“Not A Smart Media Strategy”: The RNC’s Endless, Misguided War With MSNBC
Someone at MSNBC offends Republicans. Conservatives explode. MSNBC apologizes. Rinse, and repeat.
This is the cycle we’ve seen play out several times in the past few months, with the spat reaching a new high (low?) point this week with a tweet from the TV network suggesting Republicans are racist.
“Maybe the rightwing will hate it, but everyone else will go awww: the adorable new #Cheerios ad w/ biracial family,” read the tweet, which has since been deleted.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus quickly called for a boycott, saying no RNC staffers, officials, pundits, or strategists would appear on MSNBC until the network apologized. In short order, MSNBC President Phil Griffin personally did so, calling the remark “outrageous and unacceptable” and saying the person responsible had been fired. Priebus then called off the boycott, instead placing MSNBC on “probation.”
Sure, the tweet was an offensive cheap shot. So, too, was former anchor Martin Bashir’s statement that someone should defecate on Sarah Palin, and the comments made by guests on Melissa Harris-Perry’s show about Mitt Romney’s adopted black grandson.
Still, it’s unclear what purpose is served by dialing the outrage machine up to 11 over a few dumb remarks made on cable TV. Is it to discredit MSNBC? Well, in a PPP poll this week, registered voters named Fox News, once again, the most trusted TV news source. MSNBC came in second to last, at six percent — ahead of only NBC, and tied with Comedy Central.
In other words, the RNC is maligning an oft-maligned network, which, contrary to popular opinion, is not beloved by liberals the way Fox News is by conservatives.
Indeed, Priebus’ Network-esque defense of the “right wing” seemed more about channeling the right’s grievances and giving the base a short-lived sense of vindication. But that has little appeal for the more moderate swath of the public his party wants to court.
On its own, this would be sort of comical, though mostly harmless. But coupled with the RNC’s vote to ban MSNBC and CNN from hosting future presidential debates, it’s indicative of the party’s tendency toward insularity. The whole thing ends up being a myopic charade that could ultimately make the GOP — so desperate to rebrand — even more cloistered.
The RNC is right to be upset over MSNBC’s insensitive needling. But retreating into the safe confines of Fox News won’t help the GOP achieve its stated goal of attracting a broader array of voters. Next time, try a strongly worded statement and then carry on.
By: Jon Terbush, The Week, January 31, 2014
“What Was Huckabee Talking About?”: I Can Hardly Believe That I Share The Same Country With The Man
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus invited former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee to be the keynote speaker at the RNC’s winter meeting, but it appears that he regrets that decision:
Priebus responded to Huckabee’s comments, telling the Washington Post, “I don’t know what he was talking about. Sort of a goofy way of using some phrases. Not the way I would have phrased it.”
I don’t know what Mike Huckabee was talking about, either. When he was serving as governor, Huckabee signed a law mandating that health insurance plans provide contraceptive coverage, and he made no exceptions for religious institutions. And, despite the fact that his hero Jesus was quite clear that he had nothing but the harshest contempt for hypocrites, Huckabee is now behaving as if contraceptive coverage in health care plans is some kind of violation of people’s religious rights.
His actual comments were more than ‘goofy.’ They were nonsensical. I don’t know if he asks his nieces to refer to him as ‘Uncle Sugar,’ but I certainly hope not. The main thing is that he wants us to have a national discussion about contraception.
“If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it. Let us take that discussion all across America.”
I’m not sure that anyone knows quite what the hell that comment is supposed to mean. He later explained that “My point was to point out that Dems have put a laser-like focus on government funded birth control and given it more attention than cancer drugs.”
Does anyone think Huckabee’s point was that Democrats are not highlighting enough how ObamaCare is giving people access to life-saving cancer drugs?
Anyone?
I’ve tried to decipher Huckabee’s meaning and I’ve read other people’s attempts to explain his comments, but I think I’ll have to chalk it up to some kind of cultural misunderstanding. It’s kind of like the tension I feel between having total contempt for how Saudi Arabia treats women and religious freedom and my tolerance for different cultures having different laws and beliefs. Maybe your typical Saudi understands what Huckabee was trying to say, but I certainly don’t. I can hardly believe that I share the same country with the man.
As best as I can tell, he was saying that Republicans have enough respect for women to believe that they can remain chaste until marriage, as they should. Maybe ObamaCare should cover the expense of burkas. Would Huckabee support that?
By: Martin Longman, Washington Monthly Political Animal, January 25, 2014
“Rebranding, Who Needs It: A Genuine Rebranding Is Only A GOP Emergency Fallback Measure
The Mike Huckabee brouhaha yesterday offered about the 155th recent opportunity for non-conservatives to observe that the “rebranding” exercise of the Republican Party isn’t going that well. But as The Atlantic‘s Molly Ball observes today, Republicans really just don’t care:
While Democrats fixate on what they consider the GOP’s failed makeover, Republicans have moved on. The delegates at Thursday’s RNC meeting weren’t brooding over the party’s lack of reorientation. They were getting upbeat briefings about how far the party has come in the past year and how bright the future looks. As Massachusetts Republican committeeman Ron Kaufman told me, the time for “painful self-examination” has passed. “Now we’re implementing it, and it’s going to pay off. Everything couldn’t be better right now for us.”
