Note To GOP: The Will Of The People Is Not Optional

Posted by Mark NC on April 18, 2013 at 1:48 pm. 22 Comments :

Republicans need to be taught that the will of the people is not optional. It is not contingent on convenience or the concurrence of special interest lobbyists. The people’s will is the compass with which public servants guide their path. And when 90% of a political party votes against the will of 90% of the people, that party must pay a price.

Americans must reject the Republican Party that has rejected them. They must elect a Democratic majority that respects the principle of democracy. They must vote against Republicans, not because of where the party stands on any single issue, but because Republicans have demonstrated that they are not above betrayal. This isn’t about guns. This is about trust. And every citizen has the right to expect their representatives to represent them.

Republicans have proven that they cannot be depended on to do that. They have declared their opposition to the people. They have positioned themselves as far-right obstructionists, determined to hold back the tide of progress. They oppose (for the sake of opposition) legislation, cabinet appointments, judges, and even people and policies they formerly supported. Their opposition has produced a record number of filibusters via a rank abuse of senate protocol. Yet Democrats have failed to rein in their recalcitrant Republican colleagues. Due to either weakness, naivete or excess good faith, Democrats have permitted this situation to fester.

Politics almost always produces conflict, but yesterday something rare occurred. There was near unanimity across the nation and the partisan divide. The only place where division prevailed was in Washington, D.C. And the only way to mend such a broken system is through the force that gives democracy its strength: the voting booth. The Republican Party is hereby on notice: The disappointment and rage of the American people will not be diminished in the eighteen months between now and the next election. Prepare to be cast out.

What Do The GOP And The NRA Have In Common With Syria, Iran, and North Korea?

Posted by Mark NC on April 8, 2013 at 2:48 pm. 11 Comments :

The American ultra-rightists in the Republican Party like to associate themselves with an unwavering patriotism that borders on psychosis. They revere the flag as if every one of the Chinese-sewn banners had wrapped pieces of the True Cross. Granted, their unctuous adoration is mostly vacant rhetoric that disguises a deeply held animosity for real liberty and justice, but it is worn as garishly as papal vestments.

This makes it all the more startling that senate Republicans have declared their opposition to a recently approved UN Arms Trade treaty that would regulate the transfer of tanks, large-caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, warships, missiles, etc., between member nations. There were only three votes against the treaty in the UN: Syria, Iran, and North Korea. Consequently, the GOP is aligning itself with three of the most brutally oppressive regimes in the world.

The treaty has been debated for more than a decade and contains language that explicitly prohibits it from regulating any domestic transactions within any country. The whole purpose is to stem the traffic of military grade weapons to rogue nations and terrorists. So obviously Syria, Iran, and North Korea have easily discernible motivations to oppose the treaty. The question is: What reasons do senate Republicans have?

The short answer to that question is: The NRA. The National Rifle Association has come out against the treaty claiming that it will infringe on the Second Amendment rights of American citizens. They offer no evidence of how the treaty could interfere with our Constitution. They simply oppose it out of a blind distrust for any institution that seeks to put limits on the transfer of weapons. The position of the NRA, and their allies in Washington, is that any entity, person, corporation, or nation, should have free reign with regard to weapons acquisitions, and sales, including weapons of mass destruction. They believe this fervently despite assurances like this one from Secretary of State, John Kerry:

“As the United States has required from the outset of these negotiations, nothing in this treaty could ever infringe on the rights of American citizens under our domestic law or the Constitution, including the Second Amendment.”

This is perhaps one of the clearest delineations of the differences between extremists on the right and rational progressives with regard to sensible gun safety measures. Progressives favor keeping dangerous arsenals out of the hands of tyrants and terrorists, while right-wingers, serving the interests of defense contractors (even those in China), favor unencumbered free trade. And this manufactured controversy over a much-needed international treaty parallels perfectly with the domestic debate. The right has no intention of engaging in an honest debate or representing the wishes of the people, who overwhelmingly support new regulations.

The more this sort of insanity is revealed to American voters, the more they will continue to reject the short-sighted, falsely skewed servants of the gun lobby. But the media needs to be more responsible and point out the loony alliances that are forming between mad dictators like Assad, Ahmadinejad, and Jong-Un, and our own congressional leaders like Mitch McConnell.

