Anticipating '06: How will the media save the GOP?

Democrats have been understandably very optimistic about our chances for at least some gains in Congress and elsewhere in the 2006 election.  The Republican true colors are finally showing in ways even the RWCM (right wing corporate media, aka the American mass media, for you new Kossacks) can't completely explain away.   While most Kossacks aren't willing to get complacent per se, I think it will help us be savvy and motivated if we sensibly anticipate that the RWCM will try to do what they have successfully done for the last three election cycles.  Which is to take lots of bad news for the Republicans and distract people from it, respin it in favor of the Republicans, and/or demonize Dems enough so that they look even worse than the Republicans... all in time to secure a Republican victory at the polls.

Republicans have been not looking so popular, galvanized, and untouchable lately.  There has been the Schiavo fiasco, vicious homophobic legislation, and other religious right evil that has woken some people up.  Then there is the Social Security privatization plan/non-plan/semi-plan fiasco and all of its inherent unpopularity.  The bankruptcy bill hasn't gotten as much media attention as some of this other stuff- probably because there is no way for the RWCM to spin in positively for the right; therefore the people that have heard about it probably have started to lean more to our side because of it.  The RWCM has tried their hardest to spin the judicial nominations in favor of those poor, frustrated Republicans and against us selfish, obstructionist Dems. But I think more people have realized that something fishy is going on ever since the Schiavo thing and all of those anti-judge threats of violence.  

But let's not assume we're going to win just by sticking to the facts, watching the Republicans crumble for the time being, and working hard for our own candidates.  The Republicans were coming apart not long before each of the last three elections, and the RWCM managed to re-brainwash enough people to secure a Republican victory (or at least enough votes that they could cheat the rest of the way to victory) for each.  Each time, Dems were left saying "What happened?"   What happened was that we did not anticipate that even the GOP's bad situations could be so thoroughly reversed each time by the RWCM.  And those of us that anticipated that the RWCM would do this didn't anticipate what exact lies the RWCM would repeat a billion times to turn things around.  

What could the RWCM possibly use to save the GOP this time?  Let's review the strategies from the last few election cycles in order to help anticipate what bits and pieces of these the RWCM will use most next cycle, what new ideas they might come up with, and what we can do to pre-empt or reverse whatever they try to do.  

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2000 cycle
 

Dem expectations:  The Republicans look like intolerant, crazy hypocrites with screwy priorities thanks to the Lewinsky fiasco.  We've been having the best economy in many years for several years now.  Al Gore is experienced and obviously intelligent while Bush is a far-right, inexperienced, unaccomplished idiot who can't even stumble his way through a long word, let alone a sentence.  We're going to win for sure!
 

RWCM strategy:  Sure Washington politicians look crazy thanks to the Lewinsky-obsessed Republicans, but let's help the Republican candidate toot his "I'm an outsider" horn so he looks like he's the one who hasn't been a part of this, while focusing on Gore as an elitist longtime Washington insider.  Sure Bush is dumb, but let's focus on how this makes him seem like a regular guy while making Gore's tendency to sound "cerebral" into an "elitist" liability.  Also, let's make Gore out to be the liar by intentionally misquoting him.  Then we'll not only ignore Bush's dishonest, corrupt record in Texas, but we'll condemn the New York Times and any other major media outlet who writes about it as liberally biased.  
 

Result: With the help of cheating and activist judges, Bush squeaks into the presidency in an election that he should have lost in a huge landslide.  

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2002 cycle
 

Dem expectations:  The economy is really bad, something the ruling party usually can't escape electorally.  9/11 helped Bush a lot especially thanks to the media, but the huge approval ratings aren't so big anymore, and people have gone back to the pre-9/11 tendency to keep figuring out just how extreme Bush and the Republicans are.  Nothing's a sure bet, but looking at the individual races out there it definitely looks like we could win this one.  
 

