Redstate

By Martin A. Knight Comments (14) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

I am not giving up because of the Press. I am giving up because we, we Conservatives, we Republicans, are letting them win.

Let us recap; Tom DeLay has not been proven guilty of any wrongdoing whatsoever. He has not been caught asking for or receiving bribes. The partisan District Attorney that indicted him has not been able to submit a clear argument as to what Texas law he is meant to have broken and there is as yet no evidence that he had ever actually broken any law. He may have lost sight of some basic Conservative principles but no-one can claim that he neglected his constituents. To the end he was loyal to his fellow Republicans and even after he left the leadership he was a fantastic rallier on the House floor.

But he has to leave Congress because he had become suddenly very unpopular in his own strongly Republican Congressional district.

William Jefferson, however, is still in Congress. Here is a man who commandeered valuable resources during the aftermath of Katrina so he could get into his house in New Orleans to rescue some of his ill-gotten gains. This is a man caught on video collecting a bribe. This is a man who had the FBI raid his Congressional offices to cart away incriminating documents and found $90,000 hidden in his fridge at home.

He is still in Congress, people. He is actually running for re-election!

Hands up anybody who thinks Jefferson would not still be on the front pages today, along with stories exploring whether or not his Caucus Leadership aided, abetted and then covered up his corruption if he were a Republican. Anyone?

I thought so.

If I read another post repeating some variant of the same Let's just sit down and wait for them to implode" canard I think I'm going to have a coronary! It's beginning to sound like some dumb bit of conventional wisdom like "Saddam Hussein never had WMDs." We're sitting down, waiting for them to implode, not doing anything as they inflict the death of a thousand cuts on us and everything we believe in.

And they're succeeding.

To those who continue to reassure themselves that the Press' influence is waning and therefore it is safe to sit back and watch them destroy themselves ... let me once again point out the case of Tom DeLay. A significant share of his own Republican constituents, people he had represented in Congress for term after term, Conservative people who should be the most distrustful of the Press, believe he is sleazy and corrupt.

Not based on any evidence of activity out of the ordinary for any other member of Congress. No. Based on misleading headlines, uncritically repeated allegations of corruption by partisan foes, suggestive proof-free stories and sly wording in supposedly objective news articles. He was showered with a barrage of them week after week after week. But now that he is out of Congress, one of the most effective Congressional leaders either party has ever had has fallen completely off the public radar.

Surprised? You thought all the brouhaha had anything more than his ouster as its aim?

All they needed to do was to create an impression and make it stick.

But, oh, let's just continue to sit down and wait for them to implode!

More people vote based on impressions than actual facts. Most people, especially the largely non-political middle, would rather vote for someone they think is a good guy even if they don't actually like his positions on the issues rather than vote for someone they think is a creep even if he dovetailed more nicely with their own policy preferences.

Can you imagine any major newspaper reprinting Salon's thoroughly insubstantiable story about George Allen's supposed racism with nothing more than a partisan hack and anonymous sources as the backbone of the article, if the target were a Democrat, especially if the overwhelming majority of those interviewed flatly disputed it? We watched them ignore, dismiss and attack 200 people who served in the same squadron in Vietnam as John Kerry when they were ready to go with memos written with Microsoft Word in 1973 against the President.

They know very well that all they need to do is to create an impression and make it stick. Allen was considered Presidential material before. Is he, now?

But I'm sure they'll be imploding soon! Any moment from now!

Every single time a Republican is caught doing something wrong, the Press starts a witch-hunt to implicate and assert guilt by association to as many other Republicans as possible. Democrats have their miscreants isolated from the rest of the party, that is, of course, if they are ever investigated at all.

We now are watching them blurring distinctions to conflate both the innocuous if too-friendly e-mails that the GOP Leadership and FBI were aware of and the explicit IM messages that only came out into the open on Friday. That way, when they say that GOP Congressman so-and-so was aware of the e-mails six months ago they can still claim to be telling only the truth while confident that the vast majority of people, those paying only marginal attention to this entire mess would come to believe that the GOP as a whole was wilfully covering up for a sexual predator. Rasmussen's polling is already showing that 61% of the American people believe that the Republican Congressional Leadership has been covering up for Foley for years.

All they need to do is to create an impression and make it stick.

But, hey, let's just lie here and wait for them to implode!

We all know that we are going to be hit by October Surprises from now till election day. Foley's follies are just the beginning. From touting polls showing Republican incumbents down by improbable margins to depress Republican turnout, to push-polling via headlines, to simply repeating Democrat allegations of wrongdoing and even making stuff up (like Bob Woodward), they are going to be hard at work.

And what would likely make it successful is that there is no conspiracy. It's just that 95+% of them honestly believe Republicans and Conservatives are evil and will slant and spin against us whenever the opportunity arises, wittingly or not.

Let's not forget that we are all political junkies here. And we are very rare. We are the guys who don't just take CBS's word for it, we go and read the transcripts. We go and read the reports on government websites. We always have it at the back of our minds when we read the New York Times that they are most likely leaving a heck of a lot out, lying straight out (to be corrected in the back pages later) or spinning. What about the unafiliated, non-attention paying in-the-middle guy who see a headline and immediately and unskeptically files it away for future reference?

He happens to be symptomatic of the vast majority of American voters. And he is also the most susceptible to the Press' death of a thousand cuts attacks against the GOP and Conservatives.

They know very well that all they need to do is to create an impression and make it stick and they can influence the casual news viewer and headline skimmer. Sometimes even Republicans. Remember "Domestic Spying?"

But, I'm okay with that, because I know if I continue to wait, they will implode!

But here's a crazy idea. Maybe we should not just lie back and wait for them to implode. Maybe we should help them on their way!

Let's try an ad campaign like the Swift Boat Vets. Let's find some way to urge Mehlman to get our guys to start lashing out at the New York Times the way Democrats regularly do at FOX News. Let's do something other than sitting back and waiting for them to ********* implode!