Ann Coulter’s Advice To The GOP: Murder Unelectable Republicans

Posted by Mark NC on March 20, 2013 at 8:38 pm. 5 Comments :

Pretty much everyone agrees that the Republican Party is in pitiful shape. The “autopsy” of the 2012 election released by RNC Chair Reince Priebus spelled out the awful truth that his party is perceived as a “narrow minded,” “out of touch” party of “stuffy old (white) men.” Unfortunately, nothing in the report recommends any practical solutions other than adjusting their messaging. In other words, shout louder but don’t revisit any of the policies that have earned you the disdain of the American voters.

Which brings us to one of the premiere Republican shouters, Ann Coulter. In a column on her blog (republished on Fox Nation), Coulter makes some pretty cogent points with regard to the Republican Party being the source of its own woes. She notes that the GOP has embraced some questionable figures who had little chance of success and, as a result, gave up winnable seats to Democrats. She cites Todd Akin, Linda McMahon, and perennial candidate John Raese. And now the GOP is about to add Mark Sanford to the list. The picture she paints of the party is one that repeatedly shoots itself in the foot. So she is now suggesting that they aim significantly higher.

For those who don’t remember, Luca Brasi is a character in The Godfather. He is Don Corleone’s principle “enforcer,” meaning he is a brutal and merciless killer. And that is the sort of person that Coulter thinks the party is missing. In a thinly disguised way she is advocating a Mafia-style hit on Sanford and any other wayward Republican whose candidacy is deemed too risky by Coulter and company.

Sure, she probably doesn’t really want to rub out Sanford, but the symbolism is representative of a repulsive streak of violence that permeates today’s GOP. Just yesterday a Massachusetts sheriff joked about assassinating President Obama, and the senate candidate he endorsed refused to disassociate himself from the sheriff.

This is the rhetoric of the NRA, right-wing militias, secessionists, and Second Amendment cultists who misread the Constitution. It is the rhetoric of Ted Nugent and Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. It is an attitude that reeks of bloodlust and final solutions, and is held by sore losers who despise democracy.

Coulter is actually right about the folly of South Carolinians choosing Mark Sanford as their candidate for congress (he still needs to win a run-off in May), but her advice is tainted by the gruesome notion that he be dealt with by a mob hit man. Ironically, the savior for whom Coulter pines was himself offed in a bloody ordeal and the news of his passing was delivered in a memorable way. The killers wrapped a fish in his vest and sent it to the Don.

The message was clear, and it is one that the GOP should heed: Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes, and so will the Republican Party if it continues to revere people like Ann Coulter. And the party is not helped by Fox News either when they endorse this sort of treasonous garbage by rewarding it with a featured spot on their web site.

Shades Of Murphy Brown: GOP Operative Clashes With Fake News Anchor

Posted by Mark NC on March 18, 2013 at 11:59 pm. 6 Comments :

One of the most widely mocked skirmishes in modern politics was the battle royale between Vice President Dan Quayle and Candace Bergan’s sitcom muckracker Murphy Brown. Qualye was concerned that Brown’s irresponsible decision to have a child out of wedlock would set a bad example and he proceeded to have a public feud with the fictional character.

Now another Republican moralist is having a spat with a pretend TV news anchor. Jason B. Whitman, the policy chair of the Young Republicans and a Breitbart columnist, responded angrily to a Tweet by Will McAvoy, the anchor of the ACN news network on HBO’s Newsroom. Unfortunately, Whitman didn’t know that McAvoy wasn’t a real person. The exchange went something like this:

McAvoy: When will the media stop talking about the politically irrelevant Sarah Palin at CPAC? I’m devoting the hour to that topic tonight!
Whitman: It’s odd that @WillMcAvot_ACN is dedicating an entire hour of his show to “politically irrelevant” @SarahPalinUSA.

Shortly thereafter, Whitman was alerted to his mistake and deleted the Tweet. That, however, did not dissuade the ersatz McAvoy from further engaging Whitman:

McAvoy: Murphy Brown and I had drinks on Sunday and could have sworn we saw Dan Quayle and @JasonBWhitman making out. Could be wrong.

This is the sad state of affairs in the world of conservatism. They are a pitifully out-of-touch congregation of ill-informed wingnuts whose grasp of popular culture consists of fan clubs for Ronald Reagan and swapping 8-tracks of Ted Nugent. No wonder their favorite news network is affiliated with 20th Century Fox, still in a century that is one behind the rest of us. Whitman’s Young Republican organization is so dynamic that they have four whole postings this year on their blog. Clearly they have their thumb on the pulse of American youth.