RWCM strategy: Sure the economy is bad and a lot of people have realized that Bush is pretty extreme.  But many people haven't realized this.  We can not only make this into a very unusual year when the ruling party actually wins big, despite the economy and despite that after a new President takes office his party usually loses in the mid-terms.  Not only that, but after we make these unlikely events happen we'll make it look like it wasn't due to us, but due to the uber-popularity, special magic, and favored-by-God status of the Republicans themselves (as well as the hatedness and pathetic incompetence of the Democrats).  So here's what we do: Make the Democrats who have disagreed with Bush out to be soft, pacifist, unpatriotic terrorist sympathizers who won't keep you safe. And make Democrats who have supported a lot of Bush's agenda out to be pathetic followers from a confused party that can't seem to define a distinct message.
 

Result: GOP gains in both houses.

 

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2004 cycle
 

Dem expectations:  The war was proven to be a lie, it keeps getting worse for our troops and everyone else involved, torture has happened under Bush's watch, the economy still mostly sucks, and more and more people have woken up to how extreme and deadly this administration is.  Not to mention that our nominee is a war hero and the hubris-filled incompetent war-monger Bush is a draft dodger who didn't even serve out his time in the National Guard.  This is the most obviously bad, hypocritical, theocratic, dangerous administration in history, and we are going to win for sure.
 

RWCM strategy: We'll keep calling Kerry a flip-flopper and emphasizing his elitism and dullness and his wife's supposed meanness, craziness, and foreignness (we never complained about that with Schwarzenegger, but hey).  Updated strategy in mid-summer: Kerry is still ahead but we can still win this for Bush.  Let's keep telling the Dems that they need to have a positive-sounding convention because people see them as too negative and anti-Bush.  Then when they take our intentionally bad advice (like they always do), we'll claim the convention didn't present enough energy or outrage or enough of an alternative.  We'll claim that Kerry's supposedly tepid proposals actually allow the incumbent to be the reformer (I actually heard pundits say this!!!).  Then we'll give much more glowing and complete coverage of the GOP convention.  We'll dovetail this with a narrative about how people are faithfully forgetting about the supposedly bad aspects of the issues of the past four years and happily warming up to Bush again (we won't claim any practical or issue-based reason, but who says the sheeplike voters need one).  Then we will let these Swifties make Kerry out to be the traitor even though we could easily check and report the facts that prove they are liars.  Final fall strategy: To add insult to injury we will demonize Rather for telling truth about Bush's service (we'll finally make Bush look like the loyal soldier and make Kerry look like the traitor after all!!!!) by pointing out that the papers that the already proven facts about Bush's AWOL appeared on were fake.  We'll ignore that other documents and people prove that Bush really was AWOL and make it look like Rather is the bad dishonest one.  We'll allow people to make the assumption that Bush really did serve his Guard time.  This will further deflect from our right-wing bias by furthering the false narrative about a liberal media dishonestly beating up on poor Bush.  We'll add to that our own tsk-tsking about how crazy and bad liberals are for being so anti-Bush (since we'll have made people forget about Bush's actual record on the issues by this time).  We can make people sympathetic towards poor slandered Bush by discussing these crazy liberals and tell people to vote for Bush just to spite these mean, unpatriotic liberals (ignoring the mean conservatives that dominate our business of course).  Let's also make the religious right's into a boon to the GOP by making it look like it the Dems are anti-religion for criticizing the right's intolerance and for allowing non-xians into their party.  
 

Result:  I don't have to remind you.

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I could also go on about Deaniac expectations vs. an incredibly insidious and well-coordinated RWCM strategy in the 2004 primaries, but you mostly know the arguments which I and others have discussed on Kos before.  And I don't want to make this into an argument about whether Kerry or Dean was a better nominee pick, as I just want this to be a diary that unites us in brainstorming about what is next.  

Also I could go on about the RWCM strategy in the CA recall. I.e. how the media uses the culture of celebrity against Democrats (those awful Hollywood liberals) while using it to help the Republicans (A popular action actor as governor?  How fascinating and entertaining!  Let's talk about how cool it sounds until he gets elected!).  Then there was the unbelievably Orwellian move of blaming the energy crisis on the guy who got unfairly backed into a corner by Enron's lies,  while helping elect the guy who had been at Enron's clandestine meetings.  

