On Hannity, Frank Luntz conducted a focus group of 29 Republican voters from South Carolina. They picked Herman Cain as winner of the debate.
The following night, on MSNBC, the surprise was general. Chris Matthews and a panel gasped in awe:
MATTHEWS (5/6/11): Here’s, by the way, an interesting guy. Here’s Frank Luntz’s focus group and it showed that Herman Cain, the businessman from Atlanta who heads up Godfather’s Pizza—he created it—he’s the pick of the group watching. Here it is. This is an amazing result.
Cenk Uygur seemed amazed by that focus group too. This was his reaction:
UYGUR (5/6/11): They spent less than six minutes on jobs and the economy. That’s amazing. And the guy who clearly won the debate according to Republican pollster Frank Luntz’s focus group was Herman Cain. In fact, it was an unprecedented unanimous decision by the focus group. Have you even heard of Cain?
Later, Darling Rachel knew how to play it. She referred to Cain, several times, as a “mafia-themed pizza mogul.” It’s no wonder we love her so much!
For the record, that “Republican pollster” was MSNBC’s official focus -group guy during Campaign 2000, when Matthews and the rest of the store-bought crew were working to send George Bush to the White House. Luntz conducted focus groups after every Bush-Gore debate; no one remembered to say that he was a Republican pollster. That said:
Why were the kids at The One True Channel so amazed by that result? We’ll save the answer for later. But first, let’s consider a basic question:
Did the recent birther nonsense catch fire because Barack Obama is black? Or did it catch fire for a different reason—because Obama’s a Democrat?
There’s no perfect way to answer that question. In large part, this is due to the way this ludicrous nonsense caught on. At the height of the latest group madness, polls showed large percentages of Republican voters thinking that Obama was born outside the United States. In a CBS/New York Times poll in mid-April, 45 percent of Republicans said they thought Barack Obama was born outside the U.S. (An additional 22 percent said they weren’t sure. Click here.) In February, a PPP poll of likely Republican primary voters produced numbers that were even more daunting. In that poll, 51 percent said Obama wasn’t born in the U.S., compared to 28 percent who said he was. Just click this.
Those polls suggest that tens of millions of Republican voters believed this latest tulip mania. Did they believe this ludicrous nonsense because Obama is black—or did they believe it because he’s a Democrat? When so many people believe crazy things, it isn’t easy to figure out “why” they do.
Presumably, some of those voters believed this foolishness due to some sort of racial animus. But did they all believe for that reason? Was race even a major cause? Did race affect most of these voters? It’s very hard to know such things, unless we just enjoy calling names—especially since these same Republican voters have behaved in such ways before. Let’s review:
In 1988, Lee Atwater introduced an ugly, stupid, dishonest new culture to American presidential campaigns.
He did this at the direction of then-Vice President Bush. From that day to this, mainstream journalists have stressed the way Bush—a decent, well-bred man—simply hated doing this.
Whatever! From that year forward, every presidential-level Democrat has been forced to deal with ludicrous slime campaigns—slime campaigns which gained wide purchase in the conservative world. Some of these slime campaigns also gained wide purchase among mainstream and liberal career journalists—but all good liberals understand that this fact must never be mentioned.
Several remarkable facts have emerged during this long, moronic era. Here’s the first fact, and it’s really quite stunning:
Conservative voters will believe any fool thing, no matter how stupid, about any major Democrat.
Bill Clinton was a serial killer. He was also a major drug-dealer and perhaps a Soviet agent. His wife, the world’s most gigantic lesbo, used drug paraphernalia to decorate the White House Christmas tree. In turn, Al Gore was the world’s most delusional liar. If you didn’t believe that, you could just ask Lawrence O’Donnell—or Arianna. Frank Rich was eager to tell you how utterly phony Gore was. He was just like Candidate Bush!
Plainly, conservative voters will believe any fool thing, as long as it’s stupid enough. In 2004, John O’Neill and Jerome Corsi published a book about Candidate Kerry; it may have been the stupidest book ever published. Their book shot to the top of the best-seller charts. “Journalists” cowered and quailed.
No matter how stupid these claims become, Republican voters believe them. Just a guess: As of the mid-1980s, very few people had any idea that you could get so many people to believe so many ridiculous things. We’ve only learned this fact in the last twenty years, because of what Atwater wrought.
The sheer stupidity of these (partisan) voters is a serious problem for democracy. But in the past few years, we’ve learned several unflattering things about liberal voters too. For example:
White liberals live for one thing—for the chance to call conservatives racists.
Conservative voters will believe any damn thing—and white liberals live to name-call conservatives. This is the essence of tribal politics. But then, there is a third major thing we should have learned during the era of Atwater politics:
In a bid to extend their careers, career liberal leaders will pretend that none of these attacks on Democrats ever occurred.
We saw this third pattern enacted in Tavis Smiley’s damn-fool bullshit with Lawrence O’Donnell last month.
Smiley was enjoying a special week in New York City. On Monday evening, April 25, he did the thing he does the best—he bowed and scraped to wealth and power, fawning over Mayor Bloomberg on his eponymous PBS program. The next night, he wasted his time with pointless questions for Katie Couric—but not before doing a guest spot on O’Donnell’s show, The Last Word. Safely ensconced in that pseudo-lib ghetto, Smiley pleased us liberal rubes, saying this about the birther nonsense:
SMILEY (4/26/11): I said over a year ago that this was going to be—this presidential race, Lawrence—was going to be the ugliest, the nastiest, the most divisive and the most racist, the most racist in the history of this republic. I did not know that that race to the bottom would begin so quickly.
On the main stage, Smiley bowed and scraped to wealth and power. Meanwhile, in a small back room, he purchased us cheap, saying that.
