Organizations, like Fox News and others both left and right, have determined how to attack political figures in an effective, escalating manner without making claims that are so outrageous that they cause amusement even from their base that are inclined to believe them.
How do you attack a political figure? In most cases, they have already gone through a vetting process. We know they aren’t murders or (in most cases) convicted felons. They may have something in their past they don’t want public. Would you want everything in your past to be made public? Many public figures have ties to many different organizations and businesses and may not know many of the more unsavory practices used by them but few are flat out dishonest even if we don’t like their political viewpoints. At the same time, few national politicians get to where they are without skating on the edges of the law. They play in the grey zone of “maybe legal, maybe not” more than most people.
Not all media groups have a political agenda that they place in front of actual facts. Organizations that do, like Pam Geller’s Atlas Shrugged, are usually laughed off by readers except the most committed who already believe in her drivel. The more ideologically committed organizations have a long-term strategy that allows them to slowly ramp up their attacks from the minor to the major charges by conditioning their audience to expect more revelations about the short-comings of their opponents.
Consider the attacks on President Obama by Fox. Today, calling him a Kenyan, socialist, Muslim, totalitarian dedicated to the overthrow of American life is normal for all Fox correspondents. But if Fox had started with that conversation, they would have been relegated to the same kook status as Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. Some people would believe them but they would have been marginalized as a major political or editorial voice.
Instead, they start with a little lie with a little bit of obfuscation – the birth certificate. Obama wouldn’t release it. People talk about the birth certificate that leads to the question of where he really was born. Then you ramp up the attack with another minor made up controversy. Eventually, the birth certificate scandal is assumed to be true or at least implicitly ignored. The damage has been done. Then attacks on his faith and friends, where he goes to church and who his radical friends like Bill Ayers are. Each attack allows additional attacks with the prior attacks moving into the background of credibility. Now the lies continue. Release your college transcripts. Fast and furious. Then the IRS non-scandal and Benghazi. Each attack builds upon the prior attacks. People that don’t believe the original lie have put stored it in their mind and it builds credibility while the true believers just add it to their list of grievances.
The attacks on Clinton have begun now. Unfortunately for her due to her long presence in the public eye, there is more fodder for the right wing noise machines. But she needs to respond forcefully to ever lie, ever bit of misinformation published or spoken about her. She cannot allow the talking heads on Fox or the writers at the Washington Post to make any unsubstantiated claim about her or her policies. If so she is going to have to start defending bigger questions already suffering from a loss of credibility.
It takes money and effort to weaken or destroy political opponents in this manner. Fox and the right wingers have the money and probably have already laid out their media strategy. Clinton needs to be ready on day 1 to respond to their attacks starting with the little lie.