Posted on 04/25/2005 5:35:44 PM PDT by wagglebee
RUSH: I got an e-mail here. I was just trolling the accounts during the top-of-the-hour break. "Dear Rush..." This from a subscriber at RushLimbaugh.com. "How can you say we're winning? Tom DeLay is likely to be forced to resign while McDermott will go free. Bolton will not be confirmed. Bush will never get the ten judges because the weak-spined Republicans will never, ever invoke the constitutional option. The newspapers and media are still as liberal, as always, still exert more influence than you and all the conservatives combined. You guys have helped but the common belief is that you guys are the radical wackos not the liberal press. Sandy Berger gets a pass. Hillary and her fund-raising pals will get a pass just like Billy Boy did five years ago. You think we're winning because we control two branches of government? We have such inept Republicans they think they're in the minority. In fact not just a minority, but a minuscule minority. I'm glad you're optimistic. I need to get that through the day but winning? I don't think so. I keep hoping but I don't see it." This is from Ronald [name redacted]. This is the exact kind of thing I'm trying to keep you people from becoming. You have to look at this if you want to take a look at DeLay or Bolton or these things or the judges, look beyond them. It's one of the things I have always attempted to tell you: There is no question the Democrats are imploding. It is the mainstream media that makes it look like they're winning -- and it doesn't help that the Republicans have been recalcitrant so far to stand up for themselves, but regardless what the Republicans do, the Democrats are still imploding.
Let's take this Bolton business. The Democrats are in such a mess. If they actually succeed in disqualifying the guy because he "yelled at subordinates," they better be prepared for what's going to hit them with their next presidential candidate. If their next presidential candidate ever yelled at subordinates, then the picture of John Bolton is going to pop up, and the Democrats are going to be forced to say, "Well, presidents have to act differently than people at the State Department and the United Nations." They're going to hoisted in their own petard on so many of these things. It's not guaranteed that DeLay is going down. I would bet that he won't go down. I mean, you're probably reacting to the fact that it was discovered that this guy Abramoff's credit card paid for DeLay's trip. The Washington Post runs the story. The Washington Post never once said DeLay did anything wrong in this story! It's just smear. But the fact of the matter is let's see every other Democrat that's every gone on a trip and let's see the credit card receipts that paid for the Democrats trips. I'll bet we'll find that it's common. The credit card, by the way, DeLay didn't know it. DeLay thought the trip was being paid for -- and it probably was -- by this interest group. You know, and they have contributors, for crying out loud! DeLay filed all the appropriate paperwork. This is nothing but a smear tactic, and if you get down and depressed on all this and think it's going to work then you're allowing these people to win but look at their tactics. They don't have an agenda. They don't have one thing they stand for. They don't have anything that's going to help them win elections downtown road. All they're doing is corkscrewing themselves, and they're setting themselves up for the same stuff to come right back at them.
This business on the judges? They want to sit around and talk about how you can't criticize judges and yet they impale the Supreme Court every time they talk about Bush v. Gore in 2000! You know, the best way to think of this is, that the Democrats are losing everything they've ever controlled, and that's why they're in this veritable panic. It's only because the mainstream press is on their side that the illusion is they're still running things and that they are not losing power and they're not losing elections, but don't fall for that. Don't make these 16 years for naught, ladies and gentlemen! Please. You have to understand when things are trending in your direction. It's not perfect. You know, I've been one to criticize the recalcitrant Republicans in the Senate on this program, time and time again. But it appears to me, if you saw Jon Kyl on television yesterday, that some of these Republicans are not taking this anymore. They're fighting back. Tom DeLay is not taking it lying down. He's fighting back, and the same with Frist. Frist went on television yesterday, at this rally, broadcast between churches, and he was unafraid and fearless in doing so despite what the Democrats are saying about it and the Democrats today offer some sort of compromise. Broder offered a compromise and Biden tried to preempt him and offer his own version of the Broder's compromise early in the day on television. The fact that Sandy Berger got a pass? Don't think you're the only one angry about this. There are all kinds of voters out there that notice this, too. How many times have I told you we're not in a vacuum here?
