An interesting piece by Nate Silver on conservative blogosphere reaction to the Cain sexual harassment story (which is starting to interest me in terms of phenomena like this, if not in and of itself):
The conservative blogs that I counted were those that had been linked to on Memorandum, an aggregation website, either Monday night or earlier that day.
I then classified the reactions as being either basically sympathetic to Mr. Cain, unsympathetic to Mr. Cain, or fairly neutral and adopting more of a wait-and-see approach. There were 46 conservative journalists or bloggers who wrote in enough detail about the allegations to allow me to characterize them in this way. (You can see the way I classified each individual blogger here — there were certainly a few debatable calls.)
Overall, the reactions were quite sympathetic. I counted 23 bloggers who either defended Mr. Cain or harshly critiqued the reporting in the story. There were just 6 bloggers, meanwhile, who took a largely unsympathetic position toward Mr. Cain.
[….] [P]articularly given the already extant tensions between the political establishment, which is broadly dismissive of Mr. Cain, and the conservative grass-roots, which has evident affection for him, the accusations might carry less weight against him than they would against a more “mainstream” candidate.
The general trend in establishment media is to suck up more and more to the far right, whether it’s Kaplan and NYT deciding to follow every O’Keefe story or CNN hiring Erick Erickson (which doesn’t bother me, but is just a sign o’ the times), while nothing that they do can assuage the right’s hatred and hatred distrust. What’s the point?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I wish I could write down and seal in an envelope the post I know is coming.
The whole Cain phenomenon is interesting for what it says about modern politics, especially the GOP. The contempt for politicians, while being obsessed with who gets (un) elected and what gov’t does; the fantasy about “running gov’t like a business”; and of course, race. I know it’s Fox, and even mores, it’s Ann Coulter, but my jaw hit the floor when I heard Coulter say to Hannity “Our blacks are better than their blacks”, and the whole through the looking glass discussion of lynching.
Spaghetti Lee
It’s a cliche to say “Doesn’t surprise me” about right wing venality, but…this doesn’t surprise me. Teh Librul Media, Teh Feminazis, Teh Lynching…all the various aspects add up to an opportunity for the right wing to throw itself the biggest pity party they’ve had in weeks. Like Silver said, they’re not really looking at the allegations themselves, just the fact that evil people are attacking Cain the Great, so they need to rally around him.
As for Silver’s test subjects, doesn’t surprise me that National Review came out against him-they need to appear Serious, after all. Wonder what caused Dan Riehl’s temporary sanity, though? And I do admire the honesty of a wingnut blogger calling himself “Troglopundit”.
The Dangerman
This is part of the reason that I thought Sarah Palin would run; she would have been fucking bulletproof (among her ilk if not her elk).
slag
Flailing. They know their audience of old, white men is both conservative and dying. So, they’re all furiously competing for a larger share of a rapidly shrinking pie. There’s no long view here.
Keith
@The Dangerman: Speaking of Palin, she’s been uncharacteristically silent for longer than I can remember. I didn’t expect her to rant about NPR taking away any OWS people’s 1st Amendment rights or anything, but she’s barely made a peep re: the primary race.
Spaghetti Lee
@The Dangerman:
Her national popularity level is somewhere near malaria. Her ilk lurves her, the rest of the country hates her. I wonder, especially if a nutball like Cain gets the GOP nod, what effect this is going to have on the nutroots, which have grown more powerful since ’08? Sooner or later they’re going to have to realize that they’re not actually in charge and that most of the country doesn’t care about their purity tests, right?
Hill Dweller
If those half-wits take just a minute away from their pity party, they’d see there is no political and/or strategic advantage for Dems leaking this right now.
This was either Rove or the Perry camp. Considering Politico’s past willingness to print anything the former Bush crowd asked, I’d put my money on Rove.
RossInDetroit
@Keith:
Sulking in her tent. Waiting for the convention to beg her to reprise her role as VP candidate. Writing her memoirs (“note to self: pick up another cocktail napkin”).
