Boehlert writes: "True, conservatives in recent years have shown virtually no interest in critiquing, let alone trying to rein in, Ailes' empire. Still, it's becoming increasingly clear that Fox's programming and the radical, fear-based agenda it's setting for Republicans is now doing lasting damage to the Grand Old Party."
Roger Ailes, Fox News CEO. (photo: MediaBistro)
How Fox News Is Destroying the Republican Party
27 January 12
annabe kingmaker Roger Ailes is facing an open revolt.
More and more despondent conservatives are expressing alarm over the unfolding Republican primary season and what they see as the party's dwindling chances of defeating President Obama in November. Spooked at the general elections prospects facing frontrunners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich (especially Gingrich), members of the so-called Republican Establishment seem to want to reboot the election season and try their nominating luck again.
Sorry, it's too late.
If the current state of concern transforms into a larger, enveloping blame game, Fox News chairman Ailes ought be a looming target. True, conservatives in recent years have shown virtually no interest in critiquing, let alone trying to rein in, Ailes' empire. Still, it's becoming increasingly clear that Fox's programming and the radical, fear-based agenda it's setting for Republicans is now doing lasting damage to the Grand Old Party.
That's because Fox News isn't simply offering a rightward take on the day's events, or innocently providing Republican-friendly commentary, of course. It's leading an exhausting, day-in, day-out attack campaign against Obama, Democrats and all their liberal allies. (Real or imagined.) Its relentless, paranoid crusade falls well outside the mainstream of American politics, which is why the Republican primary season, so proudly sponsored by Fox News, is shaping up to be such an embarrassment.
Make no mistake, kingmaker Ailes has made sure his channel's profoundly un-serious stamp permeates this year's GOP contest. For more and more spooked Republicans though, it's a stamp of failure and looming defeat.
For Ailes and company, that slash-and-burn formula works wonders in terms of super-serving its hardcore, hard-right audience of three million viewers. But in terms of supporting a serious, national campaign and a serious, national conversation? It's not working. At all.
As Fox News has moved in and essentially replaced the RNC as the driving electoral force in Republican politics today, and with Ailes ensconced in his kingmaker role, candidates have had to bow down to Fox in search of votes and the channel's coveted free airtime. That means campaigns have been forced to become part of the channel's culture of personal destruction, as well as its signature self-pity.
The truth is, the Republican Establishment all but ceded control of the party, or at least the public face of the party, to Fox News (and Rush Limbaugh) in January, 2009. Party leaders, demoralized by John McCain's electoral landslide defeat, faded into the background and obediently followed Fox News' often-hysterical lead as Rupert Murdoch's cable channel unveiled an unprecedented effort to demonize and delegitimize the newly elected president. (In the Fox-led world, it's conventional wisdom that Obama's a foreign, race-baiting Marxist who undermines Israel and is determined to destroy the American way of life.)
With Fox News at the irresponsible helm, the conservative movement in America, including the emerging Tea Party, became first and foremost a media movement, and one that gleefully cut ties with common sense and decency. (See: Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh.)
As blogger Andrew Sullivan noted this week:
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.
With media outlets setting the conservative agenda, as well as raising campaign funds and boosting GOP candidates, it was Fox News that quickly transformed itself into the Opposition Party. It was Roger Ailes who, officially or unofficially, began to wear two hats: Program Director at Fox News, Chairman of the RNC.
In terms of whipping up bouts of anti-Obama hysteria, the crass Fox approach enjoyed some short-term success. However, that same media movement is now three long and rhetorically repetitive years into its Obama crusade and trying to nominate a presidential candidate via an extended national campaign. According to more and more worried conservatives, the results on display are disastrous.
Of course, conservatives should have thought that through before handing over the reigns to Ailes and his misinformation minions. Indeed, none of this is unexpected. It's all entirely predictable. It's what happens when a mainstream political movement embraces a radical media strategy like the one being promoted by Fox News; the movement marches itself off a cliff.
Conservative leaders themselves have freely adopted Fox News' profoundly un-unprofessional rhetoric about Obama, claiming just this week he's "pro-poverty" and his politics are "almost un-American." That's the Fox-ification of the GOP.