What is not surprising is that they would object to “lamestream” news anchor Will McAvoy. He prominently put the Tea Party in its place in an early episode of the program. The monologue enumerated some of the identifying characteristics of today’s Tea-publican Party. Coincidentally, the GOP just went public with the results of their “rebranding” study and McAvoy’s list would fill in nicely as a statement of their principles.

CPAC So Far: The Conservative Miscreant Conference Doesn’t Disappoint

Posted by Mark NC on March 15, 2013 at 1:22 pm. 5 Comments :

In the first two days of the Conservative Political Action Conference, the right-wingnut contingent was out in force and was not holding back on their animus and denial. They still believe that the reasons for their losing are related to poor messaging, not poor messages. So even with the highest rated cable news network blasting their propaganda 24/7, and polls showing that the American people overwhelmingly prefer the solutions advanced by Democrats, Republicans continue to cling to ideas that have been soundly rejected by voters.

That is, of course, good news for Democrats and President Obama. The more that rightist stars shine their light on absurdities and overt hatred, the more people will be repulsed and gravitate toward the left. Some examples of the tone-deaf rhetoric emanating from the CPAC ballrooms include these utterances from their heroes:

Donald Trump is very unhappy that the social safety net, that he and the right would love to see unravel, cannot be loosened without sacrificing votes:

Allen West, the guy who says there are 70 card-carrying communists in congress, also thinks that his battle against his ideological opponents on the left is analogous to fighting terrorists.

And Marco Rubio doesn’t want to be perceived as a bigot just because he holds bigoted views:

It is that sort of demented rancor expressed by these GOP Tea-holics that is keeping the party from corralling any support, particularly from minorities and young voters. Yet after throwing such temper tantrums, whose only purpose is to malign their perceived enemies, they persist in the delusion that their policy prescription is fine and it’s just their media, and in some cases their candidate selection, that is flawed.

No matter what they say about their presentation of conservatism, they had a fair shot with “severely conservative” Mitt Romney, and they lost. They had the most powerful name in media at their back, and they lost. The 2012 election pitted Obama against a right-wing onslaught that hit every plank in the far-right platform, and they lost badly. [Note: Although MSNBC and CNN both aired Romney’s CPAC speech live, Fox News ignored it entirely]

CPAC is doing precisely what it was intended to do: Spotlight the cream of the rightist crop. They cannot whine about deficient messaging when this is the all-star roster they themselves put on the field. The only problem that conservatives have is that their ideas are stuck in an archaic past, and they didn’t even work then. When they realize that and begin to adopt sensible policies that the American people favor, they might win back some support. But as things stand today, they are stubbornly holding fast to outdated and unpopular schemes designed to benefit the rich. And judging from the performances at CPAC, they don’t plan to change their grating tune.

Daily Caller’s Videos Of Alleged Menendez Prostitution Scandal Were Faked

Posted by Mark NC on March 4, 2013 at 10:16 pm. 1 Comments :

It is long past the point when any reputable news enterprise should take seriously any story emanating from the pathological liars at The Daily Caller, or Breitbart News, or even Fox News. Particularly if the story hinges on videos of unknown origin with anonymous sources and fraudulent editing.

The latest example of the unscrupulous deceit practiced by right-wing media involves an undocumented accusation that Democratic Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey was cavorting with prostitutes in the Dominican Republic. Menendez denied the charges from the start, but that didn’t stop the unethical reporters at The Daily Caller from disseminating the story, which eventually wormed its way up the media food chain from Breitbart to Fox to other more mainstream outlets.

The scandalous tales told by the Daily Caller peaked when they posted exclusive videos of the alleged hookers confessing to their association with Menendez. All of this just happened to go down during the final days of Menendez’s reelection campaign.

Today the Washington Post published an article that blows the whole story apart. The headline, “Escort says Menendez prostitution claims were made up,” sums up the affair and should put to rest any question about the Daily Caller’s credibility. The article begins…

“An escort who appeared on a video claiming that Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) paid her for sex has told Dominican authorities that she was instead paid to make up the claims and has never met or seen the senator, according to court documents and two people briefed on her claim.

“The woman said a local lawyer had approached her and a fellow escort and asked them to help frame Menendez and a top donor, Salomon Melgen, according to affidavits obtained by The Washington Post.”

The Washington Post sought a statement from the Daily Caller’s chief, Tucker Carlson (also a Fox News contributor), but Carlson, despite his usual enthusiasm for media attention, refused to make a comment. There have been no corrections or updates to any of the reports previously published by the Daily Caller, Breitbart, or Fox. This is consistent with their standard operating practice of hyping smears and innuendos, but neglecting to set the record straight when their lies are exposed.

