| Media Stuck In Alternative Reality |
|
October 13, 2005 |
|
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT |
 |
|
 RUSH: Robin Toner in the New York Times today, and again, her piece, "Democrats See Dream of '06 Victory Taking Form -- Already, the response to Hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq and soaring gasoline prices have taken a toll on the popularity of President Bush and Congressional Republicans." Now, let's take a look at these. Hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq, and soaring gasoline prices. Now, what are my theories? And I've always shared these theories. The liberals like Fineman, let's go back to him. Fineman some time ago, last three weeks or so, wrote a piece two years late. He had just now discovered what Broder knows: the power of the left-wing blogs and extremists and activists here who have become the Democrat base. The Democrats, along with their allies in the media, create an alternative reality based on the news cycle. The news cycle has been singular with derivatives since 2001, that is, destroy Bush. Remember, Enron was going to destroy Bush, folks. Remember that? Enron was going to destroy Bush. It didn't. Nothing that they've tried has destroyed Bush. So they create this alternative reality and then they believe it themselves because it's what they want to be real. So the response to Hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq, and soaring gasoline prices, those are the three elements of the latest cycle that they think explain the plummeting poll numbers for George W. Bush. And those three things form the basis of their belief that Bush is falling apart, the Republicans are falling apart, and the Democrats can win.
Well, pardon me for being redundant, but it's important. What they fail still to realize is that they cannot create an alternative reality anymore. They can amongst themselves, and they can live it, and they do. Let's take Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina and the reporting of the aftermath, we now know was totally bogus. We know so much. There weren't rapes; there weren't mass murders; there wasn't total anarchy at the Superdome, in the convention center. The floodwaters did not become a toxic soup. The city is already being repopulated, although not sufficiently fast for School Bus Nagin. More on that later. He's very upset. But Mardi Gras is scheduled. The French Quarter is open. The place is being rebuilt. The pipelines are coming back online. None of this was going to happen. We were going to be down six months. New Orleans might not ever come back. Then the media is out giving themselves awards, and they're getting new shows and they're getting new assignments and they're getting cover stories in magazines about their social conscience, when the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of Americans now know that it was all bogus! There wasn't anything to it!
The fact that Bush's poll numbers are down now has nothing to do with the Hurricane Katrina response because the Hurricane Katrina response is responding. It's working. It's all coming together. But they still think that America is stuck back in that first week after the hurricane, still seeing those pictures in their minds, still blaming Bush for this, still blaming Republicans. What really has -- and this they are hopelessly incapable of seeing -- what really has become known and became visible to a significant number of Americans is this: That 60 years of a liberally dominated and run city was a shambles before the hurricane hit. There was racism; there was massive poverty; there was discrimination; there was misery, unhappiness. And this is the exact opposite of what it should be. In fact, I shared the story with you earlier this week. Liberals in a funk. They are hoping that the aftermath of Katrina would help them build on their existing poverty programs. Ain't happening. Republicans in Congress aren't going for it, because what's become known is, existing poverty programs for all these last 40 or 50 years failed dismally, even being run by Democrats, unchecked and unbridled for two or three generations. So they can create this alternative reality of the Hurricane Katrina response being horrible and Bush's fault. And, by the way, they can then give respectability to people like Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton, who want to go out there and say that the levees were blown up to destroy black New Orleans. They give it credence. When Pat Robertson comes up and says whoever that little thug down in Venezuela is ought to be taken out, why, it's news for a week, Robertson is losing his mind. Robertson is absolutely crackpot. When Robertson says all these floods and hurricanes and earthquakes might represent the Second Coming and the last days, they go bananas! |
|
|