You're not the only one who notices bias in the press. You're not the only one that notices the disparity of fairness when it comes to the way Democrats and Republicans in the House are treated. A lot of people notice. Why do you think Democrats are losing elections? There's nothing they stand for that's inspiring. There's nothing they're saying that's inspiring anybody. You think what they're doing is enabling them to recruit voters from outside their voting bloc or their base? It's not. All they're doing is shoring up their base, and they're doing it right now to get money. Even Hillary is not going to pull of this move to the center or move to the right. She's not going to be able to pull it off. She's not going to fool people on this. Now, as to the media and how powerful they are. They're only powerful because you assign them that, because you grant them that. You look at the media, supporting Democrats and say, "Oh, nothing is changing." You're defining success on the basis of how the media looks at things. I've warned you about this. I've warned you people several times about this. If you set your definition for success or failure upon how the media portrays news events, you're going to always think we're losing. The media is not going to change. They're liberals! It's a religion! That's why they're so afraid of the Catholic Church. That's why they're so afraid of Christianity. That's why they're so afraid of these judges. Janice Rogers Brown? You know, this thing I read to you from People for the American Way, the one thing they didn't say about her she's a devout Christian. That's the primary reason they oppose her but they don't dare say it, but they're taking heat on that.
What this rally on Sunday was all about is focusing attention on this, but if you're going to sit out there and think, "Well, press still has more power because they're still the Democrats." They don't. The press's candidates are not winning. Are the press's candidates winning? Look what they did to try to destroy Bush. In the old days Bush wouldn't have got 10% of the vote. Dan Rather would have gotten away with that. You can't say that the media is getting more powerful, or you can't say the media is not losing some of their power. They are. Their circulation is down. George Will had a column yesterday in the Post, Washington Post, syndicated around the country and let me read you some statistics from his piece. "If you awake before dawn you probably hear a daily sound that may become as anachronistic as the clatter of horses' hooves on urban cobblestones. The sound is the slap of the morning paper on the sidewalk. The circulation of daily U.S. newspapers is 55.2 million, down from 62.3 million in 1990." So in 14 or 15 years in this country the big news papers have lost 10 million readers. "The percentage of adults who say they read a paper 'yesterday' are ominous." Sixty percent of 65-and-older people admit to reading a newspaper yesterday, and as you get younger the numbers of people who say they read newspapers gets smaller. This is what I was talking about earlier in the program. The news media is concerned because they're not reaching the yutes. They're not reaching young people. They're not able to inculcate them to liberalism. If you're between 50 and 64, 52% admit to having read a newspaper yesterday. People between 30 and 49? Thirty-nine percent admit to reading a newspaper yesterday. That's incredibly low! Between 18 and 29, only 23% of Americans admit that they read a newspaper yesterday. Between 18 and 29! Now, "Americans ages 8 to 18 spend an average of 6 hours and 21 minutes a day with media of all sorts but just 43 minutes with print media." Not just newspapers but magazines as well. Get this: "The combined viewership of the network evening newscasts is 28.8 million..." You know what it was in 1980? It was 52.1 million. They are down an incredible amount, almost 24 million viewers they have lost since 1980. "The median age of viewers is 60. Hence the sponsorship of news programming by Metamucil and Fixodent....'
"Writing in the Wilson Quarterly, in a section on 'the collapse of big media,'" a writer said in rejecting "the opinion of a CBS official that 'time is on our side in that as you get older, you tend to get more interested in the world around you.'" The writer here is David T. Z. Mindich who used to work at CNN, and he says we're in a post-journalism age. "Mindich cites research showing that 'a particular age cohort's reading habits do not change much with time.'" In other words, I read newspapers when I was 18, 16, 17. I don't read 'em anymore. I do it on the internet. But his point is, if you're not reading a newspaper by the time you're 29 years old you probably aren't going to be reading one by the time you're 59 years old. It doesn't change. You don't start reading more, and people are going to be reading print less and less and less as technology changes. "Baby boomers who became adults in the 1970s consume less journalism than their parents did. And although in 1972 nearly half of those 18 to 22 read a newspaper every day, now less than," 25% do. In 1972 nearly half of those 18 to 22 read a newspaper every day. Now they don't. "The young are voracious consumers of media, but not of journalism. Sixty-eight percent of children 8 to 18 have televisions in their rooms; 33% have computers. And if they could have only one entertainment medium, a third would choose the computer" over a television. Twenty-five percent said they would choose TV. "They carry their media around with them: 79% of young people ages 8 to 18 year olds have portable CD, tape or MP3 players. Fifty-five percent have hand-held video game players. Sony's PlayStation Portable, which plays music, games and movies, sold more than 500,000 units in the first two days after its March debut." So the point is fewer and fewer people are reading newspapers. The demographics of those who do read newspapers is getting older. Fewer and fewer people are watching the New York News. So please, folks, get with it, will you? and don't sit out there and be perpetually depressed because of what you see on the mainstream media.