But on to the action item:  What do you think they are going to come up with to save the GOP and increase their hold on Congress and the states in '06?  And what can we do to counter, discredit, and pre-empt it?

•  How will they save the GOP? One word:

  Diebold

  by Southern Bird on Mon May 09, 2005 at 01:10:22 PM PDT

  •  Yes, as always

    Ignoring the mountain of evidence that the voting machines are stealing it for the GOP again and acting like it's just another mandate in favor of those always-popular Republicans and against those hated Democrats... but I'm sure we'll hear something about Democratic voter fraud somewhere.  

    by DemDachshund on Mon May 09, 2005 at 01:13:34 PM PDT

  •  The corporate media are not Diebold

    but they just don't report on the evidence of computer vote-stealing. It messes with the cororate media myth that the USA is the essence of democracy.

    Their basic message on this important story is: Move along, nothing to see here and what's with that tinfoil hat you're wearing.

    by devtob on Mon May 09, 2005 at 02:29:39 PM PDT

    •  You're right

      it's not the corporate media, I guess my answer was really a reply to "How will the GOP save itself?"

      And you're also right about the corporate media not wanting to report on any evidence of voter/computer fraud.  Not to mention a LOT of other supposingly smart people....

      If nothing changes by 2008, get used to saying "President Jeb Bush."

      by Southern Bird on Mon May 09, 2005 at 02:43:53 PM PDT

•  Your forgetting...

  In 2004, the RWCM downplays the fact that several states (I think like 13) had gay-marriage initiatives on the ballot which was likely to bring ultra-conservatives, who rarely vote in any election, to the polls to cast votes for Bush and other Repugs along with their homophobic votes.

  I think if the Dems had paid more attention to these state initiatives, they would have emphasized the effort to bring opposition to these measures, which may have brought more non-voting liberals to the polls.

  by lalawguy on Mon May 09, 2005 at 01:18:31 PM PDT

  •  And beyond that

    The media might have realized that if Dems worked against these ballot measures it would have increased their turnout as you say.  Which may be why the media kept making Dems feel like they should either stay neutral or support such ballot measures.  

    by DemDachshund on Mon May 09, 2005 at 01:22:04 PM PDT

•  i like this diary alot

  and will recommend b/c it was super entertaining (though funny and sad at the same time) to read.  but please please please do something about the format and put some paragraph breaks or something ...

  by Stampy51 on Mon May 09, 2005 at 01:23:05 PM PDT

  •  My efforts

    to make this cooperate with formatting have resulted in nothing but frustration.  I guess I don't understand the counterintuitive "edit diary" function.

    by DemDachshund on Mon May 09, 2005 at 01:38:33 PM PDT

  •  Okay I finally figued it out

    if anyone's still reading

    by DemDachshund on Mon May 09, 2005 at 01:41:59 PM PDT

•  Money

  They have successfully been selling themselves for more and more money to the wealthy elites and special interests, purchasing their political offices by overwhelming individual Democrats and the entire Democratic Party by selling public policy to the highest bidder.

  It seems to be working. After all, Americans worship at the altar of the Almighty Dollar.

  Perhaps if someone can find a way to effectively bring this to the attention of the American electorate, there might be a chance...but not with a media machine that feeds at the trough of all of this money.

  by wdrath on Mon May 09, 2005 at 01:49:28 PM PDT

•  War in Iran?

  It worked in Iraq.

  by VAdem on Mon May 09, 2005 at 02:00:45 PM PDT

•  Nice analysis

  but calling it an "RWCM" strategy may leave the impression that the media people developed it on their own, which I don't think you mean to say. Undoubtedly it was developed by media and non-media people working together.

  To counter, discredit, and preempt, we presumably would need our politicians to work in concert with sympathetic media people without feeding the RWCM spies. I don't know how this could be done, but presumably there's a way. If journalism were not virtually dead, the countering, discrediting, and preempting would be done automatically, but that does not seem to be happening. The truth now seems to need to be smuggled out like contraband.

