Birth of conservative delusion: Roger Ailes takes his revenge

Salon ^ | October 19, 2013 | Michael Goldfarb

[Cincinatus' Wife]

"............“.............A four-decade-long war on the press’s legitimacy had begun. The idea that it was a biased liberal press that made the molehill of Watergate into a mountain of Constitutional crisis took root.

A month later, an article in the New York Times quoted a letter to the editor written by one Lerline Westmoreland published in a Southern newspaper, the Memphis Commercial Appeal: “It seems to me that the greatest threat to this country is not so much a dictatorial Supreme Court or an imperfect President, it is a vicious, slanted news media on the minds of the masses of Americans who are either too lazy or too indifferent to think for themselves.”

Under Reagan, Republican appointees on the FCC abolished the fairness doctrine, the obligation for broadcasters to air both sides of controversial issues. This led to an explosion of opinionated propagandists on the air waves relentlessly attacking “liberal” media. It continues to this day, degrading American public discourse.

A Nixon media operative, Roger Ailes, discussed starting a Republican-slanted news program with the president pre-Watergate. Later, Ailes invented Fox News for Rupert Murdoch. Fox is one of the prime shapers of the hyper-partisan political culture that has made the U.S. practically ungovernable.

As I said, at the top, I take a long view from this side of the Atlantic. Over here, even Conservatives find themselves taken aback by the Tea Party and other extremist know-nothings who have been given the oxygen of publicity on Fox.........”

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Comments after this Salon piece reveal the mentality of the people who buy and promote anything anti-American.

The Left knows there are clear reason to impeach Obama and have begun their media campaign to deflect from his executive overreach (along with his "the emperor has no clothes" incompetence) in order to protect him and their agenda.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Subtitle: The long road to Ted Cruz, Fox News, the Tea Party and right-wing insanity has its roots in the events of 1973

[AlexW]

“Conservatives find themselves taken aback by the Tea Party and other extremist know-nothings who have been given the oxygen of publicity on Fox.”
__________________________________________________
Spoken like a true Marxist/Leninist A-HOLE.

[wastoute]

Man! Talk about delusion. Just what Bozo needs. A sycophant media isn’t enough they want nothing but their propaganda.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

Man! Talk about delusion. Just what Bozo needs. A sycophant media isn’t enough they want nothing but their propaganda.

I can't wait until "The Blaze" takes off.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Ulysses Arn, RedState:

"Frank Dyke is an area captain with the Winnebago County Republican Party and precinct committeeman in Rockford............[he] illustrates the mindset and mentality of the neo-Statists that make up the GOP establishment and helps explain why they have been attacking conservatives, the Tea Party, and especially Ted Cruz with gusto recently.

"...........When I asked Dyke about Rockford Tea Party leader David Hale who is running against Adam Kinzinger in the March 2014 GOP primary Dyke brought out the long knives saying, “I think David Hale is a walking argument for more investment in mental health in Illinois. The guy is stupid wrapped in crazy wrapped in a wobbly 3rd grader scribble of an American flag. Of course I welcome candidates discussing and debating their ideas. Frankly, the more the public understands Hale’s positions, the less votes he will get. I think Kinzinger could be doing a better job, but if you want to replace him AND strengthen our position in the House, run someone who won’t get other Rs in swing districts in trouble. If, by some unfortunate series of events, that lunatic Hale wins the primary, he will likely be going to Washington. If such a thing were to happen, his idiocy would not only be obvious to the folks in the stateline, but to the entire country (which the media would be only too happy to help) and the Republican Party’s credibility would be further diminished. As far as I am concerned, being a part of the Tea Party is like tattooing “DUMB ****” across one’s own forehead.”

