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Damn! Beautifully written.
Right-wing media hosts have little effect on voters
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...k/6649786.html
Right-wing media hosts have little effect on voters
By DAVID BROOKS
New York Times
Oct. 2, 2009, 8:39PM
Let us take a trip back into history. Not ancient history. Recent history. It is the winter of 2007. The presidential primaries are approaching. The talk jocks like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and the rest are over the moon about Fred Thompson. They're weak at the knees at the thought of Mitt Romney. Meanwhile, they are hurling torrents of abuse at the unreliable deviationists: John McCain and Mike Huckabee.
Yet somehow, despite the fervor of the great microphone giants, the Thompson campaign flops like a fish. Despite the schoolgirl delight from the radio studios, the Romney campaign underperforms.
Meanwhile, Huckabee surges. Limbaugh attacks him, but social conservatives flock.
Along comes New Hampshire and McCain wins! Republican voters have not heeded their masters in the media. Before long, South Carolina looms as the crucial point of the race. The contest is effectively between Romney and McCain. The talk jocks are now in spittle-flecked furor. Day after day, whole programs are dedicated to hurling abuse at McCain and everybody ever associated with him. The jocks are threatening to unleash their angry millions.
Yet the imaginary armies do not materialize. McCain wins the South Carolina primary and goes on to win the nomination. The talk jocks can't even deliver the conservative voters who show up at Republican primaries. They can't even deliver South Carolina!
So what is the theme of our history lesson? It is a story of remarkable volume and utter weakness. It is the story of media mavens who claim to represent a hidden majority but who in fact represent a mere niche — even in the Republican Party. It is a story as old as The Wizard of Oz, of grand illusions and small men behind the curtain.
But, of course, we shouldn't be surprised by this story. Over the past few years the talk jocks have demonstrated their real-world weakness time and again. Back in 2006, they threatened to build a new majority on anti-immigration fervor. House Republicans like J.D. Hayworth and Randy Graf, both of Arizona, built their re-election campaigns under that banner. But these two didn't march to glory. Both lost their seats.
In 2008, after McCain had won his nomination, Limbaugh turned his attention to the Democratic race. He commanded his followers to vote in the Democratic primaries for Hillary Clinton because “we need Barack Obama bloodied up politically.” Todd Donovan of Western Washington University has looked at data from 38 states and could find no strong evidence that significant numbers of people actually did what Limbaugh commanded. Rush blared the trumpets, but few of his Dittoheads advanced.
Over the years, I have asked dozens of politicians what happens when Limbaugh and his colleagues attack. The story is always the same. Hundreds of calls come in. The receptionists are miserable. But the numbers back home do not move. There is no effect on the favorability rating or the re-election prospects. In the media world, he is a giant. In the real world, he's not.
But this is not merely a story of weakness. It is a story of resilience. For no matter how often their hollowness is exposed, the jocks still reweave the myth of their own power. They still ride the airwaves claiming to speak for millions. They still confuse listeners with voters. And they are aided in this endeavor by their enablers. They are enabled by cynical Democrats, who love to claim that Rush Limbaugh controls the GOP. They are enabled by lazy pundits who find it easier to argue with showmen than with people whose opinions are based on knowledge. They are enabled by the slightly educated snobs who believe that Glenn Beck really is the voice of Middle America.
So the myth returns. Just months after the election and the humiliation, everyone is again convinced that Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and the rest possess real power. And the saddest thing is that even Republican politicians come to believe it. They mistake media for reality. They pre-emptively surrender to armies that don't exist.
They pay more attention to Rush's imaginary millions than to the real voters down the street. The Republican Party is unpopular because it's more interested in pleasing Rush's ghosts than actual people. The party is leaderless right now because nobody has the guts to step outside the rigid parameters enforced by the radio jocks and create a new party iden y.
The party is losing because it has adopted a radio entertainer's niche-building strategy, while abandoning the politician's coalition-building strategy.
The rise of Beck, Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and the rest has correlated almost perfectly with the decline of the GOP. But it's not because the talk jocks have real power. It's because they have illusory power, because Republicans hear the media mythology and fall for it every time.
I hope hey keep doing what they are doing. Keep listening to these morons because when you do, the Dems and the country benefit.
Damn! Beautifully written.
keep up the good work
Waft away the stench and smoke of hate media, and maybe one can still glimpse America the Beautiful?
Hate media:
"A tale Told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
Huckaby, pitbull , Pawlenty, Willard gonna lead Repugs in 2012? PLEASE PLEASE ME!
left wing nut paper stating this
makes me want to believe the oppsite
Brooks, along with Douthout, is the NYT's token conservative.
Like all Repugs and conservatives, don't let facts disturb your "beliefs".
Brooks's FACTS are clear, can you dispute them with your BELIEFS?
not surprising at all.
what does the president want to do?
since 2008 he says more troops in afganastan now he can not make up his mind.
he ing needs to stop playing policts with people lives
then this health care thing
what does he want in it
MAKE UP YOUR ING MIND
If that's the case, why does the White House spend so much time worrying about what they have to say?Right-wing media hosts have little effect on voters
why is stick figure going after fox news
who refuses to kiss anybodies ass
he doesn't waste his time with fox news
That's because you are a ing moron who doesn't know who David Brooks is.
Brooks is a starched, steady establishmentarian; populism is both untidy and uncouth. Of course he will be keen to minimize it an apparent high water mark.
I've been saying this for about a year...These wing-nut pundits control very little actual political power except with those who would never vote Democrat anyway, but as we've seen with the ACORN fiasco, the M$M buys this stupid crap and starts treating it like it's real....the pundits are very effective at getting the GOP base, what's left anyway, fired up and on the phones to anyone and everyone, and gets them to town-hall meetings to try and control the agenda by not letting representatives, who are democratically elected, express their views to their cons uents...
if that was the case foxnews wouldnt have a company
I kind of think that too. It wouldn't be the same without all the willing sponges.
Except I think Rupert Murdoch would adapt. There'd still be a Fox news. He'd find other willing sponges. Maybe even social democracy sponges.
Unfortunately, there are ~ 40 million hard-core righties in American who think like Lush, Innsanity, and Glenn Beckkk - more than enough to account for a propaganda station like FAUX to succeed...
it doesn't take much audience to be #1. Total, all channels, prime time cable news audience is about 5 million, a tiny percentage of votings citizens who are themselves less that half the total population.
Christian Science Monitor“I am not a member of any organized party,” Will Rogers famously quipped. “I am a Democrat.” Then there were those old jokes about Democrats forming “circular firing squads.”
But these days, it seems like Republicans are the ones duking it out with each other … or at least examining where they are and where they should be headed after recent electoral drubbings.
Mainstream Republicans are looking at the loudest of the conservative voices — Sarah Palin and the most prominent of the talk-show types (Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, et al) — and concluding that the GOP needs to do something different if it’s to succeed.
yeah that is why the white house is going after fox news
boy is your head in the sand
do you know him personally?
wasnt fox complaining that he wouldnt talk them?
If this is true, which I doubt.... more whisteling pass the graveyard. Why is it the left in america is so keen on passing the "fairness doctrine" why is mark lloyd Obama"s diverstiy czar enthralled with goverment control of the free press?And why does every leftwing moonbat on this forum go ape frothing at the mouth hissy fit, every time any right wing commentators name get's mentioned.
Who went ape before your signature meltdown?
b_d calling Brooks a "token republican"? Nbadan being himself?
Is that what pissed you off?
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