Menendez Valentine Another player to jump on the Menendez bandwagon is the Republican National Committee who put out a satirical “valentine” slamming the Senator with a snide reference to the phony sex scandal. Undoubtedly they will neglect to apologize now that they know the charges were false. What makes the GOP attack even worse is that their own senator David Vitter was caught with actual hookers in Washington, D.C. and subsequently admitted his criminal behavior. Yet he continues to represent Louisiana and, so far as we know, has not received any snarky valentines from the GOP.

The question for the media at large is, when will they finally stop paying attention to the cretinous slime merchants at the Daily Caller, Breitbart, etc.? After notorious failures like the ACORN affair, the Shirley Sherrod debacle, and just last month, Breitbart’s expose about Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel taking money from a terrorist group that, as it turns out, doesn’t exist, there should be no doubt that these pseudo-news manglers are undeserving of any respect. They should be left to peddle their tripe to the glassy-eyed blockheads who don’t know any better and the rest of the world should tune them out entirely. At this point, anyone who gives credence to these fakers is just an embarassment.

GOP: Greed Obsessed Profiteers – How the Right Fleeces Donors To Enrich Themselves

Posted by Mark NC on January 8, 2013 at 10:40 am. 6 Comments :

The election of 2012 broke all records for spending on campaigns and collateral causes of political movers and shakers. The orgy of spending was triggered by the Citizen’s United decision allowing donors to make unlimited contributions anonymously. A by product of this landscape littered with special interest cash was a new industry driven by hucksters intent on sucking up substantial portions of the money flying around in the political ether.

One of those hucksters was the toe-sucking grifter, Dick Morris. Rachel Maddow recently reported on his scam that involved soliciting donations for a Super PAC that he claimed to have founded, and funneling those funds to his accomplices at the right wing blog Newsmax. Then NewsMax used some of that money to pay Morris for access to his email donors list so that they could solicit more donations. In effect, Morris was raising money to pay himself to raise more money.

Another example of this racket involved the Astroturf-roots, Tea Party operation, FreedomWorks. In the wake of scandalous revelations that their former chairman Dick Armey had staged an armed coup to wrest control of the group from his partners, it has been learned that the organization was taking the funds received from unsuspecting donors who opposed big government waste and depositing them in the bank accounts of wealthy broadcasters like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. These payouts were ostensibly intended to buy positive promotions of FreedomWorks on their programs in order to produce more donations that could also be paid out to the promoters. It was a blatantly circular self-enrichment scheme that was also described by Armey as “ineffective” and “a mistake.”

These incidents illustrate a congenital characteristic of the conservative mindset. It is a philosophy that explicitly lauds a dog-eat-dog flavor of wealth creation and celebrates the success of ruthless entrepreneurship and Greed-Obsessed Profiteers (i.e. GOP).

At the center of this con game is Fox News and the associated right-wing media machine. The unprecedented sums of money raised and spent in the last election cycle exceeded $5 billion dollars. Of that it is estimated that $3.4 was spent on advertising. In the world of Republican politics there is only one elephant in the room when it comes to media, and that is Fox News, the number one rated cable news network (for now) and the PR division of the GOP.

Fox was the first stop on every Republican’s campaign trip. It was where groups like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity dumped the bulk of their television ad dollars. It was the TV base for Dick Morris, Karl Rove, Scott Rasmussen, and the Breitbart-affiliated activists who were pretending to be movie producers.

Fox News was running the same scam as those described above. They would provide a platform for conservative politicians and organizations to solicit donations. The organizations would then pay Fox to run their ads with the money they raised from their appearances on Fox. And round and round it goes.

This is a tactic exploited so well by Rupert Murdoch himself in the last election cycle when he donated a million dollars to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce who promptly returned it to Fox in the form of ad buys. In this way Murdoch actually made a 22% profit on his donation to the Chamber, and the Chamber got their ads broadcast at a 78% discount.

The maze of campaign finance laws makes it difficult to ascertain whether or not any laws were broken by these financial shenanigans. But the Federal Elections Commission is such an impotent agency that it would be surprising if they ever bothered to investigate or punish such lawbreakers.

However, what is even more surprising is that anybody would contribute to these organizations if they knew that their donations were not being used to advance the causes they support, but instead are lining the pockets of the executives and fundraisers. It is brazen betrayal of the folks who put their hard-earned dollars to work for their beliefs. But it is also precisely what conservatives are best known for: making themselves rich at the expense of the little people.