As Andrew Sullivan noted this week, the current GOP "purges dissidents, it vaunts total loyalty, it polices discourse for any deviation." That sounds a lot like Fox News.
Two years ago, despondent conservative and former Bush speechwriter David Frum, noting the sweeping power that Ailes was accumulating, observed that, "Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox."
As the Republican primary unfolds, I wonder if more and more poll-weary conservatives would like to fire their new boss.
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Comments
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In advocating an increasingly extreme conservative agenda, and "managing" the facts to fit it, the RNC has lost control of the party to its fringe elements (FOX lovers)-- those who actually believe the garbage they have been spewing for so long. Until they retool they may well find themselves out of the spotlight for awhile-- and trying to manage an increasingly extreme right-wing base. FOX may not be compliant.
Of course the 1% have the Democrats to fall back on. Obama may not be ideal for them, but they won't complain too much given his track record.
If the aim of the conservative political end is to look-out for one's self, eventually even friends become competitors. In difficult economic environments, especially manufactured ones, it is only a very small step from competitor to enemy. FOX is masterful, maybe their only real strength, at casting those roles.
And don't forget, he proposed a negative income tax to provide ongoing support to low income folks. That would be called "socialism" today.
this....
The Republicans have argued for 30 years that the only thing holding back the magical Market is
1. Your tax dollars are going to Negroes. (Formerly, "nigras.") Cut social programs. DONE.
2. Your not making more money because wages are too high in the United States. Let corporations cut wages and become competitive. DONE.
The mendacity and racism of the first argument need no further discussion.
The inherent contradiction of the second argument however, is Orwellian: "You're poor because the wages of working people are too high."
But people fall for it - larded with nonsensical rhetoric about Hayek, and freedum, and markets, and competition, and, recently Galt.
Personally, I've concluded that Americans like being lied to. Like Party members in 1984, they want to think that everyone else is being lied to more, and that they're on the inside. I think Guy Debord got at this.
1. Your tax dollars are going to Negroes. (Formerly, "nigras.") Cut social programs. DONE.
2. Your not making more money because wages are too high in the United States. Let corporations cut wages and become competitive. DONE.
The inherent contradiction of the second argument however, is Orwellian: "You're poor because the wages of working people are too high."
But people fall for it -
thank you for the insight! I hadn't thought it thru, but that is it.
It's everyone else's wages are supposed to be lower but "mine"
Of course "mine" is supposed to be high wages.
That fact that this makes no sense has not been thought thru.
Fox has gained so many people who are "wanna bees" who Don't want anything as much as a group of "winners" to give a resounding "Yes" to.
Sorry about all the "" but this was as well as I can express this thought.
Buh-bye GOP. Can't say I'll miss ya.
I was nervous all through September in 2008 and can't imagine this year will be anything less than a nail bitter.
2) the GOP primary circus is an obvious scam. how can anyone take it seriously? So what's up with letting idiot candidates whip up mass hysteria & hate & claw each other to pieces? When one gets a majority & others drop out, maybe "the nominee" gets knocked off (by some "radical" "leftist" OWS "dem" [black too?] can we say "cia+mossad"?) The left & obama are revealed as America's real enemies.
Nominee-less with committed delegates freed, the George Orwell Party calls in a "reluctant hero" (unsullied by the primaries) who "be-grudgingly" accepts The Party's nomination to lead the war against america's internal enemies. the old guard is relieved; fox, tp, nra, & other hatemongers are vindicated; the MIC & wall st get what they want. plus battlefield america becomes real profitable, it cuts shipping costs & keeps jobs here.
I think you should write it up with more detail, though, and peddle it as fiction. And make some dough. NOW! This would make a great novella. (And might prevent it from occurring.)
Can we speed along their demise?
It's three hosts are totally lacking in any real journalistic credentials. Indeed one of them, an amiable twit named Steve Doocy (whose last name will one day become a verb, I promise you), is a former TV weatherman. He now has the job of commenting daily on important matters of national and international concern - that is, when he's able to find the time to pry himself away from the latest Brittany or Paris scandal du jour. FOX and Friends is embarrassing any way you analyze it. It is nothing more than a propaganda arm of the Republican National Committee. It's message is as simplistic as it is unbalanced:
`
Conservative: GOOD. Liberal: BAD. Think of it as Mallard Fillmore in real time.
