SUMMARY
Sadly, in the last few years we have seen the Republicans use thuglike political tactics while Democrats continue to follow the Marquis of Queensbury rules to a fault: as a result the Democrats get beat up for their lunch money week after week. The Republicans are not accustomed to seeing Democrats actually fighting political battles effectively. Now, however, the Democrats are throwing an elbow here and there, forcefully getting their message out, and calling a spade a spade when the situation calls for it, and the Republicans are outraged. As Democrats challenge the Republicans on the facts and their actions, as they call attention to their own accomplishments, as they point out that they were killing bin Laden and saving the auto industry while the Republicans were attacking Medicare and unions, as they point out that the Republicans won the midterms by lying about which party was attacking Medicare, the Republicans are crying “foul!” Typical of this is the dish-it-out-but-can’t-take-it behavior of Newt Gingrich, who has a thirty-year career of calling people out and attacking them, but goes into meltdown when the scrutiny is aimed at him: he changes his story repeatedly, he demands that his past behavior and past misstatements be off-limits, then he attacks the media as biased, then runs away from the media entirely. Central to this “work the ref” strategy is attacking the “refs” themselves, by continuing their 40-year effort to peddle the myth that the media is biased to the left.
DETAILS
A new tactic has emerged: the Republicans are trying to rewrite the rules for political debate. Republicans are allowed to launch whatever attacks they like, but if the Democrats challenge the Republicans on anything, or make the Republicans look bad, or even discuss their own accomplishments, they’re not being “civil”. Democrats are not allowed to mention that they, and not the Republicans, killed bin Laden. Democrats, after enduring a year of dishonest smears about Democrats destroying Medicare (and death panels and throwing grandma under the bus), are not allowed to make honest criticisms about Ryan’s very real plan to destroy Medicare. And the criticisms aimed at Democrats a year ago in the town halls, all the lies about death panels, were perfectly alright, but now that Republicans are being hit with perfectly valid criticisms in the same town halls, they’re crying foul and throwing out anyone with a camera or a microphone.
After Gingrich was busted like a piñata for condemning Ryan’s budget as “rightwing social engineering”, he realized that his idiotic statement would be featured in a hundred Democratic attack ads in 2012. So he unilaterally declared his own statement off-limits. "Any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood, because I have said publicly those words were inaccurate and unfortunate." So quoting him accurately is really a lie.
And then he declared that all “gotcha” questions about his past are also off-limits, all while he says that everything is on the table. For Republicans, a "gotcha" question is any question which a Republican botches the answer for, no matter how simple it is. Governor Palin, which newspapers do you read? And "gotcha" questions are always the reporter's fault.
Also, Republicans have been trying for 40 years to work the refs by whining that the media has a bias against Republicans. Actually, they have a bias against liars, not against Republicans, although it is understandably easy to confuse the two. In fact, the media has been run by Republicans and corporations for a century. They cranked up popular opinion to attack Spain in 1898, they fought FDR bitterly, they aided and abetted McCarthy, the endorsed Nixon three to one even while Agnew was whining about the liberal media, they ran away from Watergate for almost a year, they gave Reagan a free pass in a way they never did for Clinton, and they were Bush’s cheerleaders in the War On Terror.
Even today, the Sunday morning political shows are jammed with Republicans, while people who regularly challenge GOP lies like Olbermann are fired by their corporate bosses. And that’s the real media, before you add all the new crazy stuff like Fox, the Washington Times, Rush, Drudge etc.
They whine that the media gave Obama a free pass in 2008. Actually it was McCain who got a free pass regarding his crooked deals with Paxson and Ruskin, the Boeing mess, the Keating mess, the earmarks, the lies, the flipflops. And there is a whole lot that Palin wasn’t asked about, regarding her shenanigans in Alaska.
Today Fox is leading the charge, blaming the real media for driving Trump out of the race and tearing down other GOP candidates; Gingrich did a whole aria on how his idiotic misstatements were all NBC’s fault.