  Of course, we also badly, badly need our own networks to get our own narrative out there.

  by AlanF on Mon May 09, 2005 at 02:04:10 PM PDT

•  They'll keep doing

  the stuff that has shown itself to work.

  First, in 2000, they did well by allowing the Chimp to appear the "outsider," as you point out, thereby dissociating himself from any negative associations with whatever had been going on with the Republicans in Washington before his arrival on the scene.  They will need to do the same thing for whoever gets the Republican nomination in 2008, so let's be on the lookout for attempts to hide ties between BushCo and their 2008 Prez candidate.  It is important that we catalogue and carefully store any information that may be helpful in tying their candidate to the infractions of the current administration.

  Next, they know gay marriage is a hot button that's always worth pushing.  Watch for gay marriage initiatives on more states' ballots.  There is a reason they didn't all put them on in 2004 -- they are holding plenty of states in reserve for 2008 when they again plan to whip up the wingnuts for whom gay marriage is the only reason to bother going to the polls.  It is important that we work to keep gay marriage initiatives consistently chugging forward as an everyday issue rather than allow Republicans to try to hold everything back for one big scary blitz in the weeks leading up to the election.

  Also, they know that keeping Democrats on the run -- letting Republicans set the agenda, and forcing us to respond respond respond all the time -- works like a charm.  We need to learn two things:  (a) when to ignore the attempts to draw us into a fight on their terms, and (b) when to immediately fight back with MASSIVE RETALIATION.  We failed on both counts last time, failed very badly.  We have to pre-empt the RWCM's ability to set the agenda on behalf of the Republicans.

  Next, we have to make stronger efforts to inform the country where "the centre" actually is.  The way the RWCM would have it, "the centre according to Democrats" is somewhere left of Stalin.  We need to be energetic in countering RWCM endeavours like this, not because "the centre" is the answer to everyone's questions and the Holy Grail we all must seek (I'm not a centrist myself), but simply because whether we like it or not "the centre" is something that is conceptually appealing to voters who aren't closely in touch with the ins and outs of actual politics in America.  We need to acknowledge that the idea of "the centre" will be comforting to many people coming out of 8 years of wingnuttery and we need to make sure they understand that "the centre" isn't where Republicans and the RWCM say it is.

  But most importantly, we need some really good whipping on our own side.  Too often, Congresscritters and Senators have sidled off the reservation, probably because they have an eye to this "centre" thing and are wisely acknowledging it, but doing all the wrong things to reposition it where it belongs.  Instead of shuffling rightwards and moderating language in an attempt to catch up with where the RWCM and the Republicans say the centre has gone (Kerry, Clinton, are you listening??) we need to loudly and insistently make clear to our representatives that they are FINE WHERE THEY ARE and must STAND THEIR GROUND rather than trying to mould themselves into some mythical "electable Democrat" as defined by Republicans!  We know huge attention will be given in the RWCM to any Democrat who appears to break from the party and shuffle rightwards, so we need to not let our people do that in the first place.  They need to be menaced as effectively as the Republicans menace THEIR people when they go off message.

  by Loquatrix on Mon May 09, 2005 at 02:07:59 PM PDT

•  Money matters

  and most political money is spent on media, which then tend to support the candidates who are their best clients.

  Themes the Republicans will use, and will become the basis of too much media reporting, include (in their terms): homosexual marriage, war on terror, culture of life, people of faith, Ten Commandments, support the troops, personal accountability, tax relief and the old standby, evil liberals (with new devils like Moveon.org and Kos, etc.).  

  by devtob on Mon May 09, 2005 at 02:23:54 PM PDT

•  2006

  At least some parts of the Theocon gameplan are always the same.

  First, they take our strengths and turn them directly upside-down. Kerry was a war hero running against a champagne-unit chickenhawk, so they said Kerry was weak, for example. Terrorism increased under Bush, so they claimed Kerry would increase terror. Anything to pre-empt us.

