Boehlert writes: "This grand experiment of marrying a political movement around a cable TV channel was a grand failure in 2012."
File photo, Fox News logo. (photo: Fox News)
The GOP's Lost Year In the Fox News Bubble
31 December 12
uffering an election hangover after having been told by Fox News that Mitt Romney's victory was a sure thing (a "landslide" predicted by Dick Morris), some Republicans have promised to break their addiction to the right-wing news channel in the coming year. Vowing to venture beyond the comforts of the Fox News bubble, strategists insist it's crucial that the party address its "choir-preaching problem."
Good luck.
This grand experiment of marrying a political movement around a cable TV channel was a grand failure in 2012. But there's little indication that enough Republicans will have the courage, or even the desire, to break free from Fox's firm grip on branding the party.
For Fox News chief Roger Ailes, the network's slash-and-burn formula worked wonders in terms of catering a hardcore, hard-right audience of several million viewers. (Fox News is poised to post $1 billion in profits this year.) But in terms of supporting a national campaign and hosting a nationwide conversation about the country's future, Fox's work this year was a marked failure.
And that failure helped sink any hopes the GOP had of winning the White House.
From the farcical, underwhelming GOP primary that Fox News sponsored, through the general election campaign, it seemed that at every juncture where Romney suffered a major misstep, Fox misinformation hovered nearby. Again and again, Romney damaged his presidential hopes when he embraced the Fox News rhetoric; when he ran as the Fox News Candidate.
Whether it was botching the facts surrounding the terrorist raid on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, parroting the Fox talking point about lazy, shiftless voters who make up "47 percent" of the electorate, or Romney's baffling embrace of reality TV show host-turned Fox News pontificator Donald Trump, the Republican candidate did damage to his chances whenever he let Fox News act as his chief campaign adviser.
Fox viewers didn't fare much better. Fed a year's worth of misinformation about the candidates, and completely misled about the state of the race (all the polls are skewed!), Fox faithful were left crushed on Election Night when Romney's fictitious landslide failed to materialize.
"On the biggest political story of the year," wrote Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic, "the conservative media just got its ass handed to it by the mainstream media."
Indeed, Fox's coverage of the campaign has been widely panned as an editorial and political fiasco. The coverage failed to move the needle in the direction of its favored Republican candidate, and the coverage remained detached from campaign reality for months at a time. (Megyn Kelly in July: The Obama campaign is "starting to panic." That was false.)
Following another lopsided loss to Obama, Republican strategist Mike Murphy urged Republicans to embrace a view of America that's not lifted from "Rush Limbaugh's dream journal." (The Fox News dream journal looks nearly identical to Limbaugh's.)
And San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll wondered if Romney's defeat marked the end of a Fox News era:
You had to wonder about Fox. This is the third presidential election in which Fox has been a major player, and the Democrats have won two of them. A combination of big money and big propaganda was supposed to carry the day for Romney and the Republicans, but it didn't. Could it be that the Fox model has played out?
Is the Fox model of a cable paranoia played out in terms of ratings? It is not. Is the Fox model of cable paranoia played out as an electoral blueprint? It sure looks that way.
Of course, conservatives should have thought that through before handing over the control of a political movement to Ailes and his misinformation minions. They should have thought twice about the long-term implication of having irresponsible media outlets like Fox supersede leadership within the Republican Party, and should have figured out first if Fox News had an off switch to use in case of emergencies.
It doesn't.
Yet as Fox News segued into the de facto leader of the Republican Party, becoming the driving electoral force, and with Ailes entrenched in his kingmaker role, candidates had to bow down to Fox in search of votes and the channel's coveted free airtime.
And Andrew Sullivan noted in January:
The Republican Establishment is Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes, Karl Rove, and their mainfold products, from Hannity to Levin. They rule on the talk radio airwaves and on the GOP's own "news" channel, Fox.
There's a reason New York magazine labeled Ailes "the head of the Republican Party." And that's why a GOP source told the magazine, "You can't run for the Republican nomination without talking to Roger Every single candidate has consulted with Roger."
That meant campaigns were forced to become part of the channel's culture of personal destruction, as well as to blanket itself in Fox's signature self-pity. (Here was Mitt Romney adopting the right-wing whine that the conspiratorial press was out to sink his campaign.)
Still, the right-wing bubble was a comfortable place to inhabit if you thought of Obama as an historic monster, or if you required to be reminded of that fact many time a day, every day of the year. The bubble is the place where followers for four years were fed the feel-good GOP narrative about how Obama's presidency was a fiasco, that the Americans suffered a severe case of 2008 buyer's remorse, and that the president's re-election defeat was all but pre-ordained.
The one-part-panic, one-part-denial message may have cheered obsessive Obama-haters, but it didn't prepare conservatives for the reality of the campaign season.
And it cost the GOP a lost year in the Fox News bubble.
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Europe is all jazzed up over this (I'm in Europe now, and it's madness, truly), as is "The Street," for all the reasons you've pointed out. A call for a referendum gives power to the people...wow... what a novel idea. I can see the headline now:
"Greece: The First REAL Democracy!"
Nan
support assange and wikileaks if u want your gov to be honest with you and allow u to have a say.
http://www.swedenversusassange.com/
The fact that Greece is out spending its ability to repay will not go away with any vote about refinancing - they have to live within their means or go bankrupt and then live within their means.
Just like our politicians never should of replaced actual savings in Social Security with IOU's and papered that fact over by calling the IOU's government securities (Dudes - when these 'securities' mature - exactly where is the money going to come from to make them good?)
Then you are a poor student of history.
The founders knew that democracies always commit suicide by realizing they can vote them selves largess from the public treasury and they do and the whole thing collapses - then a dictatorship is pushed in to play by the same idiots who did not want to take responsibility for them selves when they were a democracy (its the 1% holding us down mannn -- what an ignorant load of crap.)
Whenever the topic is of importance to the 1% oligarchs, it is ALWAYS an inside job here in the land of faux democracy.
Whose faux is it...
I totally agree!
Nan
Robbing Greece is the symbolic, if not actual, death blow they would like to inflict on meaningful Democracy. They want the Greek people to pay more taxes while getting lower wages and in the meantime they should sell off their historical inheritance.
The banks fucked Greece up back 10 years ago when they began insisting on austerity instead of investment. The banks lost money and the people must pay. I hope the righties look at Greece and see the dangers of cutting everything back, of ignoring investing in the future, of putting the onus of recovery on those least able to afford it.
Instead they will just twist the Greek fiasco into a warped validation of their concepts of economics.
When are we going to wake up to the fact that the IMF and banks should not control the world? We followed the IMF bailout/payoff/ austerity model and screwed the pooch--finance execs bought new Porsches and vacationed offshore on our dime, also.
So Greece had the guts to ask the people. Wow, what an amazing and courageous step to take.
>> If Greek voters reject the terms and the nation defaults, it will face far higher borrowing costs [??] in the future
Greece has been a great role model, they have the ability to restructure.
So OB is going there to tell them not to be a Democracy while killing other Dictators and lying to the people in other Countries about Democracy Should be interesting .
Greece hold your own and tell Euro to take their markers and shove them. People of Greece stop and look, are you importing more than you export...Suppor t Made in Greece! That goes for all Countries. Put your Country first...let China et al export to themselves. Keep jobs in your Country. Tell Wall Street to go home. Finance thru Credit Unions let the Banks and Corporate shills play their games amongst themselves.
Review the past, correct it, you will see once you start listening to others, not following what you know, you lose control on your situation.
Democracy is Alive and Well in Greece!!
Glad we found its location, there is hope for us yet