Because I'll tell you this: Even though this viewership may be down the people who are watching it see exactly what you do. They see bias. They see unfairness. You know, news is a product. The thing you have to understand. For the longest time we grew up in this country we were idealistic we thought the news was "what happened." The news is a product. Editors, packagers, producers decide every day what news you're going to see. They produce a product for you to see. Based on what? Many things. Their biases, what they think is important, how stupid you are, what you might not understand. All these things go into the mix. It's not "what happened" today. Walter Cronkite said, "That's the way it is." It's not the way it was. It was the way Walter Cronkite wanted you to think it was. It was the way Walter Cronkite saw it, but it's wasn't what happened. The news has never been what happened. It's always been packaged. It is a product like everything else that comes in a box that has a brand and a logo. The only difference is that all the people producing it are making the same product. Ergo, talk radio gets born; the blogosphere gets born, and Fox News is born -- and guess where those viewers are coming from? They're leaving the old guys in droves. Don't sit there and tell me that we are losing. I'm not saying that we're winning per se; the trend is obviously in the right direction because our opponents are in a meltdown. Now, it's up to us to take advantage of it and we here are and a number of other places are. We only hope it continues in the Senate but we'll see. But don't sit there and continually be cowed by what you see in the mainstream press which has declining viewership, declining readership and thus declining influence.
:-)
With Frist and Dingy Harry, btw, it looks like there is NO DEAL. GOOD!!!
I could not resist, he is very reassuring.. :)
You are right.
Rush, Hannity and the others keep downplaying the strength of the media and the stupidity of the average American.
We may have the White House and Congress, but the facts of "control" are just the opposite. . .
We DON'T control Congress. The "Rs" are in the majority, but the liberals "control" Congress--there are quite a large number of liberal Republicans.
Bush is in the White House, but fiscally, Bush has been the most liberal of all presidents, including FDR and LBJ. The proof is in the OMB figures, regardless of what Freeper loyalists and Republican loyalists want to scream about and flame about.
And yes, we have FOX News, but the stupidity of the American public can be witnessed first hand at any grocery store check out counter as swarms of people buy the gossip rags, and by the Arbitron ratings of the TV shows.
Rush and Hannity fail to tell the truth about this. They care more about their loyal audience that is made up largely of cheerleaders of the RNC. Every time Hannity or Rush says something negative about the Republicans, the hate mail and phone calls pour in, so Rush and Hannity, who have sacrificed their principles for their multi-million dollar contracts fed by cheerleading loyalists, just continue to play the same old game of knocking the Democrats instead of fighting for the principles important to this nation.
We are in a VERY weak position. Rush is doing a snow job on his audience.
ping
How quickly people forget. Eleven years ago we were fighting Hillarycare, gun bans, IRS harassment, and an almost successful attempt to make discussion of religion in the workplace a federal tort.
We are not losing.
Eleven years ago, we were in a stronger position than we are now, even considering the examples you listed.
We had less of a socialistic society eleven years ago. That is FACT, as based on OMB data.
Since were are far more socialistic today than eleven years ago, we are weaker today, not stronger.
Factually, you are wrong.
Factually, I am right. We were playing defense 11 years ago. Now we are playing offense. It's the left who is trying to stop us whether its the UN, schools, the courts or tort reform. And those are far more important fights than spending.
But if you want to be a defeatist, if you want to insist we can't win, if you want to stay home or vote for candidates who have no hope, that is your right.
You are wrong.
There is only ONE measurement that tells us if we are better off now or eleven years ago and that is are we more socialist today than we were then.
The factual answer is yes, as measured by the explosive growth in domestic and global welfare compared to eleven years ago.
Being that Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity et al. spend most their time in this stupid Democrat bashing game instead of holding the Republicans accountable for joining the socialist camp, the writer of this email to Rush Limbaugh was correct . . .
and Rush Limbaugh is wrong . . .
and you are flat out wrong since you avoid the facts.
The Dems have NEVER been hoisted on their own petard. Someone would have to hoist them, and the MSM NEVER will. So this is just wishful thinking on Rush's part. In 15 years of listening, I've never, ever seen the Dems brought to the altar for their own hypocrisy, because they own all the social "judges" in politics, media, and academia.
No. You are wrong. There are many measurements that tell us if we are losing to the left. You simply avoid the facts.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.