Damned if you do, damned if you don’t:
What the McCain campaign doesn’t want people to know, according to one GOP strategist I spoke with over the weekend, is that they had an ad script ready to go if Obama had visited the wounded troops saying that Obama was…wait for it…using wounded troops as campaign props. So, no matter which way Obama turned, McCain had an Obama bashing ad ready to launch. I guess that’s political hardball. But another word for it is the one word that most politicians are loathe to use about their opponents—a lie.
This is what some people are calling the Hannity strategy. Right wing nut-muffin Sean Hannity employs a slick strategy of repeating canards very quickly over and over, day in and day out, which aren’t challenged by his TV co-host Alan Colmes or by any of his radio listeners. By relentlessly repeating falsehoods day after day, the theory goes, it becomes embedded in the media. There is truth in this. In 2004, the Bush campaign ran an ad and daily repeated that John Kerry was a flip flopper, running a Kerry clip with the Democratic candidate saying he voted for an $87 billion military appropriation before he voted against it. It sounded bad when ripped out of context. Kerry voted for it in committee, and then voted against in on a floor vote when the bill included giveaways to Halliburton he didn’t support.
The distortion took on a life of its own, parroted by mainstream media including Chris Matthews, and even the Tom Brokaw and the late Tim Russert. It is a case study in how effective advertising can work when it is done relentlessly and consistently…even if its untrue. Hannity enployed the same strategy conflating a passing acquaintance between Obama and former unconvicted Weather Underground activist William Ayers with “an association” with Obama…for months. He talked it up every day. He finally goaded ABC’s George Stephanopoulus to ask Obama about it in a televised debate. It didn’t matter that Obama has nothing that could be construed by a thinking person like “an association” with Ayers. He raised the question just by repeating it daily.
Welcome to the new McCain cum Schmidt cum Rove campaign.
And the media, willing accomplices, stenographers until the end, sit by and assist the McCain campaign (who, by the way, ACTUALLY ARE USING THE WOUNDED TROOPS AS A WEAPON with this line of attack, as noted in the comments).
(via the GOS)
jake
At my most cynical moments I believe that’s because disasters sell far better than good news. President McCane would guarantee four years of wall-to-wall clusterfuck.
ThymeZone
It’s money-where-mouth-is time.
I just gave $500 to the Obama campaign. I urge all readers to dig deep and pour it on today. This is the way we can vote with our wallets against this kind of crap.
If you need a link, see my url.
matt
Which is what McCain is actually doing. It doesn’t get much lower.
All the other crap, as bad as it is, is still just run of the mill slimy politics. It really takes a cold heart to pull shit like this.
cleek
I think what we’ve had here is a little social concern in the MSM. The media has been very desirous that a lazy, stupid asshole do well. There is a little hope invested in McCain, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this campaign that he didn’t deserve. The media carried this campaign.
/Limbaugh
nightjar
Well, when you make an add claiming Obama disses the troops for basketball using a video with Obama SHOOTING HOOPS WITH THE TROOPS, somebodies gotta cover your ass, or else you’ll end up a permanent guest on the Jerry Springer Show.
jnfr
As Digby points out, this isn’t really a “Hannity strategy”, it’s the way Republicans have been running campaigns and winning elections for the last 20 years. There’s nothing new about it, and the media has always been complicit.
DannyNoonan
McCain only cared about changing the story line and going on the offensive. That’s because all that matters is that the election becomes a referendum on the Democratic candidate as the Republicans have defined him. That’s how Bush won twice. Clinton was able to beat it. Dukakis not so much.
rawshark
No he isn’t. He’s a republican. They don’t do those things. Even when they do. Unless the appropriate information suppliers say a republican did something it didn’t happen. Unless it’s a good thing. Everyone is allowed to say good things about republicans. Saying good things about republicans is what a patriotic american does.
Incertus
McCain has to do this–otherwise he’ll pull a Goldwater and pull 40% of the popular vote. Even with this, he’ll probably max at about 47%, depending on how much, if any, traction Barr can get.
