Roger Ailes, Fox News CEO. (photo: MediaBistro)
How Fox News Is Destroying the Republican Party
27 January 12
annabe kingmaker Roger Ailes is facing an open revolt.More and more despondent conservatives are expressing alarm over the unfolding Republican primary season and what they see as the party's dwindling chances of defeating President Obama in November. Spooked at the general elections prospects facing frontrunners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich (especially Gingrich), members of the so-called Republican Establishment seem to want to reboot the election season and try their nominating luck again.
Sorry, it's too late.
If the current state of concern transforms into a larger, enveloping blame game, Fox News chairman Ailes ought be a looming target. True, conservatives in recent years have shown virtually no interest in critiquing, let alone trying to rein in, Ailes' empire. Still, it's becoming increasingly clear that Fox's programming and the radical, fear-based agenda it's setting for Republicans is now doing lasting damage to the Grand Old Party.
That's because Fox News isn't simply offering a rightward take on the day's events, or innocently providing Republican-friendly commentary, of course. It's leading an exhausting, day-in, day-out attack campaign against Obama, Democrats and all their liberal allies. (Real or imagined.) Its relentless, paranoid crusade falls well outside the mainstream of American politics, which is why the Republican primary season, so proudly sponsored by Fox News, is shaping up to be such an embarrassment.
Make no mistake, kingmaker Ailes has made sure his channel's profoundly un-serious stamp permeates this year's GOP contest. For more and more spooked Republicans though, it's a stamp of failure and looming defeat.
For Ailes and company, that slash-and-burn formula works wonders in terms of super-serving its hardcore, hard-right audience of three million viewers. But in terms of supporting a serious, national campaign and a serious, national conversation? It's not working. At all.
As Fox News has moved in and essentially replaced the RNC as the driving electoral force in Republican politics today, and with Ailes ensconced in his kingmaker role, candidates have had to bow down to Fox in search of votes and the channel's coveted free airtime. That means campaigns have been forced to become part of the channel's culture of personal destruction, as well as its signature self-pity.
The truth is, the Republican Establishment all but ceded control of the party, or at least the public face of the party, to Fox News (and Rush Limbaugh) in January, 2009. Party leaders, demoralized by John McCain's electoral landslide defeat, faded into the background and obediently followed Fox News' often-hysterical lead as Rupert Murdoch's cable channel unveiled an unprecedented effort to demonize and delegitimize the newly elected president. (In the Fox-led world, it's conventional wisdom that Obama's a foreign, race-baiting Marxist who undermines Israel and is determined to destroy the American way of life.)
With Fox News at the irresponsible helm, the conservative movement in America, including the emerging Tea Party, became first and foremost a media movement, and one that gleefully cut ties with common sense and decency. (See: Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh.)
As blogger Andrew Sullivan noted this week:
The Republican Establishment is Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes, Karl Rove, and their mainfold products, from Hannity to Levin. They rule on the talk radio airwaves and on the GOP's own "news" channel, Fox.
With media outlets setting the conservative agenda, as well as raising campaign funds and boosting GOP candidates, it was Fox News that quickly transformed itself into the Opposition Party. It was Roger Ailes who, officially or unofficially, began to wear two hats: Program Director at Fox News, Chairman of the RNC.
In terms of whipping up bouts of anti-Obama hysteria, the crass Fox approach enjoyed some short-term success. However, that same media movement is now three long and rhetorically repetitive years into its Obama crusade and trying to nominate a presidential candidate via an extended national campaign. According to more and more worried conservatives, the results on display are disastrous.
Of course, conservatives should have thought that through before handing over the reigns to Ailes and his misinformation minions. Indeed, none of this is unexpected. It's all entirely predictable. It's what happens when a mainstream political movement embraces a radical media strategy like the one being promoted by Fox News; the movement marches itself off a cliff.
Conservative leaders themselves have freely adopted Fox News' profoundly un-unprofessional rhetoric about Obama, claiming just this week he's "pro-poverty" and his politics are "almost un-American." That's the Fox-ification of the GOP.
As Andrew Sullivan noted this week, the current GOP "purges dissidents, it vaunts total loyalty, it polices discourse for any deviation." That sounds a lot like Fox News.
Two years ago, despondent conservative and former Bush speechwriter David Frum, noting the sweeping power that Ailes was accumulating, observed that, "Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox."
As the Republican primary unfolds, I wonder if more and more poll-weary conservatives would like to fire their new boss.
*******************************************************************************
# 2012-01-27 16:47
*******************************************************************************
# 2012-01-27 16:47
+4 # 2012-01-28 06:30
Good observation. A different aspect is the conundrum of conservative thinking.