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
I see a real disaster coming. It might just be in FOX employee Newt taking the White House. Newt is psychologically and morally unstable, just as are FOX's main anchors -- O'Reilly, Hannity, and others. The lunatics will be in control of the asylum. All hell will break loose. But that may be the final implosion of the US that we need. Obama and his type just keep a bankrupt and criminal regime in washinton going. Maybe we need a Newt to push it to the collapse.
On the bright side, the conservative movement of the last 30 years continues to self destruct. Conservatives can no longer campaign on deregulation and tax cuts so the desperation and hate of the culture war in this election season is no surprise. They will have to move to the center or become even more irrelevant.
"The liberal group Media Matters has quietly transformed itself in preparation for what its founder, David Brock, described in an interview as an all-out campaign of “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” aimed at the Fox News Channel.
The group, launched as a more traditional media critic, has all but abandoned its monitoring of newspapers and other television networks and is narrowing its focus to Fox and a handful of conservative websites, which its leaders view as political organizations and the “nerve center” of the conservative movement. The shift reflects the centrality of the cable channel to the contemporary conservative movement, as well as the loathing it inspires among liberals — not least among the donors who fund Media Matters’ staff of about 90, who are arrayed in neat rows in a giant war room above Massachusetts Avenue.
“The strategy that we had had toward Fox was basically a strategy of containment,” said Brock, Media Matters’ chairman and founder and a former conservative journalist, adding that the group’s main aim had been to challenge the factual claims of the channel and to attempt to prevent them from reaching the mainstream media.
The new strategy, he said, is a “war on Fox.”
Lee Nason
New Bedford, Massachusetts
Fox is a victim of Librul Conspiracy.
Waaah
Fox has won court cases where they were told its ok to lie. I read one case where Fox paid a reporter to investigate something they wanted to slam, when the reporter said the information was correct and wanted to print that information, Fox took them to court and Fox won. Lying is ok, because Fox has the courts backing up their lies. Im sure there probably was a big payola to the judge whomever he was or he was a right wing tool and just went along, no matter, Fox has a legal right to lie on their news. I hope the truth comes out about all of it.
They have no business reporting anything but sports, they are a travesty to Americans and our way of life.
On another note: I have been taking the Prickly pear juice for 2 months and it is great. It is helping me a lot. i am so glad, that you mentioned it. Thanks a lot.
I know what you mean, I know people that seem to have common sense in other areas of their life, but they spout Fox News blurbs like they are facts too, its nuts!
X Dane, Im so glad its helping you, Im so glad your feeling better!
Things are even worse for the Republicans than is being acknowledged in the media. Demographics and most serious indicators don't look very promising. No matter how much money they spend or how much voter suppression they attempt or voter hacking, etc, it doesn't look like they'll get more than 40-45% of the vote. There is a God.
You are so right. It has become obvious of late that the purpose of the Dems is to be the old Republicans. If you co-opt the dems and push them to the right there is no chance of socialist or collective thinking. Now we have the denizens of crazies on the right arguing about how quickly we can get into another war. Obama is no different. All the policies of both parties protect the status quo at the expense of ordinary people. There is only Ron Paul talking about not going to war again. I mean really how did we get here? The Dems are just as corrupt is my conclusion. We need a new party.
They are fact based, but if you believe Fox News...then any other media is left wing. Fox News Lies...dong you get it? They arent fact based they are allowed to tell you whatever they want you to think.
The reason those other media outlets seem unfair to you, is they base things on whats going on, granted they may have a leaning to the left, but Fox is 100 miles right of the crazy lunatic fringe. Your just another victim of the Fox Noise machine!
I have watched Fox news...for what I could stomach...and they are creating lunatics with their spin on how they report the so called news, which really boils down to their opinion.
Fox news has an opinion and spin on everything they report, if you cant see that your so sucked into their BS that it somehow all makes sense to you. Its a spin and opinion based channel.
FOX = THE NO NEWS ZONE...JUST SPIN AND OPINION THAT TELLS YOU HOW TO THINK! That equals brainwashing.
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