If we thought Jim Vandehei's and Mike Allen's piece of Politico schmuck pom-poming how DC establishment had turned against the Obama Administration, was bad enough, just read Charlie Cook's latest article. He outright tells GOP "[a]s a tactical matter, a subterranean campaign will score more direct hits on the president." Anyone who still thought there is a shred of integrity anywhere left in our corporate media, should erase that from their mind.
Charlie Cook of The National Journal, pollster and apparatchik of the furrow-browed serious journos wrote this in May18th issue of The National Journal:
Republicans would be much wiser to pursue a third option: Dig up as much damaging information as they can about the Obama administration and leak it to reporters they know will write tough stories that won’t be traced back to the source. That way, the public won’t see the GOP as being obsessed with attacking the other side and playing gotcha at the expense of the big issues facing the country—the ones voters really care about.
Meanwhile, everyone in Washington will watch polls for signs of blood in the water, indications that the controversies or scandals—depending upon your perspective—are taking a political toll on Obama’s job-approval numbers.
So the job description for our journos is to catalyze bloodsports. It's not new, but now it's brazen. They don't care if their bias is blatant...
In the article titled Don't Gloat, Leak Charlie Cook tells Republicans how to hide their "schadenfreude" by getting reporters who write "tough stories" to do their dirty work for them bloodying President Obama up.
But as much as congressional Republicans are enjoying their schadenfreude, they would be well advised to think long and hard about their next steps. Even the most cursory look at opinion polls or focus groups reveals that the public is convinced we have an ineffectual and out-of-touch Congress that spends too much time backbiting, grandstanding, and Monday-morning quarterbacking while the country’s problems fester. Arguably, showboating for the cameras and holding hearings are what Congress does best; the temptation is unavoidable.
This is coming from same guy who on May 14th wrote a piece titled
While Republicans Rant about Benghazi and IRS, Public Mostly Yawns" indicating that poll numbers are showing the faux scandals to be having zero impact on President Obama.
Well, a journalist-pollster with integrity would leave the story at that, right? But no. In this day and age there is no such thing as simply reporting facts and leaving them be. Charlie Cook dispenses this "advise" to GOP for no other stated reason than to brign President Obama's poll numbers down just so history can be repeated.
If the facts don't fit your narrative, why, gin up your own "facts"!!
The lowest week of Gallup polling thus far for Obama was 40 percent, occurring in August and October of 2011. Arguably, he is due for a dip, given that each of his modern predecessors has dropped into the 30s or below. Presidents Ford, Reagan, and Clinton each hit a low point of 37 percent. President George W. Bush’s low ebb was 31 percent; Nixon’s was 27 percent; Carter’s was 28 percent; and George H.W. Bush’s was 29 percent.
Charlie Cook is after all twiddling his thumbs waiting to see which "scandals" real or ginned up "
takes on legs" because "
History says something always happens in the second term."
Well, in Charlie Cook's warped mind that "something" can only be negative which must be induced to occur if it doesn't do so naturally. Yeah...
This is a more virulent version of the diatribe we heard last year in the run up to the 2012 elections, No President has been re-elected with Unemployment rates above 7%, then 8%, Enthusiasm gap, Obama 2008 coalition was a fluke, blah blah blah!
But reading that piece made me sick. As sequester takes it's horrible toll on many vulnerable people who've been rendered invisible; as GOP House votes to deny those same people access to healthcare (however imperfect it is); as the conservative movement rabidly tears our commonweal apart, our Journalists focus on meta, on inducing bloodsport so their little historical boxes can be ticked. Really, Charlie?...
This is the media cauldron within which Democrats are trying to govern these United States of America. PATHETIC!