As is standard in pseudo-liberal culture, O’Donnell didn’t ask Smiley to explain why belief in the birther nonsense is racist—as opposed to belief that Bill Clinton killed all sorts of people. (As opposed to belief that Gore was the world’s biggest liar, a belief O’Donnell himself kept pimping on national TV right through October 2000.) That said, you have to be living in a time capsule to think that Trump’s ridiculous nonsense makes the current campaign “the ugliest, the nastiest and the most divisive” in our history—even in our recent history. Unless you’re a modern pseudo-liberal, which means that you live to drop the R-bomb and everything else can be damned.
Unless you are a career liberal leader, which means that you will never discuss the history of presidential campaigns since 1988.
In the years since Bush gave us Atwaterism, we have learned that conservative voters are among the world’s most gullible people. But haven’t we really learned the same thing about us pseudo-liberals?
We’re simply too dumb to develop a history of recent presidential sliming. Every time it happens to us, we act like it’s our first! We refuse to help the public see the pattern in this conduct.
We’re too dumb to see through our boot-licking “leaders,” who kiss the ass of wealth and power, then come around to service us. Of course, many of those “liberal leaders” drove the wars against Clinton and Gore. For that reason, they have sworn eternal silence about this whole historical era—the era Atwater wrought.
We’re too dumb to see this pattern, even after we’ve been told.
Is anyone dumber than modern conservatives? No—unless it’s modern liberals. And by the way:
Why was everyone so amazed when Cain took that South Carolina focus group? Because Herman Cain is black—and because we liberals know that Republicans hate black people!
Of course, those Republican voters have been electing blacks, Hispanics and other minorities to major offices all over the country. Last night, the future came to us in a dream: As President Rubio took the oath, we liberals huddled outside, in the rain. We were patiently telling the public that Republicans hate Hispanics!
Might we introduce a possible thought into our most recent “liberal” gong-show?
Republican voters do hate blacks—if they’re major Democrats. But in our degraded political culture, they hate white Democrats too. It’s part of the history Atwater gave us—the history our own pathetic side has agreed to disappear.
Did Republicans believe this birther crap because Barack Obama was black? Or was it because he’s a Democrat?
Liberals don’t even consider the second possibility. No one is dumber than modern conservatives—unless it’s our tribe, over here.
Licking the heels of wealth and power: How do “liberal leaders” behave when they assume you aren’t looking?
On April 25, Smiley interviewed Mayor Bloomberg on his eponymous PBS program. One day before, Bloomberg had criticized Trump’s ridiculous birther campaign in an interview on Fox News Sunday.
On April 26, Smiley would tell us, in our liberal ghetto, that Trump’s ridiculous nonsense represents the most racist campaign in American history. But look at the way he fawned to power on his own PBS program! What follows was his opening question for the billionaire in his midst:
SMILEY (4/25/11): But no better way to kick off this week in New York than with—bam!–the mayor of New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The influential Independent is serving his third term as chief executive of the Big Apple and has vowed to make education the primary focus of his final term. Mr. Mayor, an honor to have you back on this program.BLOOMBERG: Thank you for having me, Tavis.SMILEY: No better way to start our trip than—BLOOMBERG: Welcome to New York. We’d like you to be here all the time.SMILEY: We’re glad to be–we’ll work on that, maybe.BLOOMBERG: Okay.SMILEY: Come back more often, at least. Good to see you. Let me start with some news you made yesterday, a couple things I want to get your take on. I caught you on Fox yesterday and was intrigued by your comments when asked about Donald Trump and this birther issue.For those who didn’t see Fox yesterday, just kind of recap what you had to say about your advice for Mr. Trump in this issue.
After the requisite opening fawning, that was Smiley’s first “question.” Bloomberg gave a long and evasive reply; he steered away from criticism of Trump. (To read the full transcript, click this.)
Result? Tavis Smiley “followed up” in the following way:
SMILEY: I want to come back–you’ve made some provocative comments here that intrigued me about failure, and I’m in town, as you and I were discussing before we came on the air, I’m in town in part—BLOOMBERG: I don’t know why they’re provocative. I think they’re some fair statements.SMILEY: No, they’re fair statements, they are fair statements, but provocative in the sense that they got me thinking about some questions I want to ask you about failure in your own life in just a second.But one last thing about this birther thing, since you raised it. You referred to Donald Trump as a friend; we know that he is. He is an icon.BLOOMBERG: He’s a business friend, you know.SMILEY: I only raise that because I’m curious—a guy who is as smart as he is, when you define this issue, describe it rather, as “ridiculous,” Mr. Trump is a smart guy, so I’m only left with a couple of options for why you think somebody like that would grab ahold of an issue like this.
“An issue like this?” An issue like what? On PBS, speaking with Bloomberg, Smiley forgot to say! And of course, Smiley was only discussing the topic “since you [Bloomberg] raised it;” it isn’t like Smiley cared about this issue for himself! Those two “questions” represent Smiley’s full treatment of this issue when in the presence of wealth and power. Since Donald Trump is “as smart as he is,” Smiley simply wanted to know why he “would grab ahold of an issue like this.”
Will liberal voters ever learn to recognize the phonies in our midst? (The evidence plainly suggests we will not.) One night later, on MSNBC, Smiley ranted and raved and displayed tribal fury, in the utterly phony way we liberals so enjoy. He made sweeping claims of racism. “Never again,” he grandly said, comparing Trump’s conduct to the Holocaust.
That what’s righteous liberals would say about Smiley, if we were even half-smart.
Final suggestion: Smiley stressed education in his introduction of Bloomberg (see text above). Go ahead! Scroll through the full interview to see the way he fawned and deferred to the billionaire mayor about that.
People like Smiley are servants to power. We liberals bow and scrape to them; they bow and scrape to wealth.
No comments:
Post a Comment