Hysterical Addendum] Dick Armey is now claiming that when he spoke with Media Matters and made his remarks about FreedomWorks, and their wasting money on Beck and Limbaugh, he actually thought he was talking to the uber-rightist Media Research Center. That explains his candor. He clearly believed that those comments would never be made public by MRC.

Right-Wing Blames God For Romney Loss And America’s Descent Into Socialism

Posted by Mark NC on November 23, 2012 at 2:48 pm. 7 Comments :

The Republican Party has been suffering debilitating and very public seizures produced by the results of the election a couple of weeks ago. They are desperately attempting to find explanations for how they could have lost on such a grand scale an election they presumed was in the bag. After spending unprecedented amounts of money, Republicans still had to wake up Wednesday morning with Obama returning to the White House for another four years, two more Democrats in the senate, and nine more in the House. Even with the propaganda power of Fox News, the top rated cable news network, and its frothing companion web site Fox Nation, conservative fanatics were unable deceive enough citizens to vote against their own best interests.

At first the excuses focused on typically lame dodges involving the weaknesses of their candidates. Then they shifted to assertions that it was a failure from not being sufficiently conservative. Eventually they trotted out accusations directed at the allegedly negative, Chicago-style campaigning of the Democrats. And sprinkled in amidst all of this were hysterical wails of imaginary corruption and voter fraud.

Now that some time has passed, the forlorn right-wingers have been able to reflect on these events and discovered the true source of their despair: GOD!

That’s right. The Heavenly Father on whom they had entrusted so much of their hopes had betrayed them. It has become impossible to ignore that God clearly preferred Obama and other Democrats to the roster of GOP loonies that pretended to speak in His name.

Prior to the election, folks like Pat Robertson had confidently declared that God had personally assured them of a Republican victory. Now Robertson has had to backtrack saying that “I thought I heard from God, I thought I had heard clearly from God, what happened?” What happened was that you were unable to distinguish the voice of God from the hallucinatory voices rattling around in your senile head.

And speaking of hallucinatory, Glenn Beck had his own divine prophesies mangled when he spoke of an inner certainty that the Lord was preparing the path for righteous Republicans to prevail:

“I am to the point to where I think that God is trying to make this so clear to us that if it happens, it’s his finger. Because, boy, nothing looks good. And yet, everybody I know who I consider a spiritual giant feels good.”

The day after the election Beck was singing a different hymn when he said “Man, sometimes God really sucks.” But what else can he say when the day before he declared “If [voters are] so dead inside that they can no longer see the difference between good and evil, we have to be destroyed.”

That’s typical of the sanctimonious zealots who believe that they are the only ones with a direct line to God. They exalt themselves and their imagined favor with a deity that their principles mock. They blithely ignore biblical instructions to “judge not, lest ye be judged,” and openly denigrate the faith of others – particularly President Obama, who is wrongly believed to be a Muslim by about one-third of Republicans.

Right-wingers on the Fox News community web site Fox Nation even go so far as to explicitly state that Obama is “God-Less.” This article linked to the execrable conspiracy obsessed Breitbart News.

The spiritual consternation of the right is thoroughly understandable. They had just run a campaign that fervently tried to paint Democrats as socialists bent on imposing a secular, atheist dictatorship on America. They condemned their policies as big-government takeovers that would throw freedom-loving patriots into bondage. They cast Democrats as leaning far too extremely to the left to be acceptable to voters. Yet people voted for them anyway. That could be interpreted in some circles as a mandate for the sort of socialism that the GOP was running against.

What the right missed was that all of the left-leaning agenda of the Democratic Party had far more in common with God’s agenda than the rank selfishness and greed of the GOP. Democrats advocated for health care (healing the sick), immigration (brotherhood), financial assistance (caring for the least among us), income equality and separation of church and state (giving Caesar his due), and deescalation of hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan (blessed be the peacemakers). What’s surprising is that Republicans could oppose all of these things and still think they were doing God’s work.

The funny thing is that they had plenty of signs. The religious right is fond of ascribing meaning to significant events such as natural disasters. Many of them told their disciples that Katrina was God’s wrath on the sinfulness of New Orleans. Why, then, did they not see that God was sending them a warning when Hurricane Isaac slammed down on Tampa, scuttling day one of the GOP convention? Why didn’t they hear God’s message when Sandy battered the New England states just days before the election, giving Obama an opportunity to look presidential?

