Will Fox News Be The Death of Conservatism?
Since Delaware Liberal has been called an echo chamber, I figure this give me a little license to talk about the wall that Fox News has built around the conservative movement. My take on this wall is that it is made of one part “The Party of No”, another part of Fox News’ “editorial” direction, and the final part, the litmus tests of Limbaugh and Beck. These broken down and reactionary political building blocks are extremely self-defeating to any success of the Republican Party, that as opposition member, I just have to laugh and laugh and laugh some more.
But there is some hope for the GOP and that hope is Newt Gingrich. For many reasons, I’m not a fan of Gingrich, but if there is one area I do respect him it is his knowledge of politics. And when Gingrich calls for “principled bipartisanship”, Republicans should heed this call. But The Tea Party rejects such a strategy with their childlike stomping of the feet, holding their hands over their ears, and shouting, “No, no, no, no!” Hey, I’ll let you in on a little secret, the Tea Party is so vital to the future success of the Democratic Party, that if it didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it. Don’t tell anyone.
The Fox cocoon may be good for stirring up the troops, but it’s almost certainly not good for the intellectual development of new ideas. And eventually that catches up to you. If modern conservatism is simultaneously politically vigorous but intellectually enervated, Roger Ailes and Rush Limbaugh probably deserve both the credit and the blame.
Alas, the deep sleep of conservatism will last at least another 20 years and no wet, sloppy kiss from Sarah Palin will be able to wake it up from its comatose state in 2012.
hello
hello
hel
he
h
o
o
o
As David Frum said – the Republican party thought Fox worked for it, but they actually work for Fox. Mainstream reporters are beginning to ask “where are the serious conservatives?” I guess they finally got tired of writing up the drooling idiocy of what passes for Republican thought these days.
Nemski, clearly insane and out of his mind, wrote: “But there is some hope for the GOP and that hope is Newt Gingrich.”
I agree A1. Gingrich has been sipping the kool-aid like the rest of them and sounding like a teabagger. The GOP needs new idea people, not the same old ones that have gotten them in this mess.
What are you all talking about? Newt Gingrich has bold, exciting, new ideas. In fact, they’re so great, they’re the same bold, new, exciting ideas that he had 15 years ago. But this time, I’m sure they won’t lead directly to his own personal disgrace and downfall.
And as far as FOX goes, the “working for” dynamic goes only one way — FOX works for its profits. Their preference goes towards conservative politics, but they push it so much because they’ve found a way to make money doing it. Look at what happened a week or two ago when they pulled Hannity back from that Tea Party gathering. It wasn’t because they disagreed with what was going on, or that they didn’t want to be associated with the TPers. It’s because they weren’t making money off of it. Like Beck (who at least has admitted it, they are only interested in viewers and revenue. Appealing to uninformed paranoids just happens to be how they’ve found to do it.
That’s right, Fox works for profit. As does Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly, etc. What makes money for them is selling fear and paranoia which is the opposite of what we need to run a nation.
Conservatives yearn for a new Ronald Reagan, what they need is a new William F. Buckley. It would also be nice if they realized the wing nuts, Baggers and Birthers are in thier pocket but it’s not enough and it never will be. As for Newt he’s more Nut thean prophet these days.
It would be nice if they realized that even their “intellectual” leading lights have, since the beginnings of their movement, been engaged in the work of trying to preserve the privileges of the status quo. Buckley, for example, twisted himself in knots his entire life because he kept using rational arguments to support his inability to recognize the irrationality of religion. Other than that he was a libertarian, but how much liberty do you really have if you think you’re being constantly judged by an invisible man in the sky?
As much fun as it has been to watch conservatives talk about *epistemic closure*, Geezer gets to the one thing that is missing in the entire conversation — the complicity of the co-called intellectuals on the right in letting its entertainers call the shots and run the show. If you give up on the ideas and policy for the sake of red meat, then you have some responsibility for the current state of affairs. But a conversation on ideas and policy will call for conservatives to end their behavior of following the Dog Whistle of the Day. Which is about the only way they know on a day to day basis what they support and what they demonize.