This tactic worked so well on the Pat Buchanan speech in '92 that the leftists are praying it will work again. Immediately after Buchanan's speech about the culture war in the US, it got a favorable response from viewers. However, the media went after it full tilt for several days, and now it is mythic as a terrible speech. They are hoping to change the great response of Zell's message the same way. The only problem is that now the US populace is not hanging on every word of the media. They are largely irrelevant now, but they are still giving it the old do-or-die try.
EXACTLY!!! Buchanan's speech received a huge positive response from most of those who heard it live. But after several days of media spin denouncing the speech as hateful, insensitive, divisive, etc., so-called public opinion turned against the speech. This was largely due to people who didn't even hear the speech simply accepting the media spin about how horrifying the speech was.
I also remember that during the Clarence Thomas hearings, people who actually watched the hearings overwhelmingly believed Thomas. But people who didn't watch, and only got their info from the media, believed Anita Hill. The coverage was that biased.
But that doesn't work anymore. With Fox News, talk radio, and the blogosphere, media spin doesn't have the impact it once did.