Brutal Coming Attractions

Nice to see the Dems already hitting hard:

No use being namby-pamby anymore not after your leader has been called both Hitler and Mao as well as African, and lies spread like memes that he somehow hates America, apologizes for America or has made us weaker internationally.

No use waiting too late to brand the likely opponent after watching John Kerry take the high road to getting Swiftboated.

This is likely to be a brutal campaign...and you don't bring a knife to a gunfight.

We're Listening

Is Eric Cantor the next Michael Steele?



The first Republican official who doesn't give a shit what Rush says about him will be the first one with any kind of shot at the Presidency.

The Jebbish Cometh

Wow, that was fast. As I noted on Thursday, the new GOP rebranding effort is actually a re-emergence vehicle for the Bush Family, specifically the originally anointed one, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the man who did everything in his power to seal his state for his brother back in the disputed, anti-democratic (small "d") 2000 Presidential election.

This is the elected official who had his election commissioner, glitzy hack Katherine Harris, remove 57,700 registered (mainly minority) voters from the rolls for crimes they did not commit and had state troopers blocking access for some minority voters.

If America votes in as President a third member of what Kitty Kelley called a bigger crime family than the Sopranos, after two failed Administrations (the latter most spectacularly), then we deserve all the big business and Christianist damage that follows.

Oh, and on his brother's greatest legacy, America as purveyor or torture, look, how the insiders are starting to leak out their differences...i.e. positioning for the official inquiry(ies) to come.

And why wouldn't they, when even fourth graders are calling them on it.

Facts Is

El Presidente Bush and the truthy Stephen Colbert have given the Republican Party, a.k.a. modern Conservatism, a reputation for disregard of facts. Distrust of facts would be too kind. And it's rampant throughout the party, just as it was when some men still wanted to preserve the institution of slavery or deny suffragettes the right to vote. Conservatism as stuck.

Now, for example, there will be a national health care system that costs taxpayers but improves health security for America, as it does in Japan, Canada, Western Europe. And this will ultimately make our nation more competitive with the rest of the world.

There's a lot of flailing by Republicans at their troubles, trying to grapple by rebranding, new salesmanship for the fantasies that they call ideas that have now proven to fail. Everyone knows it, which is why adult party identification has falled to near 20%. When a political party sinks below 20%, into the teens, of voter identification, then do they deserve to be treated on equal footing with the major national party they oppose? At 19%, wouldn't that make the GOP some sort of Third Party?

After all the grading of President Obama's first one hundred days in office, here's a list of where the Republicans are after their first one hundred days in session. Top of JCWilmore's list:

The GOP failed to block a single Obama agenda item while at the same time letting the GOP be branded as the "Party of No." To the extent that the economy turns around as the result of Obama's stimulus package, Republicans will have no claim whatsoever to that success. The Republicans have painted themselves into a corner where they have to hope that the United States fails economically, and Americans sense--and resent--that fact.

JC goes on to say the Party's agenda is entirely devoted to self-defence now, and calls Sarah Palin "the designated next Republican presidential candidate" with a campaign already fatally flawed and likely to loose to Obama by an historic margin. Sixth point is the real significance of Specter's switch to the GOP's future:

The defection of Arlen Specter handed the Democrats the ability to pass legislation without a single Republican vote as long as the legislation is moderate enough to hold the Democratic Party together. The Democratic Party would have achieved this goal in the 2010 mid-term elections, but the GOP's gift of Specter puts the Democratic Party and Obama about 20 months ahead of where we thought we'd be on key issues like health care. Specter won't help us do everything, but what he will do will help us ensure Democratic victory in 2010. We won't get everything we want from Specter, but we should have a solid record of achievement to show off in 2010 and 2012.

That last point is the really fatal one for the GOP. The GOP needs the United States to fail in some way--for the American people to come crawling back--but the GOP has largely lost the ability to intervene in the affairs of the United States, for good or ill.

Twenty months ahead. If a week is a lifetime in politics, what's twenty months?

It's well-worth reading the end of the analysis, with the Party in slow collapse but still powerful enough (fundraising) to squelch or co-opt any real Third Party, as they did with the Teabaggers, essentially a nascent grassroots party. Which leaves the progressives as the loyal opposition while the Obama/Democratic government will grow increasingly conservative (small "c") as they get too used to power.

Orbital Mind Control Lasers have a fleshed out list as well, this one of why the GOP rebranding is doomed to failure. The toplines (he has explanations for each:

• The Republicans have become, for better or worse, the party of rural/suburban white people.
• At this point in time, conservatives are dealing with a deep sense of failure.
• Conservatives are caught up in identity politics.
  
• The core of their victim imagery makes no sense.
  
