Posted on 06/23/2015 5:31:41 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell
Republicans Must Stop Letting the Media Manipulate Them, Daniel Greenfield
Groucho Marx used to ask contestants, “Have you stopped beating your wife?”
A number of Republican candidates showed that they still hadn’t mastered that one when the media came asking them about the Confederate flag in South Carolina.
Like so many chumps undone by Groucho, they thought that they were showing off how noble they were, when all they did was answer, “Yes, I did stop beating my wife. And I mostly oppose it now.”
Instead of looking like heroes, they looked like guilty men confessing to a crime.
Like most questions the media asks Republicans, it was a loaded question meant to set up a narrative. The question feeds into the narrative. The answer itself doesn’t really matter.
The difference between condemning the Confederate flag and supporting it is the difference between, “No, I haven’t stopped beating my wife” and “Yes, I have stopped beating my wife.”
Either way it’s a story about the Republican position on beating women and the Confederacy.
The media does this all the time. It manufactures a story. Then it reports on the story that it made up. Then it keeps the story alive by interviewing people about its own narrative.
The media appears to have avoided asking Hillary Clinton about the flag despite her husband signing a bill into law that stated the Arkansas state flag commemorates the Confederacy and sending letters of congratulations to the United Daughters of the Confederacy. When she does make the inevitable statement, it will be spun as a rebuke to Republicans and there will be no questions about Arkansas.
The Republican candidates were being asked about the flag in order to connect their party to the Charleston church massacre by way of the flag. The whole premise of the question was guilt by association. There was no practical reason to ask Scott Walker, running for president from the notorious Southern outpost of Wisconsin, about a flag flying in South Carolina.
What they were really being asked is, “Have you racist Republicans ended your support for killing black people.”
Too many Republican replies came down to some version of, “Yes, we have.”
Once the media had its answers, it was able to do three things.
It didn’t matter that most of the Republicans in the stories were condemning the flag. The association alone created a linkage between Republicans, the flag and the massacre. Like the wife beating query, the question creates its own aura of association and guilt.
This is one of the media’s favorite tricks. It seeks out a Republican with an outlier opinion; it asks other Republicans about the issue and “reports” on the debate within the Republican Party. The media kept the “War on Women” going with that particular trick. Romney and Jeb Bush were stupid and egotistical enough to help the media pull the same trick with the Confederate flag.
This is the best part of the whole ghoulish circus because it allows the media to write long background pieces like “The GOP’s long history with the Confederate flag” while accusing Republicans of really being hypocrites for only claiming to oppose the flag while continuing their racist opposition to Obama.
We’re now at stage 3.
All it took to get to stage 3 were Republicans willing to comment on an issue that they shouldn’t have commented on. The media would have gone to stage 3 anyway, but without comments from Republican presidential candidates, the stories would have been buried at Salon and Slate, instead of getting top billing in the mainstream media. By responding, the Republican candidates gave the story legs.
There were two correct responses to the question.
Scott Walker said that the shootings shouldn’t be politicized until the victims were buried and the families have a chance to mourn. It was a sensible response that left the media gritting its teeth.
“We should honor the dead and the families by allowing them to bury their loved ones. And then you could perfectly ask me that question at some point in the next week or two when that’s done,” he said.
Of course by then the media’s window of opportunity will have passed and everyone knows that. The media accused Scott Walker of dodging the question, but it was a feeble attack.
The other response is to challenge the premise and turn the question around on the asker. The Republican Party had defeated slavery while the Democrats had championed it. Democratic mobs of immigrants stirred up by community organizers had raged across the same northern cities where its media elites now smugly rule, burning black orphanages and murdering Republican supporters.
The Democratic Party’s two previous presidents, Carter and Clinton, were both tainted by racist associations. South Carolina had, until not all that long ago, been a Democratic stronghold.
Not enough Republicans are willing to expose the media’s agenda by challenging its premises. Instead most tried to position themselves on the right side of the issue while describing it, correctly, as a decision for the state. It was a matter of child’s play for the media to tear them apart as hypocrites.
This isn’t about the Confederate flag. It’s about Republicans who still don’t seem to have caught on to the media’s tricks or figured out how to counter them. It’s also about liberal Republicans who are eager to help the media do its dirty work and don’t realize that their media pals see them as the enemy.
Too many Republicans have been taught by their strategists and consultants to see the media as people who can help them tell their story, but the media is only here to tell its story in which they are the villains. In the past, even a biased media might have contended itself with sabotaging their stories, but these days the media develops its own fully formed stories and works to fit Republicans into them.
The media is the most dangerous opponent of any Republican running for political office. It has more money, more people and more talent than any conventional political opponent. It also commands more airtime, column inches and pageviews. It has the same mission as any political opponent, but with few of the same limitations.
What the media does best is tell stories. That is also what the best political candidates do. An election is a contest of stories. The best story is the one that people find the most compelling.
Any Republican who wants to win the White House will have to beat the media. He will have to tell his story without letting the media fit him into its story. The media will tell the same story that it tells every time. It will invent gaffes, accusations of racism and invest him with an air of malice and incompetence.