Now that we know whose side God was really on, Republicans are expressing their bitterness and disappointment with the Lord. That doesn’t seem like a particularly good way to get back in His good graces. But then the GOP was never very good at humility or admitting their mistakes. So what we see now is an escalation of apocalyptic doomsday scenarios that thrust the weak-minded into fearful panics. Leading the way is Fox News who broadcast this cheerful special on Thanksgiving Eve: “Countdown to Doomsday.”

They might make out better if they take some time to study the teachings of their Savior and seek to integrate them into their political philosophy. But then that would just make them liberals, wouldn’t it?

[Reprise] The REAL Job Creators: Share This Infographic To Undo GOP Fallacy

Posted by Mark NC on November 17, 2012 at 11:18 am. 2 Comments :

With the presidential election behind us, the public discourse turns once again to more substantive matters, first of which is the fearful prospect of the so-called “fiscal cliff.” Setting aside the fact that the cliff itself is a figment of media imagination, it is nevertheless necessary for congress to address tax policy.

As the debate heats up in advance of the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, conservatives are trotting out their tired rhetoric about the risk of allowing tax cuts for the rich to expire and the allegedly detrimental impact it would have on what they call job creators. However, they are deliberately distorting facts in order to benefit their wealthy patrons. Last year I published an analysis of the right-wing effort to confuse the issue along with an infographic that laid out the case for who the real job creators are. This seems like a good time to re-publish it and direct credit for creating jobs to those who actually deserve it.

Occupy Messaging: Who Are The Real Job Creators?

December 13, 2011

For too long now, right-wing propagandists like Frank Luntz have been manipulating language to distort the real issues that impact so many lives of American citizens. They engage in dishonest wordcraft that disguises their true meaning in order to shape public opinion and deceive voters. It’s time to counter that rhetorical offensive by restoring definitions that actually reflect reality.

One of the most recent and insidious examples of this practice is the conservative effort to replace references to “the rich” with the phrase “job creators.” It is of no interest to these hacks that no evidence exists to validate the claim. In fact, NPR’s congressional reporter, Tamara Keith, asked members of congress and representatives of conservative business groups to refer her to business people who could substantiate the assertion that tax cuts for the wealthy would induce them to increase hiring. They were unable to come up with a single name or example to affirm their half-baked theory. However, Keith found several examples of her own that utterly refuted it. This caused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to note that “Millionaire job creators are like unicorns. They are impossible to find and don’t exist.”

The agenda that Republicans have adopted has literally no popular constituency. Every poll taken on the subject reveals that majorities of Americans (including majorities of Republicans) favor increasing taxes on the rich. Even polls of the rich show that they believe that they are not presently sharing the sacrifice required to restore the nation’s economic health. An independent group of Patriotic Millionaires released a video beseeching Congress to raise their taxes.

So the next time you hear some GOP flunky whining about the plight of the rich whose only desire is to be unburdened from the shackles of what are the lowest taxes in decades, remember that they have not, and cannot, certify any claim that lower taxes will spur hiring. In fact, the evidence is all to the contrary. And whenever possible, we need to recapture the phrase “job creators” and use it in a manner that is more in line with reality. Here is a handy, shareable chart that illustrates who the real job creators are:

(click to view larger)
Job Creators

Some conservatives are beginning to admit that lavishing benefits on those who are already wealthy does nothing to stimulate the economy. Bill Kristol recently said that “It won’t kill the country if Republicans raise taxes a little bit on millionaires.” Ben Stein, with some apparent reluctance, told Gretchen Carlson that “With all due respect to Fox…” “We’re going to have to raise taxes on very, very rich people.”

This is the beginning of the wall crumbling down. The right knows that they cannot continue to be seen as only fighting for the welfare of the rich. They know that they have already lost this argument and that now it is only a matter of finding a way to concede without losing face (or Tea Party support).

FLASHBACK: Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party

Posted by Mark NC on November 10, 2012 at 3:15 pm. 5 Comments :

With the 2012 presidential election behind us, there has been a flurry of post-election analysis by observers from all across the political spectrum. One theme that I have seen coming from both the left and right is the notion that Fox News has not been particularly helpful to the Republican Party, despite that being their primary mission. This criticism reminded me of an article I published three years ago titled “Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party.” So I went back and read it, and to my surprise, it seems just as relevant to today’s political landscape as it did then. In fact, it’s rather frightening (and disappointing) that so little has changed. That is, unless your a Democrat, because the harm that Fox is causing to the GOP is a gift to the Democrats.

