The GOP Media Deficit

If there is one thing you have to hand to the Democrats it’s that they don’t give up. While Republicans are out doing their victory laps, before most of the landslide winners have moved into their offices in the Capitol, the Dems are already launching the media campaign to broad brush them as heartless, narrow-thinking, homophobic, racist—excuse me, racial—sexist and just plain unhip.

Of course the media are willing players in this age-old battle of ideas and the Left is masterful in using it to disseminate its message. There was a time when the public could rely on unbiased coverage, but almost no one is alive who will remember it.

Look at this AP story (via Breitbart) from this morning:

In a matter of weeks, Congress will go from trying to help young, illegal immigrants become legal to debating whether children born to parents who are in the country illegally should continue to enjoy automatic U.S. citizenship. Such a hardened approach …

‘Nuff said there.

This one is from yesterday’s New York Times, in a story about the end-of-life panels the Obama Administration is trying to slip through during the transition of power.

A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation suggests that the idea of death panels persists. In the September poll, 30 percent of Americans 65 and older said the new health care law allowed a government panel to make decisions about end-of-life care for people on Medicare. The law has no such provision.

But of course there is now such a provision. Whether end-of-life counseling, medication rationing or simply making a choice in physicians, every aspect of your health maintenance will shortly be controlled by one or more panel of government bureaucrats who will have a final say on your future. Which amounts to what Sarah Palin infamously dubbed, “death panels.”

But if you’re a news junkie you have to appreciate the tactical deftness with which the Left demonizes and marginalizes the conservative message. Take a look at this headline from Newsweek on the Kagan appointment last year:

Left Wing: How Rupert Murdoch Controlled Liberal Media This Week.

As though the Fox News Network has somehow leveled the playing field with the megalithic Western media. Notice lower on the same page, on the right, a photo of John Boehner over the caption: “The Year’s Biggest Political Lies,” which takes us to, “The ‘Government Takeover’ of Health Care, and Other Whoppers”.

Okay, none of this should come as a surprise to anyone with even a slight grasp of current events, but the problem this time, and for the remaining two years of Obama’s term, is more serious than in past decades.

This time the Republicans must win the media war, and droning out the same tired rhetoric the GOP leadership has used for decades will not accomplish the task. At stake this time is the future of the Republic. Literally. If Barack Obama is allowed to reinvent himself as a moderate in the remaining two years of his term, he will be reelected, and, if he is reelected, the damage he will do to the nation is incomprehensible.

Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Jim DeMint and a few other national conservative figures have caught the public’s attention for one reason. They have departed from political-speak and spoken to the American public like they are actually part of it, which of course they should be. Palin may be criticized for her lack of astute political perception, but when she speaks absolutely no one is left wondering what she has said.

In order to win the media war against the Democrats, GOP leadership must first understand that they are fighting for all the marbles. The Left has taken off the gloves; it’s time Republicans do the same. To regain the people’s trust the GOP must reach out to the moving wing of their party—the Palins, Huckabees and DeMints—or they will lose their party, if not the nation.