Ooh, he's an absolute Looney Toon, this Robertson, and he's an idiot and they go down to New Orleans and they talk to people, "Do you think this is the last days? Do you think there's a conspiracy down here to blow up the levees?" Meanwhile, Calypso Louie who is ten times, a hundred times -- to average people, now -- a hundred times the crackpot that anybody on the right is, is given respectability. He's going to do a million gazillion man march, and it's all going to be focused on the fact that the levees blown up and it's going to get covered and the media is going to give him respectability. He's a bigger kook to the American people, and worse, he's a dangerous kook, than Robertson could ever hope to be in the minds of most Americans. Media can't see this. I ran this theory by a good liberal buddy of mine the other day. When I drew this comparison between Calypso Louie and Pat Robertson, face went blank. Never even thought of it that way, never even considered it. And I said, "Okay, go ahead and defend Farrakhan to me. I want you to intellectually defend Farrakhan to me. I want you to tell me where he's gotta point. I want you to tell me where it's important to hear what he has to say." Ba-da ba-da ba-da ba-da ba-da. They just instinctively believe it because any enemy of Bush's is a friend of theirs and since he's out there saying Bush set the charges to blow up the levees, hey, he's on our side, that's all we need to know. What they fail to grasp is that the vast majority of the American people now do not trust them in the mainstream press, are very dubious and skeptical of what the mainstream press is reporting, because it is so obvious what their agenda is. Yet I don't know if Ms. or Mr. -- is Robin Toner male or female? I don't even know. So I'll cover my bases. Here's mister or Ms. Toner writing that the Hurricane Katrina aftermath is one of the things that's really uplifted the Democrats.
The real truth is in her own newspaper earlier this week. Liberals in a funk over the fact that they aren't making hay over rebuilding existing poverty programs because of this aftermath. Now, what's the next one? The war in Iraq. Well, let's take a look at the war in Iraq. What's going on there? "The Iraqi National Assembly yesterday approved last-minute changes to the draft constitution in an attempt to attract Sunni support before Saturday's nationwide referendum on the charter. The changes, endorsed by the president, prime minister and U.S. officials who had pushed for them, addressed Sunni concerns about the unity of Iraq and the persecution of former supporters of Saddam Hussein. But it was not clear whether the amendments came in time to influence rank-and-file Sunni Muslim voters, who until now have been urged by party leaders and clerics to vote against the constitution."
 Iraq sovereignty wasn't going to happen. The elections, we should postpone 'em, we can't guarantee security. We don't even have all the polling places, the precincts are not open. Remember John Kerry? Need to set that back. Then the elections happened. Remember all the columns after those elections? Maybe Bush was right. No, that's not the perspective. Maybe you were wrong! Bush hasn't changed what he said. Bush said these things are going to happen when he said they're going to happen, and they've happened when he said they were going to happen. You guys have been the doubting Thomases, you've been the pessimists, you've been the defeatists, you've been saying it can't happen. Everything that Bush said is going to happen has happened, right on time. And yet maybe Bush was right. No, maybe you were wrong. Whatever, they miss all of this.
Now, this news that the Iraqi national assembly yesterday approved last-minute changes to the draft constitution, big loss for the libs. Big loss for the insurgents. Big loss for the terrorists. Wasn't supposed to happen. Let me share with you a piece here from John Armor. Now, John Armor is a First Amendment attorney, lives in North Carolina, Blue Ridge Mountains, and he has this piece posted at News Busters. I think it's on News Busters. Is it News Busters? Yeah, that's Brent Bozell's website, the arm of the Media Research Center. He writes this.
"For two days, all parts of the American press have been reporting a 'constitutional compromise' which has 'gained the support of a main Sunni political party.' With this compromise, it is expected that upwards of half the Sunnis (a 20% minority in Iraq) will support its new Constitution, and it will be ratified in the vote on Saturday. All well and good. But hasn't anyone in the press recalled certain adventures of James Madison? (He was in all the papers.) We in the United States have been through exactly the same process. But NO ONE in the American press has, so far, remembered and mentioned that fact. There was a bitter fight between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists in Philadelphia in 1787, whether we would have a new Constitution. And if so, what would be the powers of the new federal government. When the Constitution was submitted to Congress for its review, and afterwards to the states for their ratification, that same fight spilled out to the state capitols. The Constitution missed defeat by only 10 votes in Virginia, by only 3 votes in New York. Ratification delegates in those two states, and in a majority of the other states, demanded the immediate promulgation of a Bill of Rights as the price of accepting the Constitution. Any member of the press who has a marginally competent education in the history of the United States should know this." I would wager that they don't know this. But that's how the Bill of Rights came to be. It was the result of an argument over the role and power of the federal government.