If the aim of the conservative political end is to look-out for one's self, eventually even friends become competitors. In difficult economic environments, especially manufactured ones, it is only a very small step from competitor to enemy. FOX is masterful, maybe their only real strength, at casting those roles.
If the aim of the conservative political end is to look-out for one's self, eventually even friends become competitors. In difficult economic environments, especially manufactured ones, it is only a very small step from competitor to enemy. FOX is masterful, maybe their only real strength, at casting those roles.
+11 # 2012-01-27 21:35
Fox "News" is the modern day equivalent of TASS. For those too young to remember, TASS was the propaganda "news" outlet for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It had about as much credibility as Baghdad Bob, but of course the people in the Soviet Union didn't know that. In the same way, Fox "News" watchers are blithely unaware that they are being lied to incessantly. Ignorance may be bliss, but it's still ignorance.
+1 # 2012-01-28 08:54
Well, by the 1970's Soviet citizens had figured out TASS and it had no credibility. Indeed, people came to believe that whatever TASS said, the opposite must be true. It took 50 years to get there.... 2 or 3 generations... We're still in the first generation of Fox viewers...
+1 # 2012-01-27 21:41
Obama has been the designated quisling of the oigarchy all along. The purpose of Fox is two-fold: one is cast the Republicans into such extreme postions that they won't be elected (and, of course, there is always the rigged machines and other dirty tricks to ensure that), the other is to push the nation, and the Democrats even further to the right. The wealthy oligarchy did not get where they are by leaving such things to chance.
+1 # 2012-01-28 08:56
As near as I can tell, there is NO issue on which Obama is to the left of Richard Nixon. Health insurance was not an issue under Nixon, but this is the kind of plan he would have devised.
And don't forget, he proposed a negative income tax to provide ongoing support to low income folks. That would be called "socialism" today.
this....
And don't forget, he proposed a negative income tax to provide ongoing support to low income folks. That would be called "socialism" today.
this....
+3 # 2012-01-27 21:44
Sure, FAUXNews is terrible, but it isn't really anything other than a reflection of the GOP itself. There is no room in their party for a moderate, and they embrace the worst aspects of our society...greed, racism, lack of empathy for those less fortunate, religious fanaticism, opposition to science, etc. And because of this extremism, their top candidates are completely "wrong" for the mood and situation today for most Americans. Romney is the archetypal Gordon Gekko vulture capitalist...and while vultures may have a role in an ecology and an economy, nobody wants one as President, do they? Add to this his tone-deafness ("Corporations are people", and "I like to fire people") that just plays into Obama's hand. And Newt is such the epitome of corrupt politician-cum-lobbyist that he was the only Speaker of the House to be censured. The weak field is Obama's saving grace, because he certainly hasn't been the transformative President that we hoped he would be, so he hasn't energized those of us on the Left...but the GOP candidates are so off their rocker that Obama looks spectacular in comparison.
+2 # 2012-01-27 22:14
So the Republican intrinsic insanity is now obvious. Great! Maybe sanity will sneak back into our lives when they finally drive themselves into the oblivion their frenzies are headed for.
+5 # 2012-01-27 22:46
Actually, one could be forgiven for wondering why the GOP is so upset by the current state of affairs in the US. The condition of the country now is exactly what Republicans have been working for for 30 years. Their objectives were to dismantle as many social programs as possible, to redistribute income upwards, to remove as many regulations on corporate business as possible, and to build up the most effective killing machine in the world. This is what Gingrich and his "contract" minions wanted, and this is what they have accomplished. (Thanks, Democrats, for 30 years of wimpish resistance.) No doubt, the Republican elites thought that as the lower classes got poorer, the elites would feel richer. Unfortunately, not even capitalism benefits from inegalitarianis m. The more equal the economy's participants, the better is life for all concerned ("When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn.")
+1 # 2012-01-28 09:03
This is a very interesting observation. My first reaction: the non-one-percent that vote Republican are wondering why they aren't rich.
The Republicans have argued for 30 years that the only thing holding back the magical Market is
1. Your tax dollars are going to Negroes. (Formerly, "nigras.") Cut social programs. DONE.
2. Your not making more money because wages are too high in the United States. Let corporations cut wages and become competitive. DONE.
The mendacity and racism of the first argument need no further discussion.
The inherent contradiction of the second argument however, is Orwellian: "You're poor because the wages of working people are too high."
But people fall for it - larded with nonsensical rhetoric about Hayek, and freedum, and markets, and competition, and, recently Galt.