  Second, they find something to attack--preferably a straw man. They'll attack gay marriage when it doesn't exist, for example, or they'll attack flag burning or activist judges or soft-on-crime Democrats or whatever. Doesn't really matter, as this paints us into a corner: either we try to explain why we don't support a Constitutional amendment banning flag burning (or activists judges,etc.) which means we lose, or we agree with them, which means they win. (Oh, and one thing I wish all Ds understood: whoever explains, loses. If they make you explain, you've already lost, no matter how good the explanation is.)

  So what do I expect? They'll attack Democrats for the high oil prices, bad economy, for undermining the traditional check-and-balances of a smooth-running government, and of viscious personal attacks.

  Second, they'll find something to venomously front-page, in all the newspapers and TV news. Maybe Willie Horton 2.0, maybe  Ward Churchill 2.0, whatever. They'll probably find an example of some freakshow nutjob leftie and make him (works better than 'her,' I think) famous and demand that all Ds denounce him. Then they'll revel in the denunciations, or will claim they weren't strong or fast enough. What would work perfectly is an abusive left-wing judge--one of them, among the hundreds of freakjudges out there, must be a leftie--and attack him, with the full might of the Republican Noise Machine, all channels all the time.

  We can do nothing to counter this: once it's started, it's too late. The genius of these attacks is that if you don't answer them, you're weak and tacitly agreeing, and if you do, you're participating in a conversation which undermines you.

  We could pre-empt them, though I'm not sure this is possible without our own Noise Machine, which we haven't got. (However, a nice first step would be refraining from pathetic bullshit like Markos's front-page Kerry slams.) We'd follow their gameplan:

  First, attack them for 'Big Spending,' say. Over and over, every time any D mentions Republicans, they should say 'Big Spending Republicans.' Every time. Create a debate explicitly about the questino of whether or not the Rs are for Big Spending. (Or Borrow and Spend, or whatever.) This also works, with, say, undermining family values. We don't use a well-reasoned (and truthful) screed against all they do to actually hurt average American families, but some outrageous and unanswerable exception. Say that the divorce and domestic violence rates are higher in red states: "Why do Republicans divorce more? Are Republicans the party of divorce?" That sort of thing.

  And create new targets for attacks: not necessarily the weaks spots, like DeLay. Attack the strong spots--that's what they do, and it works. Take Laura Bush. Can you imagine if Hillary Clinton had killed a kid drunk driving in High School? We need our sleazeball pundits to say: "I think this discussion of Laura Bush's vehicular homicide is totally inappropraite! The boy she killed--let him rest in peace. We should not be talking about this, and I resent your asking me if she's really the sort of role-model we want for our children, given that she did apparently kill this boy ..."

  Get very slimy, very fast. Does anything else work with this media?

  by GussieFN on Mon May 09, 2005 at 02:29:24 PM PDT

•  Good points...

  But let's not forget that democrats ran some God awful campaigns.

  Democrats need to adjust to this new reality - you cannot sit back and assume the media will weed out the lies smeared against you.  You have to attack right back.

  Kerry could have muted the swift liars attacks had he not waited for someone else to do it for him.  He might have even been able to turn it to his advantage if he would have pointed out the funding trail, the lies, etc when he had his soapbox.  Instead, he just assumed the media would clear up the whole mess and exonerate him.  Not gonna happen.

  There were a lot of other bad moves made by alot of the other candidates too, it's not just Kerry - it's the whole lot.  We need to toss out the current crop of failed consultants and get new ones.  Train talking head guests and hone the message.  It needs to be short, concise and easy to repeat in a few sentences - backed up by solid reasoning for those who care to actually understand what's going on.

  by dad2jac on Mon May 09, 2005 at 02:56:25 PM PDT

•  I think

  they are going to sit back and watch as we elect a candidate who is from the East Coast (or who merely represents an eastern state) instead of a ripe for the picking western state. They will let us do the work.

  by flounder on Mon May 09, 2005 at 03:41:22 PM PDT