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Is the press prepared? The Right is.
By now, we are pretty well-versed in the ideas behind the modern-era Republican party. Beginning, possibly, with Buchanan's famous "divide and conquer" strategy. Followed by the religious right pandering. What else? Deregulation. Privatization. Executive Power. Etc, etc.
All ideas that have been tried; all ideas that have failed.
The miracle of the last thirty years in general and eight years in particular was that pretty much every wet dream of modern Republicanism was exposed as bad policy/bad governance.
The choice of Palin is, perhaps, the final frontier. Not because of who she is--because, well, she's just GWBush. But rather, because the Right is finally going to test a theory they have been nurturing heavily now for twenty years: that the press is irrelevant.
They began by bitching about the media bias, and they sold that line until it became "fact". They overtook AM radio, and created FOX. Telling their faithful that they needn't be curious or read the newspaper, shouldn't question those in power. Trust your gut and watch FOX if you want to know more. Call Rush.
It's been decades in the making. We're going to find out in the next 60 days whether it worked. They snowed the press with Iraq. But this isn't that. This isn't about making them complicit, but about making them redundant. This is the realization of a theory they've been building toward, and preparing for, for a long time. I'm curious to see how they've done.
Comments (2)
Interesting post and seems accurate. How else can McCain and Palin avoid the press and any Q&A of their alleged policies and still be in the race?
September 7, 2008 8:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, I am intensely curious to see how this is going to develop. If they win with this strategy, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that all the rules (regarding press/media) will have changed.
September 7, 2008 8:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
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