Maybe it makes sense to have fewer than twenty debates during the Republican nominating process, but the paranoia involved about the bias of the national media is amusing. It’s not the media that draws Republican candidates to the right. It’s the base of the Republican Party.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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There’s hard polling data from 2012 that when independent voters watched the Republican debates, rather than being a positive advertisement for the Republican brand, it actually drove potential voters away. Given that they’re likely to draw even crazier candidates this time (and more of them), if the GOP was smart they wouldn’t have any debates at all. Let them confine themselves to 30-second ads and comments at county dinners that, even if incendiary, probably won’t make it past local TV news.
OTOH, if you want to see these lunatics stopped, you broadcast their public statements far and wide. Even without the help of having them all routinely on the same stage trying to one-up each other to prove their Twue Kwazee ™ bonafides, they’ll still provide plenty of material. Even the ones who know better can’t help themselves. It’s up to us to make sure as many people as possible see it.
Not to be forgotten, the original “macacca” moment wasn’t in a debate, speech, or public event. Had it not taken off on the internet, the MSM would have ignored it. While it was an obvious racist moment, it was hardly on the level of what the Bundy guy and other GOP candidates have said. However, out of the mouth of Allen who had cultivated a public reputation for being a reasonable and personable Republican, it showed just enough of the real Allen that the leading 2008 GOP POTUS candidate lost his Senate seat to a nobody.
Now I don’t cruise right-wing websites very often at all. I do have a lot of family and some friends who post all kinds of links on Facebook to the stuff that percolates on those sites. And invariably, when curiosity gets the best of me and I click on one of those stories with a blaring headline about something crazy that some high profile Democrat is purported to have said, I will almost always find it is either a second-hand account by someone who gives no links, the quote is a single sentence out some larger story and is completely taken out of context or it is just a plain fat lie.
George Allen had his highly publicized “macaca moment”. Now logic would tell you that surely, there are Democrats SOMEWHERE saying truly wacky things on the same level, now wouldn’t it? But I see almost nothing regularly documented on video or audio that passes even a cursory pass through my Bullshit Detector. But yet, Republicans feed us almost a daily dose of absolute nuttery, often on national news programs in prime time. They seem to have no compunction about saying awful and offensive things or things which are simply vile.
So when I see people who talk about both sides having their crazies, I have to wonder, where are all these equivalent crazies on our side? Is the dearth just due to wingers being unable to work video or audio recorders? Or am I just not swimming in the correct fever swamp where I can see these real world examples that pass a credible scrutiny. I just find it all really strange.
Maybe I’m just missing the obvious. Maybe the fact is that they really ARE overrun with wackos.
They are overrun with wackos and they are also exceedingly ignorant and/or dumb. They appear incapable of understanding that merely labeling something a political scandal with a limited set of facts that may suggest but is far from proof doesn’t make it a scandal. And that the failure of further investigations to uncover new revelations or facts means there isn’t a scandal or it’s too well buried ever to find it and therefore, a waste of time.
They can’t see (or deny seeing) that once questions and investigations of Christie began last fall, new information on his corruption, and quite possibly criminal activity, has been surfacing on a regular basis. Whereas, over a year and a half on with no less effort, nothing new of any materiality or substance has emerged wrt Benghazi.
Nothing they do seems to have the intent of convincing anyone on the validity of their argument. It seems they are only intent on the continual animation of their crazy base and raising money; as demonstrated by their “Benghazi Watchdog” promotion. What’s next? Offering coffee mugs emblazoned with the pictures of the four dead Americans? These people simply cannot be shamed.
They scurried likety-split when Cliven Bundy spoke out loud “wondering” if “the Negro” wasn’t better off as a slave. Maybe that didn’t shame them, but it was close enough to get them to distance themselves Bundy and state that his “wondering” was unacceptable.
I really don’t believe that the vast majority of Republicans agree with Bundy’s statement on its face. But there is little doubt that a good number of those allied with them do hold a negative view of non-white people in this country. They are not wearing hoods out in public or burning crosses on lawns, but they do support policies and laws which have the affect of making those non-white people less of an American than themselves when it comes to the rights and privileges of American citizenship. One does not have to look very far to find clear evidence supporting this fact. So, in essence, their support of these things is simply a proxy act for those behaviors which are now no longer culturally permissible in public. The intent and the desired end result is the same. But they have been forced to change the means by which they get to their desired goal.
They take care of the dumb crazies, Marie.
We take care of the smarter ones. The more sophisticated ones. The ones who don’t have to move their lips when they read.
“Insanity: The act of repeating the same actions over and over again even though they do not work.”
Crazies on both sides.
That’s right…
AG
Funny, you have not any actual linked facts to back up your assertions just like other crazies spouting unsupported non-sense do.
