Tony Blankley was Newt Gingrich’s press secretary when the Speaker presided over the two government shutdowns of 1995. He thinks the Republicans can now shut down the government without losing the public relations battle. I’ve actually been wondering whether or not he’s not right about that.
We lost that battle for three reasons: 1) because the shutdown was falsely but effectively framed in the public mind as motivated by the personal pique of the speaker and the desire of the GOP to “cut Medicare in order to give tax cuts to the rich,” 2) the issue of deficit spending and public debt was of much less concern to the public than it is now and 3) we were not able to deliver our interpretation of the issues directly to even our own supporters.
Back in 1995, there was no Fox News; there was no broadly used Internet; and conservative talk radio was not nearly as powerful as it is today. I had to try to get our message to the public through the filter of the mainstream media (New York Times, Washington Post, CNS, NBC, ABC, etc.) at a time when it was in fact mainstream. They were in no mood to fairly represent the facts, and we got shellacked.
Today, we are in the aftermath of an election that was largely about deficit spending and Obamacare (and the trillions most GOP voters correctly believe it will get us further in debt). So that not only is the deficit issue far more powerfully motivating than it was in 1995 — but if the GOP fails to even try to seriously reduce the deficit (which means addressing, among other issues, Medicare and Social Security), it is likely to pay harshly in the next election for such inaction.
I think we’re crazy if we think we can automatically win a media debate about a government shutdown. The mighty right-wing wurlitzer is so much stronger today than it was in 1995 that it can convince 40% of the country that the Sun is blue and global warming is a myth made up by socialists. We should assume nothing from the history of the 1995 government shutdowns.
I think the left needs to get serious about nurturing their own alternative media. If they don’t, we’re going to continue to lose battles that we used to win.
They can get started by buying some advertising on this site.