Personally, I've concluded that Americans like being lied to. Like Party members in 1984, they want to think that everyone else is being lied to more, and that they're on the inside. I think Guy Debord got at this.
The Republicans have argued for 30 years that the only thing holding back the magical Market is
1. Your tax dollars are going to Negroes. (Formerly, "nigras.") Cut social programs. DONE.
2. Your not making more money because wages are too high in the United States. Let corporations cut wages and become competitive. DONE.
The mendacity and racism of the first argument need no further discussion.
The inherent contradiction of the second argument however, is Orwellian: "You're poor because the wages of working people are too high."
But people fall for it - larded with nonsensical rhetoric about Hayek, and freedum, and markets, and competition, and, recently Galt.
Personally, I've concluded that Americans like being lied to. Like Party members in 1984, they want to think that everyone else is being lied to more, and that they're on the inside. I think Guy Debord got at this.
+2 # 2012-01-27 23:06
Who gets their news from the television today? I'll tell you who. Baby-boomers. This country's steady shift to the right as the boomers have aged and become more isolated is grinding to a halt. If the left shows up at the polls, we'll trounce them every time. What we are witnessing are the death throes of a dying generation. Unfortunately, it's going to get uglier before it gets prettier. But the movement is afoot. The U.S. is beginning to do what any smart driver does....look left first.
Buh-bye GOP. Can't say I'll miss ya.
Buh-bye GOP. Can't say I'll miss ya.
0 # 2012-01-28 00:01
I've seen few of the 19 Republican debates but found the candidates scarily animated Thursday night. Romney might actually have profited from this endless travail and will be a better candidate for it, baring the gratuity of a Gingrich victory Tuesday. Romney actually owned some of his accomplishments in Massachusetts. Is it too late for him to shape up for the general? Pair him with Rubio, who today branded the extreme as intolerable. There could easily go the state which made Bush president. Who among us is confident of an Obama victory in Ohio, Indiana, Colorado, New Mexico or Nevada? Independent voters are only one-third in Obama's corner and are entirely capable of ignoring what the rest of us may wish was a disasterous Republican primary season. An energized Romney will be a more formedable candidate than McCain.
I was nervous all through September in 2008 and can't imagine this year will be anything less than a nail bitter.
I was nervous all through September in 2008 and can't imagine this year will be anything less than a nail bitter.
+1 # 2012-01-28 02:51
I want to tell Eric Boehlert to be quiet. Shhhh, don't give Fox or the RNC even a hint of what is happening so they have an opportunity to change what they are doing. Just stand back and (gleefully) watch them self destruct.
+1 # 2012-01-28 04:36
1) maybe fox WANTS obama re-elected: Fox built power as THE anti-clinton channel & war-cheerleader channel. it's more profitable with a scapegoat (obama). fox ratings may fall if bachmann/santorum get elected. need a nutball-fix? watch the white house not fox. If obama's re-elected roger "josef goebbels" ailes gets a freehand, & obama will play right into it despite his pseudo-populist re-election rhetoric. If obama wins, it may trigger a GOP "night of the long knives" in which less-radical (more rational) elements are finally purged. As prescient as the rational dirty-tricks wing of the GOP is, they must know it's coming.
2) the GOP primary circus is an obvious scam. how can anyone take it seriously? So what's up with letting idiot candidates whip up mass hysteria & hate & claw each other to pieces? When one gets a majority & others drop out, maybe "the nominee" gets knocked off (by some "radical" "leftist" OWS "dem" [black too?] can we say "cia+mossad"?) The left & obama are revealed as America's real enemies.
Nominee-less with committed delegates freed, the George Orwell Party calls in a "reluctant hero" (unsullied by the primaries) who "be-grudgingly" accepts The Party's nomination to lead the war against america's internal enemies. the old guard is relieved; fox, tp, nra, & other hatemongers are vindicated; the MIC & wall st get what they want. plus battlefield america becomes real profitable, it cuts shipping costs & keeps jobs here.
2) the GOP primary circus is an obvious scam. how can anyone take it seriously? So what's up with letting idiot candidates whip up mass hysteria & hate & claw each other to pieces? When one gets a majority & others drop out, maybe "the nominee" gets knocked off (by some "radical" "leftist" OWS "dem" [black too?] can we say "cia+mossad"?) The left & obama are revealed as America's real enemies.
