By MARC McDONALD
Life is good if you're a Democrat these days. And if you've listened in lately on the Fox News/talk radio propaganda network, it seems like the stunned GOP has been at a rare loss for words (relatively speaking) since Tuesday's elections.
The Republicans are clearly down at the moment. But make no mistake: they're not out of the game yet.
I believe the Great Republican Slime Machine is gearing up for what will be the mother of all GOP propaganda blitzes.
The GOP noise machine's ultimate goal: to get as much dirt on this incoming Congress as possible and make Nancy Pelosi and the Dems radioactive to the voters in 2008.
I know what you're thinking right now: what if there ISN'T any dirt to be had on the incoming Democrats? What if they're all squeaky clean? What if they're scandal-free?
Actually, it doesn't matter.
The Great Republican Slime Machine doesn't actually need a real scandal to damage its opponents. Its main effective weapons of choice are rumors, innuendo, and just flat-out lies. Its preferred method of operation is simple brute force and endless repetition in the GOP noise machine's echo chamber. After all, if you hammer away and keep repeating a lie long enough, sooner or later, you'll start to plant seeds of doubt about any politician's reputation.
Don't underestimate the Great Republican Slime Machine. This is a lethal, finely tuned apparatus that is capable of doing mortal damage to anyone that it sets its sights on.
To me, it's not surprising that the GOP slime machine had the gall to go after a decorated war hero like John Kerry. What's frightening to me is that, by the time the GOP attack dogs were through with him, even some reasonably educated voters were starting to harbor doubts about Kerry's distinguished war record.
And make no mistake: the GOP attack dogs are gearing up to go on the offensive, even as we speak. Clearly, they will do their best to Swift Boat as many Democrats as they possibly can between now and Election Day 2008.
You've gotta give the Repukes credit for one thing: they know how to dish out the slime better than anyone else. And they have remarkable success in getting the mainstream media to go along with their attacks.
Hence, in the 90s, we saw 18 months of around-the-clock coverage of Clinton's lie about a blowjob from the "liberal" media. What's amazing is that this is the same media that has snoozed through the past six years of what is clearly the most corrupt White House in U.S. history.
Will the mainstream media go along with the GOP attack dogs this time around? You bet. In fact, Nancy Pelosi better make sure that she doesn't so much as double-park in Washington for the next couple of years. Of course, it doesn't matter how squeaky clean the newly elected Dems are. If the GOP attack dogs lack evidence to smear their foes, they just simply make up bullsh*t.
Is there any way the Dems can fight back against the GOP noise machine for a change? Yes, there is, actually. They need to revive the Fairness Doctrine, a policy that required broadcasters using the public airwaves to give equal coverage to all sides of major issues. The 1987 abolishment of the Fairness Doctrine by Ronald Reagan led directly to the rise of the likes of Rush Limbaugh and the rest of today's mighty GOP propaganda noise machine.
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The System Will Hold
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Or, to quote Mark Twain: "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on it's shoes."
I think, however, that we're underestimating the Democrats. Consider all the information that came out in the months leading up to this last election: The Tom Foley scandal, the corruption, the closeted gays in a party that abhors homosexuality, yet covers it up when it is their own, all helped along by the constant bad news coming out of Iraq. Then there was the news that administration officials in private are insulting to their fundamentalist base, calling them looney and making fun of their beliefs. This news didn't just materialize from nowhere. I have believed all along that the Democrats were quite busy with their own defense against the Republican slime machine, and that they just work more quietly and put together evidence before they go public. And they have the common sense to stick to the truth and avoid those bizarre fantasies that fuel the Rublicats.
The Dems are getting a lot of help from internet bloggers and that brave soul, Keith Olbermann. While the Republicans tried to gain mileage from John Kerry's botched joke, the Net was busy reporting that the administration idiots had published information on how to build The Bomb and other weapons of mass destruction on the internet. Although Wolf Blitzer, Hannity and O'Reilly ranted and tried to pump up the claim that Kerry had insulted the troops, voters were far more concerned about the stupidity of carelessly putting out information that had the potential to kill. Indeed, I would venture a guess that if the MSM doesn't start reporting the news as it develops instead of cherry-picking their topics, they may find themselves on the scrap heap. How do they fight thousands of internet voices reoporting the news when their ammunition is the likes of Ann Coulter and Rush Limburger?