"More than 200 state demands for amendments were placed in the hands of James Madison, a newly elected Congressman from Virginia. He distilled them into 17 amendments which passed the House. Twelve of those passed the Senate, and 11 were ultimately adopted as the Bill of Rights. (The 27th Amendment, ratified in 1992, was part of Madison's work.)" That's how far back it dates. "Why is this relevant today? The compromise struck in Iraq to assure ratification of its new Constitution is EXACTLY what happened in the United States between 1787 and 1789. It makes more sense to American readers to explain foreign events as a compare and contrast with events here. But that counts on somebody (Anybody? Anybody? in Ben Stein's voice) in the American press to know our own history and recognize the parallels." But if they don't know it, they can't report it. "Anyone interested in the Bill of Rights as the price paid for ratification of the US Constitution can read about it in the Introduction to Robert Yates' Secret Proceedings and Debates of the Convention to Form the US Constitution, facsimile reprint, Birmingham Public Library, 1987. And anyone who reads that Introduction will understand more about current events in Iraq than the entire American press."
So, all week long, "Uh-oh, they have to do a compromise. Oh, this is bad news, they're having to give up this, oh, this is bad, the Sunnis, they've got to keep the Sunnis happy." But this is exactly how these things happen! And it's exactly how it happened here. The point is, all this is reported as bad news. What was just a few short week ago, "This constitution wasn't going to make it. They're not going to vote for it, and the insurgents are going to try to stop it. They're going to start blowing up people left and right. The terrorists are going to make sure it doesn't happen." Yet all these things continue to happen. Now, the alternative reality media creation is that we are losing in Iraq, we're losing thousands every month, the Iraqis don't want what we're doing there. They don't like us being there, that the terrorists, insurgents are winning, and this constitution is simply a Bush rubber stamp being forced on them, pure and simple. But the truth is what I just shared with you. Now, as for rising gasoline prices, what can I say? The gas price is going down, oil price is going down. Gas prices are going on down, and, frankly, all of the hooting and screaming about those has died down quite a bit. But as far as the mainstream press is concerned, why, people are selling their SUVs left and right and they're buying hybrids and they're mad as hell at Bush and the oil price. No, they understand what hurricanes do to supply and demand. The press stuck in its alternative reality, which is a false one. And yet that's what they base Bush's problems on and the conservative crackup on, and their almost guaranteed lock to win in '06. Well, lies don't carry you very far, folks. Ask Bill Clinton.
END TRANSCRIPT |
|
|
Read the Articles... |
|
(NY Times: Democrats See Dream of '06 Victory Taking Form)
Headline: Conservative Crackup
Subheadline: How the neocons have developed a political exit strategy.
Source: Newsweek
By: Howard Fineman
Date: October 12, 2005
President George W. Bush may have no military exit strategy for Iraq, but the “neocons” who convinced him to go to war there have developed one of their own—a political one: Blame the Administration.
Their neo-Wilsonian theory is correct, they insist, but the execution was botched by a Bush team that has turned out to be incompetent, crony-filled, corrupt, unimaginative and weak over a wide range of issues.
The flight of the neocons—just read a recent Weekly Standard to see what I am talking about —is one of only many indications that the long-predicted “conservative crackup” is at hand.
The “movement” —that began 50 years ago with the founding of Bill Buckley’s National Review; that had its coming of age in the Reagan Years; that reached its zenith with Bush’s victory in 2000—is falling apart at the seams.