Whatever she’s up to I’m certain it pays better than running for office. Because that’s what matters.
The Dangerman
@Spaghetti Lee:
Oh, she would have had no chance in the General, but she could have taken the nomination; shit, she still could (riding her White Horse to the rescue of the Baggers). True about the malaria comparison, but there would be a Payday to be the 1st Woman Candidate.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Hill Dweller:
The advantage to the GOP is keeping the base angry and riled up. I’m not suggesting a grand strategy between Ann Coulter and Karl Rove, but this is win-win for them, the Establishment and the fringe media/wingnut welfare types. The Inconvenient Upstart is marginalized, and Typical Fox Viewer can say “I’ll tell ya who the real racists are…”. Poor Herb Cain does take a hit, since he probably just dropped permanently to B or C-list on the speaker’s circuit that was, I believe, his real goal in all this.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
The whole point is that the right has marked out the threshold of Hippiedom so far out that the media, in the striving need to be ‘Fair and Balanced’, dutifully lurches harder and harder rightward in order to remain nice and steady between the two sides as well as give them equal credence, even as one side is composed of the local crackpots in the alleyway on 4th st. while the other side is the entire rest of the city.
I know I say this a lot ad nauseum, but it all comes down to Hippie Punching. And the right is masterful at creating hippies for the media to shun and ignore, since hey, everyone hates hippies and knows they’re entirely and inherently unserious. And it works every single goddamn fucking time because I don’t fucking know why.
EDIT: included which part of the post I was specifically referring to, just in case.
Short Bus Bully
Reading 46 conservative journalists and bloggers bloviating about Herman Cain? That shit would put me in a fucking coma. I guess that feat in and of itself deserves some kind of pat on the back in a Fear Factor sort of way. Like eating your way through a sewer pipe filled with cockroaches. Amazing you could do it, but why….????
Cacti
Perry had the “Niggerhead Ranch” story. Cain now has his sexual harrassment story.
No embarrassing stories about Mitt Romney.
Hmmmm…
ant
the teatards should be friggin pissed at Cain right now.
He could have totally just blown this off…. had he given the matter any thought whatsoever beforehand.
Instead, he has bungled this up really bad with his changing stories, and basically just bullshitting everyone with crap all day long.
Cain’s handling of the story is the story… imho.
Turgidson
Can’t that be the reason it bothers you?
I mean, I’m having trouble seeing a lefty commentator getting hired by CNN after saying something as vile about a prominent conservative as Erickson said about Justice Souter, for example. That bothers me a little.
Spaghetti Lee
@Short Bus Bully:
When no one else can get the job done, they send in…Silver.
Consider yourself analyzed. Coming September 2012.
Chris
@Spaghetti Lee:
I’m a little surprised for one reason only: I expected right wingers to seize an opportunity to abandon Cain. I thought they supported the black guy because he spoke their language and even they don’t like to think of themselves as racist, but I thought they’d seize the first excuse they could to drop the guy and go for another (read: white) candidate.
They still might, but I thought this might be the trigger. And it looks like it wasn’t. Huh.
Chris
@The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik:
Yeah, I agree.
I still think the analogy between Nazis in Hollywood and hippies in our political/media system is a decent one: they’re the only people everyone feel comfortable punching, so of course, they get trotted out as a punching bag more than anyone else does. And the entire country has it down to a Pavlovian reflex. You’d think they’d be over it after fifty years, but noooo….
Spaghetti Lee
@Chris:
Well, there’s no one really available at the moment, though I think Perry’s going through a rebirth of sorts. My position on Cain is that he’s just too weird, too temperamental, and too unprofessional to make it all the way through primary season. Someone at alicublog said that at this point in 2007, Rudy Giuliani was about 10 points up on his competitors, so there’s a lot of game left to play.
