O’Reilly Runs Away From His Base
The Research 2000 poll commissioned by Daily Kos has a lot of Republicans worried. Republican leaders know that the extremism of the Republican base will turn voters off so that’s why so many Republican leaders have tried to dismiss the poll. Witness Bill O’Reilly and Karl Rove:
Comment by Republican David on 2 February 2010 at 9:54 pm:
Who would dis the poll? I would be hard pressed to disagree with any of the majority conclusions except the gay teacher and benefits that you published. There is nothing that I don’t say everyday. This poll confirms what I often claimed that there is no controversy over so called same sex marriage within the party and hardly any on DADT or ENDA.
I almost wonder about why anyone would disagree with the common sense expressed in the poll. Then I see people who can’t even laugh about a joke told to break the ice with teens and can’t admit that they are a bunch of Fabian Socialists.
This poll is gold for Democrats, if only they figure out how to use it. It’s got a second benefit as well if it splits the Republican leadership from the Republican base.
Tags: Bill O'Reilly, Teabaggers
The poll was genius. Right wingers have to choose between defending the results, or denying them. Either way they are screwed.
Right now they are responding by attacking Daily Kos. That’s all they got.
The next step should be a similar poll from another pollster that is not Daily Kos. That will drop the firecracker into the hornet nest.
I’m not sure what O’Reilly, Rove, etc. hope to accomplish by mocking this poll. Couldn’t this potentially backfire on them? They probably should have just ignored it.
Follow-up:
Markos and Keith discuss the poll and O’Reilly’s reaction:
Never bet against the power of the conservative owned media, coupled with the inexhaustible willingess of Dems to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Last spring and summer people were actually talking about the end of the Republican party, or its isolation as a rump party of the South. The Democratic agenda looked like a juggernaut.
Republicans really were on the ropes. Not even Rupert Murdoch could cover up their failures. They had nothing left, so they sent out the bottom of the barrel, the Million Moran Army (teabaggers) to gin up some fake outrage for the MSM to run with.
And it worked. It was as if the women and children of Berlin had beaten back the Allies in WWII.
I don’t know anon. I sort of feel (gut feel here) that the Republican resurgence has peaked. Obama is finally fighting back against the obstructionism and the loss of the “super majority” is finally making the media pay attention a little bit. IDK, but it really seems to me that the Republicans are flailing around a lot.
They’ve finally had to take a stand against things they claimed to support, like PAYGO and Boehner’s flailing around about the Ryan GOP budget has really put them in a corner.
it really seems to me that the Republicans are flailing around a lot.
You and I know that. But the news is all about “Republican resurgence.”
Obama has not yet shamed one Republican into voting with the Democrats. I hope he has a Plan B already under way.
Dems won’t get back on track until every American knows at least one person who got a job as a direct result of a bill signed by Obama.
“They’ve finally had to take a stand against things they claimed to support, like PAYGO and Boehner’s flailing around about the Ryan GOP budget has really put them in a corner.”
And yet none of that has made the papers. It’s all about the morans.
In wingnut world, voting for PAYGO is voting for taxes.
In our media environment, Repubs don’t need a viable alternate budget. They can rack up points simply by attacking Obama’s budget. Nobody except us cares if their alternate budget is scrawled in crayon.
Now, the “cutting Social Security and Medicare” aspect of the GOP budget is a gift of low hanging fruit – but the only way for it to become widely known is for multiple Dem candidates to run aggressive attack ads against it. And that will have to wait until the fall.
multiple Dem candidates to run aggressive attack ads against it
They don’t have to wait for ads. They just have to wait for a recess town hall and invite some cameras to show their constituents the plan to privatize medicare and social security. Really, you can use their own words and their own charts for this — they are in Ryan’s proposal up on the web as is the CBO report.
The fact that repubs voted against PAYGO ought to be the cable story for days — but the media will wait for Dems to point this out and can anyone here imagine Tom Carper calling out these guys for not passing PAYGO?