The days when the public is dependent on the biased news coming from cable news channels and even leading newspapers, are over. I think it's a safe bet that while the GOP is mixing up their next batch of slime, Democrats are quietly collecting evidence of Republican corruption for the next battle.
Much of the '08 election is going to hinge on how much the new Congress can do to neutralize the sins of Team Bush, such as getting the problems with electronic voting machines solved, bringing home the troops from Iraq, and focusing on the middle class which has been all but destroyed by the Bushies. It's a big job, but I think they're up to it.
What I'm seeing is that the worm has turned and the things that worked in 2000 and 2004 are not going to work again. No doubt there is some corruption in the Democratic party, but the difference between us and them is that we are far less inclined to blame our shortcomings on the opposition. And we don't impeach presidents for infidelity. We don't have to. They've provided us with enough illegal acts to justify serious investigations and, as many people think will happen, if Bush is impeached it will not be on trumped up charges that are none of our business in the first place.
I was amused to read today that people will never vote for Joe Biden because he has hair implants. Reminded me of my mother-in-law who, years ago, wouldn't vote for Adlai Stevenson because he had a mustache and everyone knows that men with mustaches are evil. Whether or not Biden should be president has yet to be determined, but that decision probably won't be based on his hairline.
All in all, we're making progress, and I think we've learned a hard lesson, and learned it well.
I believe the hateful dirt machine of the RNC 527 groups will have not nearly as much effect on people as they would like. No one pays any attention to hate-filled commercials on television any more, and local papers have all been assimilated by large firms, such as Gannett. I have watched my hometown newspaper shrink to near irrelevancy as an information source, from over 30 pages of news, editorials, want-ads, and local items to a daily paper with 15 pages of cut-and-paste-without-proofreading wirefeed articles on pages mostly filled with advertising. I have continued to buy this rag every day for the sole purpose of seeing who got divorced, died, or was arrested.
You want a propaganda blitz? OK...
The Clintons are the most powerful and recognizable Democrats to the American public in recent history. On one hand the economy was booming and there was a budget surplus while BC was in office. On the other hand, neither he, nor his wife seemed to comprehend that multiculturalism, and assimilation are two completely different things. There aren't enough people talking about this because many white Americans still seem to think it's taboo to proudly stand up for themselves and their identity as a distinct human culture but it is still there under the surface and it needs to be brought out and reconciled with the American public. If the Democratic party can accomplish this feat, they will win the trust of a lot of voters who will only secretly admit why they've turned their backs on them. It all started with political correctness, and it snowballed into a witch hunt where even cosmopolitan and pluralistic ideals were termed racist. A total assault on free will. When columbine happened, some liberals rightfully blamed ther right by signaling to the lack of gun control and the NRA, yet little was done to identify the problem with the multicultural (aka assimilate-the-white-person's culture) spin which was much of the motivation for these displaced "trenchcoats" in the culture of the late nineties. No one dared say that this was primarily the fault of our Democratic leadership because they endorsed this kind of anti-white bias so fervently, but it was, and they probably never will accept responsibility for it, but they should if they want to get right with themselves.
Now that the Democrats won, it is time to straighten up some things, such as the gov't rountinely violating our Constitutional rights.
They violate the 1st Amendment by caging demonstrators and banning books like "America Deceived" from Amazon. America Deceived (book)
They violate the 2nd Amendment by confiscating guns during Katrina.
They violate the 4th Amendment by conducting warrant-less wiretaps.
They violate the 5th and 6th Amendment by suspending habeas corpus.
They violate the 8th Amendment by torturing.
They violate the entire Constitution by starting 2 illegal wars based on lies and on behalf of a foriegn gov't.
Fix up that and while you are at it, investigate 9/11 a bit more thoroughly.
From a truly non-partisan observer:
If Democrats really think that their chosen representatives are 'squeaky clean', as they are referred to several times in this blog, then they are displaying a truly ignorant, unfounded opinion. It reveals a COMPLETE lack of understanding for the way the political machine works on all levels of government in this country (in my opinion, this is the biggest problem facing this country today). Hating Republicans is understandable if it is in accordance to an individuals core values, but they are deceiving themselves to imagine that Democrats don't play the game as well as Republicans. If you are honest with yourself, and critically analyze the FACTS, you will know this is true, and that is the important first step in repairing what is wrong with the US government.
The author never said the Democrats were squeaky clean, he simply pointed out that even if they were the Republicans would make something up to slander them with.
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