So on this lazy Saturday afternoon I thought I would reprise this article for your enjoyment. I reprint it here without a single modification.

[Purchase FreakShow stickers at Crass Commerce]

The case was made long ago that Fox News is a blight on the media map. It is bad for journalism. It is bad for Democracy. It is bad for America. A so-called “news” network that repeatedly misinforms, even deliberately disinforms, its audience is failing any test of public service embodied by an ethical press.

I, personally, have made the case for an embargo of Fox News by Democrats and progressives (see Starve the Beast: Part I, Part II, Part III), documenting via studied analysis that there is no affirmative value to appearing on Fox News – a network that has established itself as overtly hostile to the Democratic message and its messengers.

However, there is another side to this that has not been addressed previously. Republicans might be well advised to avoid Fox News as well. There is a case to be made that Fox News is demonstrably harmful to the Republican Party. In fact, it may be the worst thing to happen to Republicans in decades. That may seem counter-intuitive when discussing Fox News, the acknowledged public relations division of the Republican Party. Fox has populated its air with right-wing mouthpieces and brazenly partisan advocates for a conservative Republican agenda. They read GOP press releases on the air verbatim as if they were the product of original research. They provide a forum where Republican politicians and pundits can peddle their views unchallenged. So how is this harmful to Republicans?

If all we were witnessing was the emergence of a mainstream conservative network that aspired to advance Republican themes and policies, there would not be much of note here. Most of the conventional media was already center-right before there was a Fox News. But Fox has corralled a stable of the most disreputable, unqualified, extremist, lunatics ever assembled, and is presenting them as experts, analysts, and leaders. These third-rate icons of idiocy are marketed by Fox like any other gag gift (i.e. pet rocks, plastic vomit, Sarah Palin, etc.). So while most Americans have never heard of actual Republican party bosses like House Minority Leader John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, posers like Joe the Plumber and Carrie Prejean have become household names.

Fox News has descended into depths heretofore reserved for fringe characters. They are openly promoting the wackos who believe that President Obama is ineligible to hold office because he isn’t a U.S. citizen. They feature commentaries by secessionists and even those calling for an overthrow of the government and the Constitution. This explains how folks like Ralph Peters, a retired military officer who said that the Taliban captors of a U.S. Soldier would be saving us a lot of trouble and expense if they would just kill him, earn airtime on Fox. Peters previously told Fox News that he favors military strikes against media targets. This explains how Glenn Beck can agree with a guest that it would be a good thing if America were attacked again by Osama bin Laden. And don’t even get me started on Victoria Jackson, who has joined an ever-lengthening line of psycho-Chicken Littles who compare the President to Hitler.

Good Advice:
“If crazy ideologues have infiltrated the news business, we need to know about it.”
~ Bill O’Reilly, 7/16/09

The list of loonies extends to politicians like Michele Bachmann, entertainers like Ted Nugent, and of course, the talk show pundits like Rush Limbaugh, whose maniacal rantings are elevated by Fox into their version of political dialogue. It’s a dialogue that is consumed with ACORN conspiracies and Manchurian presidents. The problem is that by elevating bona fide nutcases, they are debasing honest and informed discourse. The mental cases are crowding out any reasonable voices that might exist amongst the more moderate Republicans (if there are any left). Fox appears to have made a tactical decision to permit the inmates full run of the asylum.

As a result, the Fox News audience is being dumbed down by a parade of paranoid know-nothings. This strategy appears to be successful for Fox in that it has attracted a loyal viewership that is eager to have their twisted preconceptions affirmed. The conflict-infused fare in which Fox specializes is a ratings juggernaut – just like any good fiction. However, this perceived popularity is having an inordinate impact on the GOP platform. By doubling down on crazy, Fox is driving the center of the Republican Party further down the rabid hole. They are reshaping the party into a more radicalized community of conspiracy nuts. So even as this helps Rupert Murdoch’s bottom line, it is making celebrities of political bottom-feeders. That can’t be good for the long-term prospects of the Republican Party.

With the Fox network unabashedly promoting the most ridiculous rumors, myths, and nightmares of the rightist fringe, moderate and independent Americans will grow ever more suspicious of the Fox/GOP agenda. Most Americans do not believe that Sonia Sotomayor is a racist; or that FEMA is constructing concentration camps; or that we are on a march toward socialism, communism, fascism, or whatever the right is peddling this week. Most Americans do not believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim, a reptilian alien, or the anti-Christ. In short, most Americans think that the loopy yarns spun by Fox News are fables told by madmen – and believed by even madder men and women who wallow in their doomsday utopia.