In 1973, Karl Rove met George W. Bush, and became the R2D2 and Luke Skywalker of Republican politics. At first, neither was plugged into “The Force”—the conservative movement. But over the years they learned how to use its power.
By the time Bush was in his second term as governor, laying the groundwork for his presidential run, he and Rove had gathered all of the often competing and sometimes contradictory strains of conservatism into one light beam. You could tell by the people they brought to Austin.
To tie down the religious conservatives, they nudged John Ashcroft out of the race and conducted a literal laying on of hands at the governor’s mansion with leaders such as James Dobson.
For the libertarian anti-tax crowd, they brought in certified supply-sider Larry Lindsey as the top economic advisor.
For the traditional war hawks they brought in Paul Wolfowitz, among others, go get Bush up to speed on the world.
For the traditional corporate types—well, Bush had that taken care of on his own.
But now all the constituent parts are—for various reasons—going their own way. Here's a checklist:
Religious conservatives
The Harriet Miers nomination was the final insult. Religious conservatives have an inferiority complex in the Republican Party. In an interesting way, it’s the same attitude that many African-Americans have had toward the Democratic Party over the years. They think that the Big Boys want their votes but not their presence or their full participation.
And what really frosts the religious types is that Bush evidently feels that he can only satisfy them by stealth—by nominating someone with absolutely no paper trail. It’s an affront. And even though Dr. Dobson is on board—having been cajoled aboard by Rove—I don’t sense that there is much enthusiasm for the enterprise out in Colorado Springs.
I expect that any GOP 2008 hopeful who wants evangelical support—people like Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum and maybe even George Allen—will vote against Miers's confirmation in the Senate.
Corporate CEOs
For them, Bush’s handling of Katrina was, and remains, a mortal embarrassment to their class, which Bush is supposed to have represented—at least to some extent.
These are people who believe in the Faith of Management—in anticipating problems and moving mass organizations. They also like to think of themselves as having a social conscience. And even if they don’t, they are sensitive to world opinion.
The vivid images from the Superdome were just too much for these folks. Recently, a prominent Republican businessman, whom I saw in a typical CEO haunt, astonished me with the severity of his attacks on Bush’s competence. And Bush had appointed this guy to a major position! Amazing.
Main Street: Smaller government deficit hawks
This is an old-fashioned but important core of conservatism: people who think federal spending should be relentlessly reduced, and that we should always view with suspicion any proposals to increase the role of the federal government in local and private life.
After binges of spending and legislating, backbenchers in the GOP, especially in the House, are in open revolt, having gathered around Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana and Sen. John McCain in the Senate. They tend to view the “Leadership’s” spending habits with alarm.
Isolationists
An old term, but still applicable. With the fall of Communism in Europe and Russia, the old anti-Communist wing of the conservative movement lost its role. Now the isolationists of old are back, and with a new crusade: immigration.
The relatively unchecked flood of illegal immigrants into this country is indeed a legitimate cause for alarm. But in the eyes of this crowd—one leader is my MSNBC colleague, Pat Buchanan—the Bush Administration is doing nothing.
Neocons
They think that the Middle East can be remade, and this country made safe, by instilling a semblance of democracy in the Fertile Crescent and beyond. But they seem to have given up on the ability of the Bush Administration to see that vision through.
They want more troops, not fewer; more money, not less; more passion, not the whispered talk of timetables for withdrawal.
Besides championing democracy, we need to show strength and resolve, they believe—and they are no longer convinced that Bush can show much of either.
Supply-siders
This is the one faction that the president has yet to disappoint in a major way. He pushed through two major tax cuts, and is pushing more—targeted ones—in the wake of Katrina.
Deep in their collective memory bank, Bush and Rove remember what happened when Daddy moved his lips and raised taxes. But now that the son has been reelected, will he move his lips, too? If the conservative crack up is to be complete—and I think it will be—the answer is yes.
|
|
|
*Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time. |
|
|