Tax Analyst
Yes, it’s as despicable as it is frustrating.
TZ’s right. It’s a good time to pony up again for Obama. It’s unfortunate to have to pay for what the media ought to do for free, but it’s important that this crap be dispelled as quickly and forcefully as possible, and that’s gonna take $$.
voice of reason
The only good Movement Conservative is a dead Movement Conservative.
Noah
The Obama campaign should take a page from Clinton vs. Dole when attacking McCain on how ridiculously old he is.
Glenn Hauman
The technical term for this is a magician’s choice. Either way the mark jumps, the magician has a plan for it. See here for an explanation of the trick, which people keep falling for again and again…
Zifnab
I don’t know how this is even a surprise. If anything, it should be surprising that McCain had a plan for Obama NOT visiting the troops because, honestly, what did anyone expect him to do?
The fact that the Pentagon swept in and stonewalled Obama at the last minute for one particular leg of his Tour American Troops In Iraq Tour seems to indicate that White House flunkies in the Army Brass aren’t co-ordinating with McCain campaign strategists properly. And that simply demonstrates how off-message they’ve become.
Seriously, if you’re going to run a one-party government with farce elections every four years, make sure you do it right.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
As I see it, there are structural factors at work driving the media to shill for McCain, beyond just the long-term pro-GOP bias that has been building ever since the Nixon administration, and their personal liking for McBBQ.
1 – Media pundits and decision makers (the people who decide what stories to cover and how to slant them) don’t live in the same country as the rest of us. They can live in gated communities, physically travel outside the US and they can hedge their investments against failure of the US economy. The rest of us can go to perdition, and it won’t have any impact on them – “let ‘em eat cake”.
2 – For the rest of them that do care what happens here, I think many of them have already decided that Obama will win this year due to macro level factors (incumbency, the war, the economy), so they don’t take the idea of McCain’s policies being implemented very seriously.
3 – For them it is all about long-term access to power. If Obama wins in a landslide, it will reconfigure the media environment. They will have to start all over again building up personal contacts and getting access to the insiders who they depend on to make themselves look and feel like part of the power structure. Otherwise, they will be on the outside looking in, while people like Keith O. and Rachel M. get all the good scoops and interviews. They don’t want to go there – it would be too much risk and too much work. Better to have a semi-crippled Obama administration with no mandate – then they can just dust off the same high school kool kids klique BS they spent the entire Clinton administration engaged in. They know how to do that. Call it the Revenge of the Village.
4 – Obama’s community organization model for changing US politics by increasing grass roots involvement will cut down the power of the media – they won’t have the keys to the kingdom anymore. People who have gotten off their asses and gotten involved are less likely to act like sheeple and listen to whatever crap is on the TV. God forbid, they might even start turning off their TVs. The media powers-that-be have stored up a lot of bad karma for their propagandistic cheerleading of the Bush admin, and the last thing they want is to be called to account for it.
binzinerator
Seen that over and over again. If Kerry lashed back at the smears, he’d been labeled as unpresidential, angry, shrill.
Look at the bullshit the fucking goopers are doing with this church shooting stuff — if everyone ran like hell when the shooting started, which is what most human beings would do, they’d say “how typical of weak, cowardly effeminate liberals!” But unarmed people faced the shotgun blasts, then knocked the shooter down. And these sick rightwing fucktards now shout “See! If everybody carried a concealed weapon, they would have got him first!”
Everything gets twisted to fit their ideology. And when their dogma is proven to be a lie — the liberals who are supposedly godless Christian-haters were at church — they ignore the conflict with that meme and instead they re-direct their narrative to “The shooter was anti-Christian!” Which reinforces another of their themes, that despicable people (liberals and the deranged are interchangeable) are out to get the God-fearin’ Christians, which makes themselves into victims too.
You can’t ever reason with people like this. No matter what you do or say, it’s used as an excuse to do whatever they had already decided they were going to do to you.