MikeJ
@Spaghetti Lee: At this point before Iowa, Obama was 4th behind Edwards, Clinton, and Richardson.
G
I suppose he could’ve said that people may have misundersttod his actions, and that to avoid a lengthy legal process he had them paid off. And that’s why we need tort repeal, err reform.
as for the media coverage? the idiot outrage machine from the right will attack anyone who dares speak ill of a republican. unless the ill is not being right wing enough, then it’s OK to complain.
and really, that’s where we, in the center, or the left, or what once was the moderate right in the 1970s and 1980s… fall short, we do not have the bitch at the media discipline the right wing does. I imagine it’s because they get results, and we don’t. and they get results because giant corporations tend toward right wingers in the management areas…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MikeJ: and IIRC McCain was dead in the water, broke, firing staff. Maybe Perry can use his drunken Jim J Bullock impression to paint himself as a victim too, but it’s looking more and more to me like they’ll settle for Romney and fall in line, like they did for McCain. I just wonder who can do for Romney what Palin did for McCain. It is beyond my imagination to imagine people who aren’t named Broder, Brooks or Hiatt getting sexually aroused by Romney/Thune. Okay, throw in Simon and Matthews.
Ed in NJ
@Chris:
In all likelihood they will do both, abandon Cain, but not before trying to pin the leaks on the “liberal media” and Dems.
piratedan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: well Haley outta SC or Brewer outta Az ought to set wingnut hearts aflutter, Haley because she’s attractive as a sparkle candidate and Brewer because she’s passed some truly heinous legislation that is the meat and taters of the wingnut diet
Mark S.
If a week from now, Cain’s numbers are the same, I’m going to give up and say he’s got a serious shot at the nomination (I’ve been predicting his 15 minutes to be up for about a month now). The guy’s almost bulletproof. The gaffes and u-turns seem to only endear him more to the 27%ers.
The consolation, of course, is that I’d love to see Obama vs. Cain in the general. It would be hella entertaining, and O would coast to victory despite the shit economy.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Shorter Nate: Serious conservatives don’t take Cain seriously while conservatives who aren’t serious take Cain seriously.
That pretty much describes the Republican party of today.
cleter
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Romney/Rubio
Jenny
It’s not media distrust. Watching them lump Politico with w. the vast lefty wing conspiracy was too delicious.
It’s a simple case of IOKIYAR.
I mean, there was a vast left wing conspiracy out to get Vitter for paying for hookers. He admitted it. And of course, he got a free pass.
Herman will get the same freebie.
Spaghetti Lee
@Mark S.:
It would be hella entertaining, and O would coast to victory despite the shit economy.
I’m baffled by the wingnut strategy, such as it as. “Let’s nominate a black guy, so we’ll split the black vote and the liberals will all feel guilty, and this time WE’LL get to accuse anyone who disagrees with us of racism. WINNING!” I mean, does no one remember the Senate election in ’04 that got Obama to such national prominence in the first place? Literally, the most lopsided Senate election in U.S. history. DuPage County voted Democratic, for God’s sake.
Spaghetti Lee
@Spaghetti Lee:
That should be Illinois history, my apologies. Probably a few uncontested ones have been more lopsided.
Chris
Romney blew it if he’s behind this one — it would be just one more sign that he doesn’t get the Republican party rank and file. To them, this kind of thing is a feature, not a bug. I bet Cain is even further ahead in the next set of polls.
Jenny
@MikeJ:
Oprah’s endorsement sure turned things around.
Hope one day he awards her the Medal of Freedom.
Suffern ACE
@Ed in NJ: As I wrote last night, by the end of this week, the message will be that Obama is continuting his divisive ways by digging up long past historical dirt on candidates. Yes, it is a bizzarre charge – and even if his campaign did, it’s well within the realm of normal political practice to dig up dirt against candidates this way. But this will be the biggest outrage of all time…and a good day for John McCain.
Mark S.