Dyke wasn’t done being venomous because he had this to say when questioned about the attacks Adam Kinzinger has made against Ted Cruz, the Tea Party, and conservatives, “I think attacking stupidity and the bags of meat it lives in is appropriate. Cruz has done irreparable harm to our chances of taking the Senate in 2014, and if it wasn’t for the outstanding job of gerrymandering done by our Republicans in other states, might cost us the House, too. Right now we have pseudo-conservatives calling for policies that are a) never going to happen in this country b) so idiotic other Rs are soiled by association and hurt electorally and c) morally repugnant. I hear activists say we should deport all 11 million illegal aliens (a 21st century Trail of Tears), outlaw homosexuality, and prohibit early-term abortions in cases of rape. None of these positions is in the national or IL state party platform (for good reason) but somehow this filth keeps bubbling to the surface. Additionally, positions like these make Republicans LOSE ELECTIONS!!! If you really want to shrink government’s role in society, like I do, it makes ZERO sense to say and do things that cost Republicans elections, because the Dems that laugh all the way to victory lane sure aren’t going to reign in Uncle Sam.”......................

Full post

[nathanbedford]

Thank you for exposing the ugly side of Rinos.

When one is confronted with the sheer mean-spiritedness, the arrogance, the condescension, the underhandedness, and the mind numbing disregard for truth on the left as made so obvious by the Nixon article, one begins to understand why Nixon was paranoid.

Nixon had lived through the Alger Hiss/Whittaker Chambers controversy in which reality and truth were stood on its head and facts meant nothing in the face of left-wing ideology. He had seen his victory in 1960 over Kennedy stolen in Chicago and stolen along the Texas border by Democrats stuffing ballot boxes. Small wonder Nixon was paranoid.

I am not a fan of Nixon's ideology but I am a fan of the man's courage to stand up against the entire establishment of America as he did so many times. One cannot know much of Nixon's biography and not understand why he was paranoid-I accept the idea that he was paranoid merely for the purposes of this reply to prove a point. Nixon was not really paranoid, he was middle-class. He understood the middle-class and in many respects he advocated on behalf of the middle class. Apart from Nixon's tendency towards big government solutions which is a regrettable counterpoint to his political biography, he would be out of sorts today with the Republican establishment just as he was during his career.

One might also note that the crimes of which Nixon were accused had virtually all been committed by Kennedy and by Johnson. Kennedy stole an election, Johnson stole period. Both men illegally used the IRS. But there was no question of impeaching these men. Small wonder Nixon was paranoid when he found out that the rules of the game had suddenly changed against him. In the end, Nixon was abandoned by establishment Republicans in the Senate and forced to resign. There was no sign that that might happen in the case of William Jefferson Clinton in which DNA proved that he committed perjury, hid evidence, suborned perjury, all in an effort to fix a court case.

The left can bear a grudge for decades as they did in the case of Richard Nixon because of his successful campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas, wife of actor Melvyn Douglas, mistress of Senator Lyndon Johnson, and darling of the left. It took the media decades to get Nixon, but they got him. This destructive urge carried like a virus for decades deep in the corroded soul of the Democrat corpus is not regarded to be a sign of mental ill health when it occurs as it so often does on the left.

We live in a bizarro world in which liberal unreality is the received reality distributed by the media. Those who dispute this reality, as Nixon did for example in the Alger Hiss matter, are accused of being attached to unreality, in short, they are accused of being paranoid or crazy. Those who escape that description are called racists etc. We know how that game is played.

The demonization of Ted Cruz and the tea party is but of a piece with the demonization of every prominent Republican who has bucked the establishment.

[mosesdapoet]

Re your comments
When the media jumped in with both feet into the Zimmerman thing, which was really a black on black incident and turned it into “a racial incident” by POTUS Obama and his media. The stains imbedded on the media hands are like tatoos. And their complicity including the resultant subsequent strife inluding killling of innocents can be directly traced back to their sources and should be.

Not a word about this from conservative media resources. It doesn’t occur to them to inject these incidents of their reporting when refuting or rebutting a statement citing what was presented by that source at that time such as;. “Oh yea NBC.. didn’t they show some picture of a little black kid not some adult sized teen who was beating another black security guards head in on the sidewalk after he knocked him to the ground” ...Then claim the guard was white ?

Use that plus. How about going into the real reason Obama did this partly to advance his goofy communist ideas about living in “collectives” and whip up a power base so nobody goes after him for corruption amd incompetence.