Republicans want to blur the line between factual reporting and opinion, for a simple reason: in the world of facts, truth always trumps falsehood, but in the world of opinion, all opinions are equally valid because everyone has a right to their opinion. So first, they plow through that barrier and insist that, just as Republican opinions deserve the same hearing as Democratic opinions, likewise Republican lies and smears must get the same coverage as facts. And this applies not only to the media but also education: in the minds of Republicans, fallacies about creation science deserve the same standing in our schoolbooks as the facts about evolution. And even in Wikipedia, Republicans were caught trying to rewrite the history of Paul Revere's ride, to conform to Sarah Palin's Finnegan's-Wake-like version of the event.
Not scared yet? Listen to this: when the Democrats ran an ad in New Hampshire pointing out, correctly, that the Paul Ryan plan will end Medicare as we know it, which even the Wall Street Journal admitted, the Republican party went into action. The NRCC contacted the television station and demanded that the station pull the ad, because they disagreed with the content; happily, the station told them to pound sand. Since when do the Republicans get final editorial authority over Democratic ads? Can the Democrats edit all of their dishonest ads, if they want to edit the honest ones from the left? Since when does only one team enjoy the right of free speech?
And what happens if some muscular, deep-pocketed rightwinger tries to put muscle behind such demands? What if Rush threatens to pull his show from a station, or a state GOP chairman threatens to pull ads, or a corporation threatens to pull its ads or its business, if the station runs Democratic ads?
And another scary example of the Republican effort to ensure that only GOP voices are heard: the GOP now has yet another tool to keep prevent non-Republican views from getting out. Congressional Democrats use the congressional mailing system to contact their constituents with mailers, political information and so forth, just as Republicans do. But now the House Republicans are using the House Administration Committee to block Democratic mailers which assert, correctly, that the Ryan budget plan ends Medicare. The Republicans are delaying the mailers and demanding revisions. In other words, Congressional Democrats can no longer talk to voters in their districts unless the GOP approves, but their Republican challengers next year can say whatever they want – in fact the Republican mailers are already out there, praising Ryan’s plan and claiming that it’s the Democrats who want to kill Medicare. In a word: censorship.
Sadly, in the last few years we have seen the Republicans use thuglike political tactics while Democrats continue to follow the Marquis of Queensbury rules to a fault: as a result the Democrats get beat up for their lunch money week after week. The Republicans are not accustomed to seeing Democrats actually fighting political battles effectively. Now, however, the Democrats are throwing an elbow here and there, forcefully getting their message out, and calling a spade a spade when the situation calls for it, and the Republicans are outraged. As Democrats challenge the Republicans on the facts and their actions, as they call attention to their own accomplishments, as they point out that they were killing bin Laden and saving the auto industry while the Republicans were attacking Medicare and unions, as they point out that the Republicans won the midterms by lying about which party was attacking Medicare, the Republicans are crying “foul!” Typical of this is the dish-it-out-but-can’t-take-it behavior of Newt Gingrich, who has a thirty-year career of calling people out and attacking them, but goes into meltdown when the scrutiny is aimed at him: he changes his story repeatedly, he demands that his past behavior and past misstatements be off-limits, then he attacks the media as biased, then runs away from the media entirely. Central to this “work the ref” strategy is attacking the “refs” themselves, by continuing their 40-year effort to peddle the myth that the media is biased to the left.
DETAILS
A new tactic has emerged: the Republicans are trying to rewrite the rules for political debate. Republicans are allowed to launch whatever attacks they like, but if the Democrats challenge the Republicans on anything, or make the Republicans look bad, or even discuss their own accomplishments, they’re not being “civil”. Democrats are not allowed to mention that they, and not the Republicans, killed bin Laden. Democrats, after enduring a year of dishonest smears about Democrats destroying Medicare (and death panels and throwing grandma under the bus), are not allowed to make honest criticisms about Ryan’s very real plan to destroy Medicare. And the criticisms aimed at Democrats a year ago in the town halls, all the lies about death panels, were perfectly alright, but now that Republicans are being hit with perfectly valid criticisms in the same town halls, they’re crying foul and throwing out anyone with a camera or a microphone.