@Spaghetti Lee:
If they think Cain will split the black vote, I’d like whatever they’re smoking. I think conservatives genuinely like Cain as a person. He’s certainly more down to earth than Romney, and less batshit insane than the rest of the field.
Jenny
@Chris:
True. If you’re gonna bring Herman down it has to be on an issue their base cares about. To them, sexual harassment is part of the liberal PC tyranny that penalizes hard working white guys for simply complimenting women when they say “nice tits”.
Chris
@Mark S.:
And also a flaming bigot in his own right, which makes him alright.
@Jenny:
This. This exactly. I guess that explains why this was the wrong issue to drop him on…
Spaghetti Lee
@Jenny:
If you’re gonna bring Herman down it has to be on an issue their base cares about.
Well, then let’s start something up right here, then. Hey, conservatives, you didn’t hear it from me, but Herman Cain was once friendly towards a poor person. Also, he occasionally throws his cigarette butts in the liberal statist trash can, instead of throwing them on the ground like God intended.
eemom
McGuin and McGuire couldn’t get no higher but that’s what they were aimin’ at
And no one’s gettin’ fat except Mama Cass
Jenny
@Chris:
Problem is so many of them have objectified women at the workplace, so they sympathize with Herman. I mean, Fixxed News is all about objectification, on and off screen (“falafels”/Geraldo).
Here they are taking long leering shots are spokesmodel’s F-Me shoes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3g9wlGjAEU&feature=related
Suffern ACE
@Jenny: Which kind of makes me think it was Romney not Rove. I mean, come on. Rove knows the base better than anyone. And he’s not gonna come up with weak sauce…he’s gonna embellish that sauce. Digging up true dirt, sure, but shouldn’t there be some insinuation that Cain fathered children with these women or was palling around with Marion Barry by offering his staff members for parties?
eemom
shit, won’t let me edit. At that point, it’s EVERYONE’s gettin’ fat except Mama Cass.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
@Jenny:
He has the unitary power to award her a Nobel Peace Prize, which I think she would prefer.
.
.
Suffern ACE
@Spaghetti Lee: How about “Cain was instrumental in setting up the vegan and raw foods section of the National Restaurant Association, and was noted for recommending that restaurants help increase the the consumption whole grains in the national diet.”
Martin
@Suffern ACE:
Couldn’t resist.
Anonymous37
Anyone have any idea which 6? I’m shocked that 6 of 46 reasonably high profile conservablogs (high profile enough to be linked to from Memeorandum) would be unsympathetic towards Cain, particularly over these allegations.
MikeJ
@Anonymous37: Silver links to his whole chart in the article.
Xenos
@MikeJ: Yikes. Our old PUMA troll myiq2xu is running a ‘Democratic’ blog praising Cain?
Xenos
As a seperate issue, what happens when one of the parties to a settlement that includes a non-disclosure clause starts making public statements about it? At what point is the issue so well known that the non-disclosure clause become unenforceable?
jheartney
I don’t think this was aimed at the base, unless you mean the big donor base. Also the Gang of 500, who can’t resist any story with the word “sexual” in it.
The righty blogosphere is an appendage of the party structure, not the reverse. When the word comes down that they should hold their noses and support Mitt, they will do it, albeit grudgingly.
As for Cain scandal stories, it’ll be like what they do with bulls in the ring – stick them with those colorful knife things one at a time till they go down. Cain will have a new scandal every few days till he stops kicking.
Thymezone
The same one it has always been: Right wingers watch more tv than left wingers. They will glue themselves to content that assures them that their fucked up views are okay.
CNN wants more viewers. Righties are the ticket to getting them, although there is no guarantee of higher ratings. But indies and lefties are not going to watch CNN. Not with frigging people like Wolf Blitzer and Candy Crowley around.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@eemom: Nice to see someone else knows these lyrics (from ancient memory, some wrong but I refuse to look ’em up):
Broke, busted, disgusted, agents can’t be trusted
And Michie wants to go to the sea.