This reminds me of a street thug a friend of mine once made an acquaintance with. This guy told my friend he’d look for an isolated person on the street and ask him for a cigarette. If the person said he didn’t have one, the punk would punch his victim in the face.
My friend asked him what he’d do if the poor slob did have a cigarette. The thug laughed and said “Then I punch him in the face. There is no right answer. No matter what he says I get to hit him.”
When people call the goopers “rethuglicans”, I think they are a lot closer to the truth than some people realize. They don’t want the damned cigarette, it has nothing to do with it, so why give it to them? Give them a kick in the junk instead, like they so richly deserve.
One of the things I like about Obama (and Dodd and Kucinich and Feingold) is that they seem to understand this.
montysano
My hatred for Hannity is white-hot. One of my fantasies has always been for Hannity or Limbaugh to have to sit down across from someone like Bill Clinton or Barney Frank or Rachel Maddow and have a little unmoderated discussion. Then we’d see how Sean would do without his mute button and his “liberal” stooges. Recently I’ve seen Jesse Ventura and Phil Donahue on his show, and they (esp. Donahue) beat him like a gong.
Ain’t never gonna happen, of course.
Brachiator
The media seem to be so relentlessly stupid that they no realize what they are doing.
For example, they seem to need to create the false impression that the Obama and McCain campaigns are equivalent. So, I see recent stories that insist that both campaigns are now going negative. And so, if both campaigns are doing the same thing, then they are equally bad. This, of course, takes McCain off the hook for any of his bullshit, and lets biased journalists blame Obama for his behavior.
And of course, now the media is giving big play to the McCain camp’s claim that Obama is playing the race card (Obama and McCain go old-school in political jabs):
Can someone explain to me how supposedly overtly playing the race card can also be a subtle charge of racism?
It’s also interesting that the writer, Mike Glover, tries to help McCain by explaining what McCain’s strategy is all about, but magically ignores the slew of negative attacks that have recently come from the McCain camp, which was the putative subject of the article.
binzinerator
Man, that’s a white-hot hatred.
But I totally understand.
Gregory
Maybe this revelation will keep the so-called “liberal media” from presuming McShame’s criticisms are made in good faith?
Naaaaaaaaah.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
That is either the most subtle euphemism ever in the history of political hate speech, or an illustration of the essential difference between teh Left and teh Right.
Somebody on teh Left really, really hates somebody, and the worst they want to do is to strap them down and make them listen to reason
Oh NOES! ! !
Oh think of the humanity !
We all know what teh Right fantasizes about.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
we need a new term for this insidious form of torture:
Reasonboarding.
That’s when you strap somebody down and pour facts into their ears until they think they’re drownd-ing.
Ed Drone
Actually, my liberal fantasy involves the right-whingers’ worst nightmare — an “armed liberal” with no reason to pull his punches. Of course, it’d just reinforce one of their other talking points, that liberals are haters and essentially violent people. But it’d sure be fun!
“Violent pacifists” is not an oxymoron when put forth as a whinger meme.
Ed
The Moar You Know
101ST KEYBOARD COMMANDOS COMMENCE OPERATION PEEPANTS
voice of reason
Historically, of course, virtually all political violence in the U.S. has come from the right, not the left.
I agree with Ed and TMYW that it would be nice to see that change. But what I would like to see is the left to raise the ante by at least 10 orders of magnitude.
And yes, I know what an order of magnitude is.
opit
Come,come…let us reason together.
It’s a liberal media owned by corporate masters. That’s a nice bridge in Brooklyn.
You know that the Ministry of Truth ( what is their current name ? ) ‘gives access’ to sycophants. The executive office advances those who give the best service in marketing snake oil.
Free Press is an Oxymoron.
It’s a brave individual who bucks those odds : he’s likely to accidentally get shot.
Best quick synopsis of this situation by a qualified individual
http://www.thebrokensoldier.com/2008/07/29/support-the-troops-is-an-american-lie/