And NO misquoting a Stealers Wheel line isn’t supporting your fact free rant, at all. It results in making you resemble a little more the crazy uncle, who nobody wants to listen to, ranting incoherently, at most family get togethers ……
That’s “nonsense,” clif. Not “non-sense.”
Lern to spel.
And I linked to the page that held those lyrics after checking a number of others to make sure that they all agreed.
Why?
Because:
1-I like accuracy.
Yore memorie must be fawlty as wel as yore sintax and speling.
and
2-I didn’t pay much attention to low-level, one-hit pop music bands in the ’70s. Too busy listening to, studying and playing with the geniuses of real American art music. I didn’t pay much attention to splatter films like “Reservoir Dogs” either…the inclusion of that song in the film gave it a new lease on life in the ’90s. Now I believe it’s being played on the yuppie-aimed “easy listening” stations. Such is life. Don”t hear no Miles w/Gil Evans on them, though. No Mingus either. Hmmm…
It’s a great couple of lines, though. Kinda like posting on a leftiness blog trying to make some sense instead of blatting out leftiness talking points.
Latter…
AG
P.S. This place is beginning to smell very Dkos-like. Too bad. It coulda been a contender, but now it’s just a contractor.
Still NO actual facts to back up your clueless drivel eh Aur-thor … (misspelled intentionally)
There are no facts,, clif. Just differing opinions and statements about what actually comprises a “fact.” No numbers can be counted upon in this system, no witnesses exist that cannot be destroyed by the right cross-examiner. We cannot find out the “facts” about who killed JFK, RFK or MLK Jr. We cannot even count on “facts” about a fender-bender accident. He says/she says and may the craftiest liar win. Almost everyone here is now living by the lie, and for good reason. Tell the truth big enough/loud enough and you get Snowdened. We now survive by prevarication and outright lying. Do you tell the truth on your tax returns? Really? (Don’t answer that, the IRS is watching. Bet on it.)
Do you believe the so-called facts that are spewed by the media?
Oh.
Which facts from which (always disagreeing) media?
We are living in a post-factual system.
It is often said the the winners write history.
Word.
The winners establish the facts as well. True or false.
You carp about my lack of “facts” in my arguments here.
Here is a real fact for you.
I observe and I comment upon what I have observed. I do so honestly, with no eye to personal profit or honors, no skew towards any political positions of any kind. It’s just what I do. Take it or leave it. I don’t really care.
AG
no skew towards any political positions of any kind
Bull(rand paul/cliven bundy)shit
How can anyone who supports both Elizabeth Warren and Rand Paul be considered “skewed towards” a certain position on the left->center->right continuum? If you were to consider that continuum a circle, you might say that I am “skewed” towards anyone who effectively challenges the area on the circumference of this criminal enterprise that we laughingly call the Deep State/PermaGov, but otherwise?
Nope.
Go swing at another kneejerk leftiness dream, clif. You’ll strike out every time, because they’re all knuckleballs.
Knuckleballs for knuckleheads.
AG
Still pushing a line with NO actual facts to back it up I see.
BTW the Deep State/PermaGov, started when the organisers of the country agreed to allow part of the human race to be held as slaves in it’s founding document, and openly advocated stealing land from another large section of the continents populace for their and their allies eventual profit.
Get over yer-self aur-thor …….
Dere Clif…
Yu rite:
And?
Is this news of some kind?
How does this pertain to what you have been saying about my positions and arguments?
Empty shit, clif.
Go shit off another cliff. I am through wasting time on you.
AG
P.S. Here’s a grammatically correct version of your post above.
All arm waving no facts as usual.
Interesting, when the simple fact that the founders were setting up a government for rich land owning white men only, you don’t want to comment on it but cry and run away.
bye-buh aur-thor
The Devil makes them do it.
Ah yes, the “bias” of the media to hand Repubs a megaphone every time they ask for it, and only occasionally and deferentially question the stupidity that gets amplified.
The ironic thing is that probably only a fraction of the truly crazy and offensive things said by Republican candidates ever makes it into the mainstream national news flow. Those of us who swim in the liberal blogosphere every day see and hear about virtually ALL of them. So that’s what makes even more ridiculous the accusation that somehow the national media are sweeping up everything that the candidates say and filtering it like the NSA does our phone calls, and then bleating it, ad nauseam, until everyone gets some kind of misperception that these are totally mainstream things that are getting all twisted and contorted out of context. And it’s all a conspiracy with the “far radical left”.
As crazy as that all sounds, it makes perfect sense in the world of talk radio, tin-foil hats and poll skewers.
What is annoying is that apparently the networks are ok with their moderators being augmented by “journalists” from the National Review and other conservative outlets. That will keep the adversarial questions to a minimum. Keep the dirt under the rug. Maybe Dem debates should include bloggers from Daily Kos and Huffington Post.
I say there should be a Republican primary debate every single night on every single network.
Let the voters see the clown car in action, every single day. It might even be enough to get someone like Bernie Sanders elected POTUS.