Cass can’t make it, she says we’ll have to fake it
We know she’ll make it eventually
Greasin’ on American Express card
Tent’s low rent, and keepin’ out the heat’s hard
… damn, I can’t remember the rest.
Creeque Alley, Mamas and Papas, thanks DougJ!
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Xenos:
myiq2xuGoatBoy was never a PUMA, he’s always been a racist ratfucker. All he was doing was stirring the divisions during the primary and the dumbfuck PUMAs fell for it. That he is a Cain supporter is just gold, pure fucking gold.I bet Cain’s line about knowing when to go to the back of the bus was the clincher for him…lol!
Ahhh GoatBoy… now that was some fine bitch-slapping I got to do. Remember this?
Good times. :)
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
I had to go check out his shithole of a blog and caught this line by him (on Cain singing):
Then GoatBoy goes on to say that Cain is talking to black voters and if he can peel them away from Obama then he’s unbeatable.
Like I said above, Cain is attractive to GoatBoy because “he knows his place”…lol!
Called it!
Samara Morgan
how is Silver any different from the rest? hes handicapping the pari-mutuals for a paycheck like the rest of them.
In reality, neither Romney or Cain can get the 65% of the white vote they need to beat Obama (albeit for different reasons).
But it would be relly boring to mention that, not to mention killing the horse race.
:)
HeartlandLiberal
OK, Silver is a great pollster. BUT:
A fascinating and compelling insight into the total vapidity to which the NYTimes and the corporate controlled mainsteam media have now stooped / fallen / declined / decayed.
They do not report the facts of the story. They go and do a fair and balanced analysis of whatever random thoughts pop into the heads of an uninformed and ignorant populace. Or in this case, a survey of those most likely to believe whatever they want, while totally ignoring facts and reality that might not fit their predetermined world view from the Right. All tied into a neat package aimed at manipulating the weak willed and ignorant. They support the key play book of the GOP, Faux Noise Nutwork, and the puppet masters of the 1% and the corporations.
They have done such an excellent job using these techniques on Global Warming and Anthropogenic Climate Change that only in the past couple of weeks have the facts managed to get past the smoke screen of even the most well-paid deniers.
Well done. I am sure they get your paychecks, and that is all that matters to Them.
Thomas Jefferson, where are you when we need you?
The Fourth Estate is collapsing into a smoking, crumbling, decaying ruin as the fourth pillar of the American dream of Democracy.
Cassidy
So now,those 46 sympathetic journalists need to have their articles examined for what they wrote regarding Weiner. Guessing not that sympathetic.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cassidy: That was different. Weiner is a Democrat. Try to pay attention, please.
norbizness
When Nate Silver is analyzing blogs rather than polls, he must feel that the day is completely wasted.
different-church-lady
Wait a minute… conservative bloggers will circle the wagons around a conservative candidate? Well, there’s a hoocoodanode!
soonergrunt
According to TPM, polling in Iowa amongst likely republican caucus-goers says they don’t care about Cain’s sexual harrassment.
Likely caucus-goers means hard core conservatives, because it’s always the base that goes to the effort for these things as we all know.
Sexual Harrassment–for conservatives, it’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
ornery
“The general trend in establishment media is to suck up more and more to the far right”
Yes, DougJ, it has a name even: propaganda.
You just described the outward symptoms of fascism … but I guess you believe that could never happen here? As if we don’t see the patterns everywhere.
DougJ your perpetual cluelessness about politics might be doing a disservice to readers at this point. Figure some crap out already! Quit relying on your ‘gut’ instinct which has failed so many times. People take cues from your cluelessness and time is wasted. I assume that’s not your goal, but the ever-green nature of your thinking seems strange anymore.
Kola Noscopy
This makes no sense. YOu spend all this time and effort bemoaning the media domination of the Right, and then in throw away lines you say it doesn’t matter.
Weird.