propaganda –noun 1. information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.
The modern Republican Party has mastered the art of propaganda. Republican operatives have learned to get their talking points across so effectively that an idea that pops into in Karl Rove’s head on Monday morning generally becomes the media’s conventional wisdom by Friday afternoon.
My purpose today is not to condemn them for their success at this. If I detach myself from the actual stakes involved I can even admire the skill involved, the way you might admire the ruthless efficiency of a lion as it goes in for the kill.
But it has now become clear that their skill at propaganda has come at a price. Once the engine of its success, the GOP propaganda machine now threatens to destroy it.
There’s more....
The Republican propaganda machine was on full display this weekend promoting their cause du jour, Sarah Palin. You could see it when the talking heads in the mainstream media repeated the GOP talking points on the new VP candidate verbatim---they had to, because they literally had no other information on Palin to rely on. You can see it in this email glurge making the rounds that repackages their talking points into a seemingly spontaneous outpouring of support from "Deb," allegedly from Palin’s home town in Alaska.
It used to be that GOP operatives were wise enough to use their propaganda purely as a technique to persuade others. After all, a wise salesman doesn’t believe his own advertising.
But not any more. The Palin decision shows that the Republicans have started to believe their own propaganda. That's led them to make a disastrous choice for VP.
It’s not so much that Palin is inexperienced, though that’s true. And it’s not that she has things in her background that may make her the laughingstock of the country, though that may well turn out to be true as well. It’s that the powers that be that picked Palin are absolutely depending on her to deliver votes she will not get. It will cost them the election.
Over the last few months a powerful idea became conventional wisdom. There are, the story went, millions of Democratic and independent women who were once Hillary supporters but are now ready to dump Obama and jump to McCain.
These millions of women do not exist. While there were obviously many who were disappointed Hillary is not the nominee, they have become Obama supporters. If you look at the poll numbers you’ll see that Obama has a substantial lead among women overall, and that the women who were thinking of voting for Hillary and now are considering McCain are just what you’d expect—Republicans who were flirting with crossing over to the Democratic side.
This myth of the disgruntled Hillary democrat was created by the Republicans with the intention of driving a wedge between the Clinton and Obama camps and creating an awkward, uncomfortable Democratic convention (much like the 1980 Democratic convention where Carter and Kennedy supporters feuded openly.) The purpose in creating the myth was purely to sew chaos among the Democratic troops.
And yet, ironically, the Republican power brokers have come to believe their own myth. It’s clear the overriding factor in Palin was not her record, nor even her policy positions (though most of them are perfectly attuned to the hard right.) Palin was picked because she was a woman, and has been given the job of attracting the "Hillary vote." The McCain campaign has been explicit about this: "If we get them we win; if we don't we lose," a McCain advisor is quoted as saying in Slate.
It won’t work. The disgruntled Hillary supporters Palin is supposed to attract only ever existed in the fevered imaginations of the Republican propagandists. And ven if they did exist Palin’s policy positions would drive them away instead of attracting them.
The very act of trying to snag Hillary supporters alienates the Republican base. Palin has already been booed by hardliners for mentioning Hillary in her speeches. Worst of all for McCain, putting an unqualified candidate on the ticket has alienated the independents who until Friday saw McCain as the safer choice on national security.
The Republicans created the myth of the disgruntled Hillary supporter to send the Democrats off on a snipe hunt. Yet ironically here we are in September and while the Democrats are united and focused, it’s the Republicans are off in the brush looking for that ever-elusive snipe.