• The conservative media machine is stuck in a loop.
  
• Any Republican leader who steps up to take on the Noise Machine will be attacked by the Noise Machine.
• Today's Republican leaders represent the worst traits of the GOP.
• Environmentalism is becoming more and more important.
• Democrats have successfully painted the GOP as the Party of Liars.
• This is why secession talk is becoming so popular.

The facts are the facts. The GOP/Conservative notions are all in the dustbin, thanks to deregulation, widespread next generational support for marriage equality, the ruined Iraqi families, the lives lost. The secrecy. The torture. They don't need new branding, they need a sea change.

Of course, the fact is that Obama's built an extremely strong team. As in taking his biggest rival for the Presidency, Republican or Democrat, and giving her the most important post in his Cabinet. And she's thriving.

The fact is, the Republicans are up against this.



Good luck with the one-on-one.

Brand

I've finally figured it out. I was fooled by the quasi-journalistic trappings, Chris Wallace, the word "News" in the title. It may have been over ten years ago by now that Sumner Redstone said something along the lines that he'd rather have X number of Comedy Centrals than one CBS, i.e. a handful of brand-defined cable channels with small but reliable viewerships over one major network where the vicissitudes at the top can thrash balance sheets year-over-year.

Fox News just can't be taken too seriously anymore. It's boiled down its audience to its brand by going some extremely into the pure brand direction and it's not a growing brand, no matter circus sideshow periods when a Glenn Beck gets a few more curious eyeballs, the barker ginning up the media like Morton Downey used to while holding a cigarette. It's the brand that was vanquished in the last election from all elective branches of the Federal government. It's the loser.

Sure, losers can come back, but unless we're actually watching the burning of the Republic live on Fox with Hannity, Cavuto, Van Susteren, Beck and Riley screaming I told you so live on the scenes, most Americans are not going to start watching. Just the hardcore audience, which they seem more focused on keeping than expanding.

Here's my new take: as long as the Republican Party is shackled to Fox News as their mouthpiece of choice, they will be condemned to being a minority party. Only when they stop going on Fox the way the Dems do (I mean, c'mon, Evan Byah, who do you think you are?), when they shun the extremism that is tearing apart the Right itself.

For the length of the Bush Administration, starting with John Ellis over at FNC calling the 2000 election for his cousin George before all the other networks and arguably tipping the Electoral College, Fox News has seemed like the broadcast outlet for the Republican Party. Cheerleading for the Iraq War build-up and rarely criticising Presidents Bush (save Harriet Miers) or Cheney (not even when he shot an old man in the face). But it's changed.

Fox is no longer the voice of the Republican Party. The GOP is the voice of Fox News. These past two and a half months of the Obama Administration, it's begun seeming like the only reason the Party exists is to keep the voice of Fox News and, similarly, Rush Limbaugh alive. Not to challenge anything being said for any of these commentators on the Right or face approbation from an audience that has a greater allegiance to the TV personalities sharing their living rooms, kitchens, family rooms and dens, bedrooms and offices than they do to any currently serving Republican politician.

Ronald Reagan was a powerful brand. Eisenhower, Nixon for quite a while. Gerald Ford not so much.

Obama is now the largest and most sought-after brand on the planet. Fox News may catch a lucky break if things go from bad to worse, but with 3 1/2 years before the electorate can vote out Obama, it's a long shot that things won't feel better, especially because I think the very policies he's been putting into place are smart ways to help revivify our country.

Many Conservatives, i.e. Paleo and Libertarian, are realizing that they are prisoners of the Republican Party (with no where else to go, and I'd bet against a split into two smaller parties). The Republican Party is prisoner of Fox News. And Fox News is a prisoner of its core brand psychographic. Maybe the channel can't grow beyond a cable-sized winner, but it's a mistake to expect that it'll ever depict mainstream Liberal democratic thought with anything less than skepticism and most often contempt, because it can't afford to alienate it's core audience.

What's left is a kind of around-the-clock ideological performance art. How else can one describe Glenn Beck's program, which features him as a sort of overgrown baby, infantilized by his tantrums, fears and emotional swoons (a sense-memory master) as well as his appearance: the doughy face, virtually hairless, with those watery eyes rolling around in his head. Getting that core audience to cleave as closely to the breast of FNC-branded political entertainment as possible.

Once you rid yourself of the notion that Fox News is nothing more than reality TV, the Real Housewives or Kimora but as a live feed from their studios, it's harder to get worked up about it. They will always have their fans, and God help us that the most hardcore don't keep shooting folks like in Pittsburgh, but the acts on the channel have grown so nonsensical that they are limited from growing their audience large enough to change the fate of our government.

At least not this year.