He’s not wrong. Without changing a thing, Republicans are very well positioned for the midterm elections this year and even for the 2016 presidential election. As the University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato recently noted, Republicans are almost guaranteed to keep the House of Representatives in November; they have about a 50-50 chance of taking the majority in the U.S. Senate; and they are likely to keep their majority of the nation’s governor’s mansions. The erosion of public trust in Obama and Democrats spurred by the botched introduction of the healthcare exchanges continues to reverberate in public polling of contests up and down the ballot, erasing the public-opinion edge Democrats gained from the government shutdown and tilting more and more contests in the GOP’s favor, according to Sabato, who on Thursday revised his ratings of three Senate contests, tilting all of them more toward Republicans.
Now anyone who reads this blog surely knows by now that the bright 2014 prospects for an unregenerated GOP are largely baked into the cake, thanks to a sizable midterm turnout advantage, a House landscape with few marginal districts, and a very favorable Senate landscape. And there are just enough grounds for 2016 optimism among Republicans to make a good midterm outcome quite enough to convince most of these birds that a genuine “rebranding” is a fallback measure, only to be used in emergencies, and vastly less attractive than taking a chance on winning with their full freak flag displayed. Meanwhile, there are plenty of bells and whistles a party as wealthy as the GOP can deploy to improve their chances on the margins, as Bell notes:
At Thursday’s RNC meeting, delegates got closed-door briefings on all the ways the GOP has upped its game in the past year. The RNC has been raising money at a record clip, enabling Chairman Reince Priebus to fulfill his goal of staffing an unprecedented national political operation. There are more than 160 field staffers living and organizing in 26 states, and they’ll be in all 50 by the end of the year. There are Hispanic outreach staffers in Colorado, Asian-American staffers in California, African-American organizers in Detroit, a youth director in Pennsylvania. The chairman of the Alaska Republican Party, Peter Goldberg, marveled to me that there are now full-time-staffed RNC field offices in Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau, with more on the way. “That’s never existed before,” he said.
Republicans are also investing tens of millions of dollars in their data, digital, and Internet operations, opening an office in Silicon Valley and hiring numerous tech-savvy staffers. Meanwhile, they’re undertaking a series of picayune but potentially consequential changes to the presidential nominating process….
Democrats roll their eyes at these efforts—see, they say, Republicans think they can dress up the same old ideas with fancy Facebook doodads and slick new slogans, but they’re not fundamentally changing what it is they’re offering in policy and philosophical terms. But to Republicans, the idea that they would change what they stand for was always oversold. The Growth and Opportunity Project’s only policy recommendation was immigration reform—which, granted, hasn’t happened, blocked by House Republicans, though it still could get done this year. The bulk of the report, though, focused on changing the party’s image and effectiveness through rhetoric and tactics.
So no: other than the occasional outcast like John Weaver who still has cache with the MSM, there’s really not much Republicans interest in rebranding any more. They’d just as soon go with what they’ve got and avoid the necessity of compromise if they do win big in 2014 and 2016. All they need now is a decent 2016 presidential candidate, and the troubles afflicting Chris Christie could make that decision more of a fashion show than a civil war. So we’d all do well to stop marveling at the contradictions between “rebranding” rhetoric and the underlying reality. That’s all history now, and will remain so until such time as Republicans find themselves in really big trouble.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, January 24, 2014
“GOP Sensitivity Training In Animal House”: The Real Harm Is The Ugliness Of The Policies Themselves
When we learned last month that John Boehner was providing “sensitivity training” to his male Republican colleagues, I knew we would be in for a treat. But who knew Boehner’s friends would provide an almost daily dose of “can you top this?” outrageous comments.
Just look at the sensitivity toward women that prominent members of the GOP have displayed just this week.
Yesterday, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a favorite GOP pundit and former presidential candidate, said that it’s the Democrats who have the “war on women” because they think women “cannot control their libido” and so rely on “Uncle Sugar” to provide birth control. (True to form, maybe he was trying to show us the difference between the pill makers and the pill takers?)
Then, later in the day, Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas, went off on a rant about how bored but crafty high school girls have figured how to work the system by having more children to increase their welfare checks.
And we also learned that Republican Rep. Steve Pearce of New Mexico wrote in his memoir that women are to “voluntarily submit” to their husbands, and that men are to take “the leadership role” in the family. Perhaps hoping nobody would actually read his memoir, Pearce promptly denied saying what he has said in print.
Never wanting to be outdone, yesterday afternoon Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, blamed a rise in sexual assaults on college campuses on President Obama and Sandra Fluke. Although Perkins used more polite language than that of Rush Limbaugh in describing Fluke, his implication was the same. Fluke’s “crusade…for unlimited birth control,” he implied, had encouraged young women to invite sexual assault on themselves.
