Wednesday, February 24, 2016

TV Brought Us To The Current Republican Reality

As the insanity that is the Republican Party unrolls farther, as the guaranteed candidate campaigns to appeal to the angry, insane base that can still consider voting for any or them, more and more people will ask how the United States has devolved to the mainstream being reminiscent of the worst days of 19th century Know Nothingism.   Well, there's really no question and there really is no mystery and, in this year of complete insanity goes on, it is one of the people who are most responsible for the partial decay of our politics who gave the answer.   Newt Gingrich told the people of FOX that they are responsible for creating Trump the political success.

DOOCY: Well they are uncomfortable with Trump, the GOP establishment. You talk to the GOP establishment, I mean, you're part of it for the most part. What—this is their nightmare scenario. What are they trying to do?

GINGRICH: Oh, I think they live in a fantasy land right now. Donald Trump is tapping into something that's real ... 

KILMEADE: Well what's interesting is that Mitt Romney, one of his great advantages was money, and that's why a lot of you guys couldn't keep up. This time, the billionaire is spending the least amount of money and running away with this thing—

GINGRICH: Well, that's because of you guys.

KILMEADE: What?

GINGRICH: That's because of you guys. Donald Trump gets up in the morning, tweets to the entire planet at no cost, gets on the phone, calls you, has a great conversation for about eight minutes, which would have cost him a ton in commercial money. And meanwhile, his opponents are all out there trying to raise the money to run an ad, and nobody believes the ad.

KILMEADE: People make decisions. Mitt Romney made a decision: for three months, he wouldn't do us at all. People decide—for a while, Jeb Bush wouldn't hop on any television at all. Hillary Clinton didn't do anything in the beginning. Donald Trump from day one made himself available to big and small.

When it's the likes of Newt Gingrich who is telling truth things have gone totally nuts.

As Jack Holmes points out, it doesn't seem to occur to Doocy, Kilmeade, etc. that they, their producer and others involved were also making decisions that have led this way.  But the media is what has produced the insanity of the Republican filed, which, if we are really lucky, will implode and not be elected.  It being elected is a very real danger that the free press, cabloid TV and hate-talk radio and web have produced.

And you can include the people who destroyed penalties for media lying about political figures and others, the Supreme Court, the ACLU...  those who abolished broadcasting standards and community service requirements and the idiots of the alleged left who accept and even champion that libertarian stand which is what has created Trump, Cruz, etc.

The hard teaching of our insane politics hasn't been enough for the left who have been entirely marginalized by the regime of media deregulation isn't learned because, for the most part, the people who speak for the left are affluent and either a part of or true believers in the insane pseudo-liberalism that invented that ideological stand.   They seldom pay the real price that is paid, by the poor and destitute, first and foremost, Black people, Latinos, members of other minorities, people who are incarcerated.   Oh, yes, let's not forget that significant minority group.   I remember, back when I used to watch MSNBC's Friday lineup the jokes that the last talking head before the prison show would make a joke about its weekly prison show.  Well, considering how large that group is, a class largely created by government policies, one hour a week is about the least that TV could do.  I've got my doubts about any media liberal who could think that was something to joke about.  That's a symptom of the intellectual and moral rot where this whole thing originated.

Bring back the Fairness Doctrine, community service requirements and the ability of politicians and public people to sue for slander and libel.   No doubt one of the early casualties of that legal regime would be FOX "news", CNN, and the rest of the media that has dragged our politics down to the lowest common denominator of the Republican electorate.

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