helped spread the Republicans' anti-Clinton message.

This is a case where huge swaths of the conservative media, including television, radio, and online, have shed any façade of being journalists and embraced their king-making role. Or, if savaging a GOP candidate is what's needed, as was the case in NY-23 and Dede Scozzafava, then they'll do that as well.

Looking forward, it's inevitable that during the 2012 GOP Republican primary season, there will be, for the lack of a better term, a Fox News candidate in the field. There will be a far-right darling of the Tea Party movement (cough, cough, Sarah Palin) who has both the official (Limbaugh, Beck, Malkin) and unofficial (Fox News) endorsement of the right-wing media.

But will that do any good in the real world? Ask Doug Hoffman.

Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh, and Malkin, among others, all put their reputations on the line in NY-23, touting the contest as a referendum on the anti-Obama, Tea Party movement in America. And they lost, big time. Not unlike the way the same right-wing media leaders put their reputations on the line in early 2008 and went all-in against McCain in the South Carolina Republican primary. (FYI, McCain wasn't sufficiently conservative.) Result? McCain won the SC contest in a walk.

See a pattern here? Me, too. The Republican Party is now attached to a political movement -- a media-led movement -- that cannot win elections. It's a movement that cannot even win elections in traditionally red districts (NY-23) or in very red states (SC). By refusing to separate itself from media players who claim the president of the United States is a racist and a Nazi, the GOP may be assigning itself a permanent minority status.

And I'm sorry, but belated and feeble attempts by Republican leaders such as Rep. Eric Cantor to create the slightest glimmer of daylight between the GOP and the right-wing media aren't going to do the trick. (For the record, comparing health care reform to the Holocaust was the line Limbaugh and company recently crossed, according to Cantor. Good to know.) Republican politicians in 2009 have made it blindingly obvious that they lack both the courage to consistently stand up to the far-right media's hate merchants and the resources. Meaning, without the energy of the fringe activists who insist Obama is destroying America on purpose, the Republican Party would be virtually kaput today.

Disillusioned "Right Wing" blogger Rick Moran, recently bemoaning what he sees as the rise of an "anti-reason" movement on the far right, may have put it best when he asked, "What is it that possesses certain conservatives to fool themselves so spectacularly into believing that they can create a majority out of a minority?"

His definition of "anti-reason" conservatives, who now anchor the right-wing media, seemed dead-on, as well: "[T]hose who reject reality in favor of persecution complexes, wildly exaggerated hyperbole, and a frightening need for vengeance against their imagined 'enemies.' "

Moran actually penned that lament before the votes were counted in the NY-23 congressional race. And incredibly, the "anti-reason" fanatics Moran described were encouraged by the results in Upstate New York, which, in a strange way, actually made sense. Of course anti-reason conservatives would celebrate as a victory the fact that a district that hadn't elected a Democrat to Congress in nearly 150 years did so last week. Of course they'd announce that it was good news that by backing a candidate who did not even live in the district and who, according to a local newspaper editorial board, was woefully ill-informed about local issues, the movement had helped toss a Republican seat to the Democrats.

Anti-reason conservatives watched Hoffman go down in defeat and immediately announced they were going to target more Republican candidates, which means the right-wing media stand poised to unleash even more wingnuttery on the GOP establishment.

Grab the popcorn. This is going to be fun to watch.