Fox News is fond of boasting about their ratings dominance. It is a daily occurrence and the structural core of their argument that they reflect the mood of America. The GOP has bought this argument in its entirety. So it is important to note here that success in the Nielsen ratings has no correlation to public opinion polling. The ratings only measure the program choices of Nielsen’s survey participants. That is a subset of the population at large, and not a particularly representative one. It is a sample focused on consumers, not voters. And its respondents are just those willing to have their TV viewing monitored 24 hours a day, which skews the sample in favor of people who aren’t creeped out by that. What’s more, viewing choices are not necessarily an endorsement of the opinions presented in the program. There are many reasons people choose to watch TV shows, the most frequent being its entertainment value. So any attempt to tie ratings to partisan politics is a foolish exercise that demonstrates a grievous misunderstanding of the business of television.

As for what constitutes success in the television marketplace, due to the broad diversification of available programming, it doesn’t take much to be heralded as a hit. A mere 3 share (3% of people watching TV) will land you in the top 10. For cable news the bar is set even lower. In fact, the top rated show on the top rated cable news network (The O’Reilly Factor) only gets about 3 million viewers. That’s less than 1% of the American population. It’s also less than World Wrestling Entertainment, SpongeBob SquarePants, and the CBS Evening News (the lowest rated broadcast network news program). By contrast, America’s Got Talent is seen by 12 million viewers – four times O’Reilly’s audience.

Numbers this low ought not to inspire much excitement from political operatives. Nevertheless, Republicans are riding the coattails of Fox News as if it were representative of a booming conservative mandate in the electorate. They are embracing Fox’s most delusional eccentrics. This is leading to the promotion of similar eccentrics within the party. Which brings us the absurd spectacle of the network’s nuts interviewing the party’s pinheads.

The inevitable result of this system of rewarding those farthest from reality is the creation of a constituency of crackpots. It is an endorsement of the philosophy brewed by the Tea Baggers that espouses racism, tyranny, and armed revolt. It is enabling a frightening corps of openly militant adversaries of democracy, free speech, and Constitutional rule. It is the sort of environment that produced the murders of Dr. George Tiller and Holocaust Museum guard Stephen Johns.

This is a textbook example of how the extreme rises to the top. It is also fundamentally contrary to the interests of the Republican Party. The more the population at large associates Republican ideology with the agenda of Fox News, and the fringe operators residing there, the more the party will be perceived as out of touch, or even out of their minds. It seems like such a waste after all of the effort and expense that Fox put into building a pseudo-journalistic enterprise with the goal of confounding viewers with false news-like theatrics.

Make no mistake, Fox News is still managed by hard core party patrons. And I’m not referring just to opinion-driven commentators like Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity, although they are bad enough. No, I am talking about executives and editors like CEO, Roger Ailes, former Nixon and Bush media consultant. I’m talking about Washington Managing Editor and VP, Bill Sammon, an avid right-wing alum of the Washington “Moonie” Times. I’m talking about Business News Chief and VP, Neil Cavuto, antagonistic interrupter extraordinaire. And let us not forget the head hype-master, Rupert Murdoch, whose UK operations were just discovered to have been unlawfully wiretapping celebrities, politicians, and even members of the Royal Family. Augmenting that executive roster are the GOP regulars who are straight out of the just retired Republican White House: Karl Rove, Dana Perino, John Bolton, Dan Senor, and Linda Chavez. And then there are the Fox News clowns…er…“contributors” like Dick Morris, Ann Coulter, Fred Barnes, Charles Krauthammer, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Bernie Goldberg, Michele Malkin, and on and on. If nothing else, Fox is a full-employment program for rightist weasels (and they also operate the Conservative Book Promotion Club).

The mission of Fox News from its inception was to be more than just a voice of opposition to Democrats. It was to utterly crush the left end of the political spectrum leaving only a teetering right wing with no counter balance. Yet, despite the torrid embrace between Republicans and Fox News, it is apparent that Fox is the source of a sort of friendly fire that is decimating the GOP by exalting its most outlandish and unpopular players. And since Republicans have not been particularly popular anyway lately, the anchor being thrown to them by Fox can’t be all that helpful – – – Except to Democrats.

The more things change, the more they get even crazier than they were before.

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