What is going on in those sensitivity trainings?!
And that’s before we even get to the policies. Last week, the House Judiciary Committee approved a Republican-sponsored bill that further restricts low-income women’s ability to access abortion, threatens to wipe even private abortion insurance coverage from the market, and requires the IRS to investigate whether a woman who obtains an abortion has been raped. When confronted with the fact that the bill could drive low-income women “deeper into poverty,” Rep. Steve King of Iowa snickered. Speaking at the March for Life on Wednesday, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor made this bill the centerpiece of his speech.
Meanwhile, Republican-led state legislatures are having a field day restricting women’s access to birth control and abortion. The Guttmacher Institute found that more state-level restrictions on abortion access were enacted from 2011 to 2013 than in the entire previous decade. If Michigan’s recent debate over “rape insurance” is any indication, that trend of Republican legislatures trying to outdo each other is not slowing down anytime soon.
Even if the sensitivity training were working — which it clearly is not — no amount of sensitive language can cover up demeaning and disastrous policies. For example, Todd Akin was insensitive when he said the words “legitimate rape”; the House GOP was just being its authentic, retrograde self when it tried to write that principle into law. This is part of why GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan had to go into hiding on the campaign trail. Ryan never said the words “legitimate rape,” but he did think that rape victims shouldn’t be allowed abortions.
What the GOP doesn’t seem to have grasped is that just saying sensitive things (or refraining from saying stupidly insensitive things) isn’t enough to win voters. It’s the policies, not just the way you talk about them.
If Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus’ planned “reboot” of his party’s image taught us anything, the new Republican craze for “sensitivity” will be short-lived. This week, after moving its annual meeting to accommodate the March for Life, the RNC will be encouraging its members to spend more time talking about their opposition to abortion rights. Yes, you read that right — more time talking about it. The GOP’s half-hearted attempt at outreach to women seem to already be going the way of its planned overtures to Latinos.
We shouldn’t be surprised when proponents of policies that are based in misogyny say misogynistic things. But we need to be clear that the real harm is not just a lack of sensitivity. It’s the ugliness of the policies themselves.
By: Michael Keegan, The HuffingtonPost Blog, January 24, 2014
“Old Fashion Muscular Tough Guy’s”: Christie Scandal And A ‘Feminized Atmosphere’
It stands to reason that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) admirers are going to defend him as the bridge scandal unfolds. There’s even a predictable defense: the governor wasn’t responsible since he wasn’t aware of his aides’ alleged misconduct.
But some of the arguments Christie’s allies have come up with are more striking than others. Fox News’ Brit Hume, for example, was asked yesterday about the governor’s reputation for bullying those who disagree with him. Hume responded:
“Well, I would have to say that in this sort of feminized atmosphere in which we exist today, guys who are masculine and muscular like that in their private conduct, kind of old fashion tough guys, run some risk. […]
“By which I mean that men today have learned the lesson the hard way that if you act like a kind of an old fashioned guy’s guy, you’re in constant danger of slipping out and saying something that’s going to get you in trouble and make you look like a sexist or make you look like you seem thuggish or whatever. That’s the atmosphere in which he operates. This guy [Christie] is very much an old fashioned masculine, muscular guy, and there are political risks associated with that. Maybe it shouldn’t be, but that’s how it is.”
Perhaps this is the best Republican media can do given the revelations?
I’ll confess I didn’t see that one coming. The Christie administration is accused of abusing its power, seeking petty political retribution against perceived enemies, using public resources as a weapon that endangered the public, and then lying about it.
Leave it to Fox’s senior political analyst to explain that the governor is the actually victim – he’s the muscular tough guy being treated unfairly because of his old fashioned masculinity. Team Christie isn’t “thuggish,” Hume assures us, it only appears that way because of the darned “feminized atmosphere.”
Apparently, we should feel bad for the terrible burdens the Republican governor must feel, being so tough and muscular in an environment that doesn’t fully appreciate a “guy’s guy.”
Elsewhere on the Sunday shows, the RNC’s Reince Priebus, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), and Rudy Giuliani all equated Christie’s bridge scandal with the IRS story from last spring, apparently unaware that the comparison is remarkably stupid.
The RNC’s Sean Spicer added that last week’s developments in New Jersey are proof that Christie is “what America is yearning for,” a point echoed by Karl Rove, who said the governor blaming his staff is emblematic of “what we want in a leader.”
None of these folks, by the way, appeared to be kidding. These are their actual talking points.
Kathleen Parker, meanwhile, believes Christie may ultimately thrive because conservatives will think journalists and news organizations are being “mean” to him. “What is certain is that the only thing the Republican base hates more than a liar and a bully is a bullying media,” she wrote. “Once that common enemy is established, the perceived victim often becomes the victor.”
It would appear for many Republicans in media, efforts to address Christie’s controversy on the merits are over. Indeed, they never really started in the first place.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, January 13, 2014
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