Nominee-less with committed delegates freed, the George Orwell Party calls in a "reluctant hero" (unsullied by the primaries) who "be-grudgingly" accepts The Party's nomination to lead the war against america's internal enemies. the old guard is relieved; fox, tp, nra, & other hatemongers are vindicated; the MIC & wall st get what they want. plus battlefield america becomes real profitable, it cuts shipping costs & keeps jobs here.
+1 # 2012-01-28 09:07
Wow. Great imagination. This really could happen and it hadn't occurred to me. (I think imagination is key to progress.)
I think you should write it up with more detail, though, and peddle it as fiction. And make some dough. NOW! This would make a great novella. (And might prevent it from occurring.)
I think you should write it up with more detail, though, and peddle it as fiction. And make some dough. NOW! This would make a great novella. (And might prevent it from occurring.)
+2 # 2012-01-28 04:49
The thing Fox News does best is sports programming and politics is just another sport to them - a blood sport. I wonder, how many payrolls Fox News alumnus Newt Gingrich is on? Let's see, there's Freddie Mac, Fannie May, Fox News.......the list goes on. Fox is not a news outlet; it's an infection.
+2 # 2012-01-28 06:06
It is well-deserved by the GOP and their media cronies at Fox News. They are now a party filled with hatred and bigotry, especially against a black president, and now they are seeing the results of abandoning the people just to remove a president.
Can we speed along their demise?
Can we speed along their demise?
+3 # 2012-01-28 06:16
Every once in a while, I'll tape an entire, two hour segment of the morning "news" program, FOX and Friends. It is the modern equivalent of watching the old, 1965 movie, Hold On! starring the deservedly forgotten British pop group, Herman's Hermits: so mind-numbingly awful that it's actually fun to watch! The very fact that this lame assemblage of info-taining, trivial nonsense is the highest rated morning cable program is instructive when trying to get to the bottom of the question as to why the American people are the dumbest, least informed, unenlightened people in the entire western world and why we are - no doubt about it - the laughingstock of the planet.
It's three hosts are totally lacking in any real journalistic credentials. Indeed one of them, an amiable twit named Steve Doocy (whose last name will one day become a verb, I promise you), is a former TV weatherman. He now has the job of commenting daily on important matters of national and international concern - that is, when he's able to find the time to pry himself away from the latest Brittany or Paris scandal du jour. FOX and Friends is embarrassing any way you analyze it. It is nothing more than a propaganda arm of the Republican National Committee. It's message is as simplistic as it is unbalanced:
`
Conservative: GOOD. Liberal: BAD. Think of it as Mallard Fillmore in real time.
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
It's three hosts are totally lacking in any real journalistic credentials. Indeed one of them, an amiable twit named Steve Doocy (whose last name will one day become a verb, I promise you), is a former TV weatherman. He now has the job of commenting daily on important matters of national and international concern - that is, when he's able to find the time to pry himself away from the latest Brittany or Paris scandal du jour. FOX and Friends is embarrassing any way you analyze it. It is nothing more than a propaganda arm of the Republican National Committee. It's message is as simplistic as it is unbalanced:
`
Conservative: GOOD. Liberal: BAD. Think of it as Mallard Fillmore in real time.
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
+1 # 2012-01-28 06:19
This is good. FOX news began as a republican party project for mass propaganda and now it has taken over the party itself. The NRA did a similar thing. So did the National Right to Life Coalition. The problems is that the untra-right wing which runs all these organizations is more aggressive than what is left of the main stream republicans.
I see a real disaster coming. It might just be in FOX employee Newt taking the White House. Newt is psychologically and morally unstable, just as are FOX's main anchors -- O'Reilly, Hannity, and others. The lunatics will be in control of the asylum. All hell will break loose. But that may be the final implosion of the US that we need. Obama and his type just keep a bankrupt and criminal regime in washinton going. Maybe we need a Newt to push it to the collapse.
I see a real disaster coming. It might just be in FOX employee Newt taking the White House. Newt is psychologically and morally unstable, just as are FOX's main anchors -- O'Reilly, Hannity, and others. The lunatics will be in control of the asylum. All hell will break loose. But that may be the final implosion of the US that we need. Obama and his type just keep a bankrupt and criminal regime in washinton going. Maybe we need a Newt to push it to the collapse.
+1 # 2012-01-28 06:33
I'm not sure if Fox News is the cause or just one of many symptoms. One thing is certain, the lunatics have taken control of the asylum. Republican strategists have been feeding the lies and propaganda that divide the nation for decades because they can't win on an economic agenda that dis-empowers working people, ultimately they're to blame.