I caught Kudlow’s excursion into political campaigning on his Saturday 10/19 broadcast which he’s demonstrated doesn’t get. When he discusses politics it always comes from his narrow perspective don’t upset the money market viewpoint. He does have guests who do know something about campaigning but once they start citing polls it doesn’t dawn on them that they’re driven by the political opposition. During the 2012 campaign most Americans were talking about prices. Food prices, gas prices, what were the Romney people responding to ? We’re still fighting the 2012 campaign on the same issues which were never made then.

It’s very dishartening to post stuff here and see that many FRs don’t get it let alone the so called GOPES.

[Venturer]

There is certainly nothing delusional about the fact that the liberals and the Democrats own the Media.

[driftless2]

When I read articles like this one and the comments following, I know all is not lost for conservatives. If our enemies are this dimwitted, we still have a fighting chance. They’re still totally unable to discern conservatism and the birth of conservatism...which was basically the birth of the country. The roots of recent conservatism start with W. F. Buckley Jr. and Barry Goldwater. As long as these toads can’t (or won’t make an attempt to) understand us, we’ll have an edge. If we use it correctly.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bump!

Excellent post. Enjoyed it immensely.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

CLICK on Chameleon Obama:

[NTHockey]

Now can Conservatives FINALLY get rid of the notions that a) the GOP can be taken from within< b) it is worth saving and c) athird (really a second) party is counterproductive?

The RINOs will vote with the RATs rather than support a Conservative; yet we are all supposed to fall in line for their Do Nothing candidates. Never again.

[lafarge]

It’s not this, it’s not that.

It’s the money, the easy money. Follow the easy money.

[Excellence]

Anything that comes out of Salon is almost self-satire. We have not come anywhere near getting our “revenge” on the liberal media.

[Flintlock]

Conservatives “across the pond”??
The wouldn’t know one if they tripped over one.

[Nextrush]

They assume that the Republican Party is a monolithic institution with real conservatives and RINO’s being one.

Ailes worked for RIchard NixOn, not Ronald Reagan. Nixon made tough speeches about “law and order” and sent his surrogates like VP Spiro Agnew to attack the liberal media more directly.

Meanwhile Nixon signed off on the expansion of government at home with with OSHA and EPA, went to China and the Soviet Union to promote “détente”, then cut a meaningless peace deal with North Vietnam.

Of course, the media hated anyone who wasn’t talking like Marx and Lenin back then and there was a vicious media war with Nixon’s FCC ruling against NBC News on Fairness Doctrine grounds.

Heck, even Phyllis Schlafly editorialized for the Fairness Doctrine back then as the Nixon team also took out a conservative radio preacher’s station on those grounds

The whole mantra of Nixon and the beltway conservatives who supported him was that news should be “fair and balanced”.

We still hear that slogan today with Fox News and there’s no doubt that Fox News is the revenge of a RINO Republican president who was attacked by the liberal-left mainstream media.

[I am Richard Brandon]

"This led to an explosion of opinionated propagandists on the air waves relentlessly attacking “liberal” media. It continues to this day, degrading American public discourse"

OK! Now let me get this right. If you do not agree with our PERFECT message and dare to say so, you are degraing public discourse. OK. Got it!

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

When I was a kid, a stand-up comedian named Herb Shriner was a favorite of mine whenever he appeared on (black-and-white) TV. The one joke of his that has stuck with me was his giving it out that his sister had been accosted by a man in a hotel lobby who pressed a note in her hand. It read, ”You are the only woman I have ever loved. Come to me in Room 233.”

Shriner’s next line was,

“She wasn’t sure it was sincere, though - it was mimeographed!”

I’m reminded of that story when we learn that the administration printed up signs in advance announcing that the shutdown, and pinning the blame on the Republicans in Congress. As Shriner’s joke illustrates, the medium can deny the message - and those signs prove that Obama had decided in advanceto close down the national parks and blame the Republicans. And did so, with malice aforethought.

It’s a bit late in the day to suggest that journalism’s claims that it was the Republicans and not Obama who shut down all public access to national parks reflect anything but the fact that the perspective of the journalism monopoly - and, via the medium of the wire services, journalists are all in cahoots - and the perspective of the Democrat Party are one and the same.