After Gingrich was busted like a piñata for condemning Ryan’s budget as “rightwing social engineering”, he realized that his idiotic statement would be featured in a hundred Democratic attack ads in 2012. So he unilaterally declared his own statement off-limits. "Any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood, because I have said publicly those words were inaccurate and unfortunate." So quoting him accurately is really a lie.
And then he declared that all “gotcha” questions about his past are also off-limits, all while he says that everything is on the table. For Republicans, a "gotcha" question is any question which a Republican botches the answer for, no matter how simple it is. Governor Palin, which newspapers do you read? And "gotcha" questions are always the reporter's fault.
Also, Republicans have been trying for 40 years to work the refs by whining that the media has a bias against Republicans. Actually, they have a bias against liars, not against Republicans, although it is understandably easy to confuse the two. In fact, the media has been run by Republicans and corporations for a century. They cranked up popular opinion to attack Spain in 1898, they fought FDR bitterly, they aided and abetted McCarthy, the endorsed Nixon three to one even while Agnew was whining about the liberal media, they ran away from Watergate for almost a year, they gave Reagan a free pass in a way they never did for Clinton, and they were Bush’s cheerleaders in the War On Terror.
Even today, the Sunday morning political shows are jammed with Republicans, while people who regularly challenge GOP lies like Olbermann are fired by their corporate bosses. And that’s the real media, before you add all the new crazy stuff like Fox, the Washington Times, Rush, Drudge etc.
They whine that the media gave Obama a free pass in 2008. Actually it was McCain who got a free pass regarding his crooked deals with Paxson and Ruskin, the Boeing mess, the Keating mess, the earmarks, the lies, the flipflops. And there is a whole lot that Palin wasn’t asked about, regarding her shenanigans in Alaska.
Today Fox is leading the charge, blaming the real media for driving Trump out of the race and tearing down other GOP candidates; Gingrich did a whole aria on how his idiotic misstatements were all NBC’s fault.
Republicans want to blur the line between factual reporting and opinion, for a simple reason: in the world of facts, truth always trumps falsehood, but in the world of opinion, all opinions are equally valid because everyone has a right to their opinion. So first, they plow through that barrier and insist that, just as Republican opinions deserve the same hearing as Democratic opinions, likewise Republican lies and smears must get the same coverage as facts. And this applies not only to the media but also education: in the minds of Republicans, fallacies about creation science deserve the same standing in our schoolbooks as the facts about evolution. And even in Wikipedia, Republicans were caught trying to rewrite the history of Paul Revere's ride, to conform to Sarah Palin's Finnegan's-Wake-like version of the event.
Not scared yet? Listen to this: when the Democrats ran an ad in New Hampshire pointing out, correctly, that the Paul Ryan plan will end Medicare as we know it, which even the Wall Street Journal admitted, the Republican party went into action. The NRCC contacted the television station and demanded that the station pull the ad, because they disagreed with the content; happily, the station told them to pound sand. Since when do the Republicans get final editorial authority over Democratic ads? Can the Democrats edit all of their dishonest ads, if they want to edit the honest ones from the left? Since when does only one team enjoy the right of free speech?
And what happens if some muscular, deep-pocketed rightwinger tries to put muscle behind such demands? What if Rush threatens to pull his show from a station, or a state GOP chairman threatens to pull ads, or a corporation threatens to pull its ads or its business, if the station runs Democratic ads?
And another scary example of the Republican effort to ensure that only GOP voices are heard: the GOP now has yet another tool to keep prevent non-Republican views from getting out. Congressional Democrats use the congressional mailing system to contact their constituents with mailers, political information and so forth, just as Republicans do. But now the House Republicans are using the House Administration Committee to block Democratic mailers which assert, correctly, that the Ryan budget plan ends Medicare. The Republicans are delaying the mailers and demanding revisions. In other words, Congressional Democrats can no longer talk to voters in their districts unless the GOP approves, but their Republican challengers next year can say whatever they want – in fact the Republican mailers are already out there, praising Ryan’s plan and claiming that it’s the Democrats who want to kill Medicare. In a word: censorship.
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