On the bright side, the conservative movement of the last 30 years continues to self destruct. Conservatives can no longer campaign on deregulation and tax cuts so the desperation and hate of the culture war in this election season is no surprise. They will have to move to the center or become even more irrelevant.
On the bright side, the conservative movement of the last 30 years continues to self destruct. Conservatives can no longer campaign on deregulation and tax cuts so the desperation and hate of the culture war in this election season is no surprise. They will have to move to the center or become even more irrelevant.
0 # 2012-01-28 06:36
This article is not surprising given Politico's recent report:
"The liberal group Media Matters has quietly transformed itself in preparation for what its founder, David Brock, described in an interview as an all-out campaign of “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” aimed at the Fox News Channel.
The group, launched as a more traditional media critic, has all but abandoned its monitoring of newspapers and other television networks and is narrowing its focus to Fox and a handful of conservative websites, which its leaders view as political organizations and the “nerve center” of the conservative movement. The shift reflects the centrality of the cable channel to the contemporary conservative movement, as well as the loathing it inspires among liberals — not least among the donors who fund Media Matters’ staff of about 90, who are arrayed in neat rows in a giant war room above Massachusetts Avenue.
“The strategy that we had had toward Fox was basically a strategy of containment,” said Brock, Media Matters’ chairman and founder and a former conservative journalist, adding that the group’s main aim had been to challenge the factual claims of the channel and to attempt to prevent them from reaching the mainstream media.
The new strategy, he said, is a “war on Fox.”
Lee Nason
New Bedford, Massachusetts
"The liberal group Media Matters has quietly transformed itself in preparation for what its founder, David Brock, described in an interview as an all-out campaign of “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” aimed at the Fox News Channel.
The group, launched as a more traditional media critic, has all but abandoned its monitoring of newspapers and other television networks and is narrowing its focus to Fox and a handful of conservative websites, which its leaders view as political organizations and the “nerve center” of the conservative movement. The shift reflects the centrality of the cable channel to the contemporary conservative movement, as well as the loathing it inspires among liberals — not least among the donors who fund Media Matters’ staff of about 90, who are arrayed in neat rows in a giant war room above Massachusetts Avenue.
“The strategy that we had had toward Fox was basically a strategy of containment,” said Brock, Media Matters’ chairman and founder and a former conservative journalist, adding that the group’s main aim had been to challenge the factual claims of the channel and to attempt to prevent them from reaching the mainstream media.
The new strategy, he said, is a “war on Fox.”
Lee Nason
New Bedford, Massachusetts
+1 # 2012-01-28 08:16
That doesn't explain David Frum's opinion that Fox News is an 'alternative knowledge system'. In other words, complete BS.
0 # 2012-01-28 08:54
Fox news is a boil on the backside of the American people. Slowly infecting all areas of our lives, while blaming everyone else for what they are doing. Then hiding behind Christianity, and Jesus...who probably could never get air time on Fox news unless they would be mocking Him. Fox news is a sad joke, that for awhile worked, it has brainwashed so many people with their lies and misinformation. I know the people who follow Fox really think they are right, and they spread the lies as if it were the truth. They are ignorant, they dont know any better, or they dont want to know any better.
Fox has won court cases where they were told its ok to lie. I read one case where Fox paid a reporter to investigate something they wanted to slam, when the reporter said the information was correct and wanted to print that information, Fox took them to court and Fox won. Lying is ok, because Fox has the courts backing up their lies. Im sure there probably was a big payola to the judge whomever he was or he was a right wing tool and just went along, no matter, Fox has a legal right to lie on their news. I hope the truth comes out about all of it.
They have no business reporting anything but sports, they are a travesty to Americans and our way of life.
Fox has won court cases where they were told its ok to lie. I read one case where Fox paid a reporter to investigate something they wanted to slam, when the reporter said the information was correct and wanted to print that information, Fox took them to court and Fox won. Lying is ok, because Fox has the courts backing up their lies. Im sure there probably was a big payola to the judge whomever he was or he was a right wing tool and just went along, no matter, Fox has a legal right to lie on their news. I hope the truth comes out about all of it.
They have no business reporting anything but sports, they are a travesty to Americans and our way of life.
In advocating an increasingly extreme conservative agenda, and "managing" the facts to fit it, the RNC has lost control of the party to its fringe elements (FOX lovers)-- those who actually believe the garbage they have been spewing for so long. Until they retool they may well find themselves out of the spotlight for awhile-- and trying to manage an increasingly extreme right-wing base. FOX may not be compliant.
Of course the 1% have the Democrats to fall back on. Obama may not be ideal for them, but they won't complain too much given his track record.