He will not only have to tell a better story, but avoid letting himself get trapped in the media’s tale. To do that he will have to understand the story that the media is trying to tell and how it intends to fit him into it. Like a battle, he must know the enemy’s strategy in order to ambush it or avoid it. What he can’t afford to do is to assume that he can charm the media or impress it with his good intentions.
The media is not here to help him. It is here to hurt him. In its story, he loses. His party loses. Conservatives lose forever. The mobs of progress move forward and make over the world their way.
A Republican who can’t handle the flag question will spend the election being stitched up as racist, sexist and the worst monster since John McCain and Mitt Romney. A Republican who lets the media fit him into its narrative can’t win. The election will not belong to Republicans who let the media tell their stories. It will belong to those that challenge the media’s stories with more compelling stories.
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Just for the record, I don’t remember Groucho constantly asking “Did you beat your wife?” on “You Bet Your Life.” Groucho was a wit, not a bumbling Republican political pundit. If you’re going to borrow culture, at least get the culture right.
Jeb Bush talks about his foreign bride
On Tuesday presidential candidate Jeb Bush spoke about the first meeting between himself and his future foreign bride, Columba. “ It was love at first sight. I spoke little Spanish and she spoke little English, but when you are in love you can overcome those barriers pretty quick. There’s another language that matters the most.”
John Ellis “Jeb” Bush is an American businessman and politician who served as the 43rd Governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007. He is the second son of former President George H. W. Bush and former First Lady Barbara Bush, and the younger brother of former President George W. Bush.
Bush met his wife while in Leon, Mexico helping to build homes. León is a city in the Mexican state of Guanajuato. They married a few years later in Austin, Texas, and now live in Coral Gables, Florida.
Is there a difference between Jeb Bush’s Foreign Bride and so called Mail Order Brides? Feminists and women rights groups have argued for years that men who travel across boarders for love take advantage of women that come from lower economic regions. In 2005 the Tahirih Justice Center and Senator Cantwell pushed legislation regulating foreign brides, stating that men take unfair advantage of women in foreign counties. The law (IMBRA ) requires marriage brokers to run background checks on all men that seek a foreign bride. Bush’s wife was underage at the time they met and came from one of the poorest areas of central America. Did Jeb Bush then take advantage of his future wife Columba? After all she came from poverty and Jeb Bush came from a powerful, wealthy family.
Kenneth Agee, Marketing of Director of A Foreign Affair, a company that specializes in foreign bride match-making says, “Absolutely not! In our society and most societies women are always looking to find a better way of life. It is instinctual for females to find the best possible suitor for having a family, just like it is instinctual for men to be attracted to certain physical aspects of women. How would marrying into wealth make you a victim? The notion that men have economic control of women, at best, would not last long after marriage. It is equally invalid to say women have a control over men because of their beauty. The truth is, a negative situation can happen no matter where you meet and has more to do with character than economics or location. Personally, my wife is from Russia, is very strong-willed, and would never let herself become a victim. I find this to be true of most foreign women. I’m sure Jeb Bush would agree. Contrary to the opinion of Terra Justice Center, an INS study showed there were fewer issues with cross-border marriages than domestic marriages. In fact they have a much higher success rate”
And Jeb Bush is not the only candidate with a foreign-born wife. Candidate Donald Trump is also currently married to Melania Trump, a former model from Slovenia. Donald Trump’s first wife, Ivana, is from the Czech Republic.
Marrying foreign women is becoming a trend for the elite. FOX News CEO Rupert Murdoch is married to Wendi Deng Murdoch from Jinan, China, with a 38 year age difference.
Yet feminists continue to argue that men seek foreign brides only because they lack the necessary social skills to find someone in the US. This is clearly not the case, as these successful men do not lack socials skills.
Society has changed greatly over the years and love has no borders. Looking worldwide for love is becoming the norm now. Each week companies like A Foreign Affair take dozens of men to countries all over the world where they attend social events, meeting hundreds of beautiful women and models, who like themselves are serious about finding true love and marriage. These men are from many varied walks of life: doctors, CEOs, policemen, businessmen, you name it. You don’t have to be a Bush or Trump to see the advantage of looking abroad for real love.
With two candidates, Jed Bush and Donald Trump, both married to foreign brides, we could see our first foreign-born First Lady in the White House.
Trump’s middle wife, Marla Maples, was an American. Apparently, the most bitter of his divorces. I lived in NYC during the reign of Marla and Trump. What a classless time that was. People breathed a sigh of relief when she escorted down to Florida.
Bears repeating.
In the real era of racism, which was the early part of the 20th century, this was absolutely true. I checked Leip's tabulation of presidential elections and the Democratic vote for President in 1932 and 1936 in SC was over 98%. You couldn't find a Republican voter with an electron microscope. When it comes to racism, the 'Rats are knee deep in it.
It’s an embarrasment watching them fall all over themselves to see who could denounce the Confederate flag the loudest.
Jeb and Mitt fit this category exactly. Neither has the strength it would take to help the country turn around.
Some people are angry and their anger taints their reasoning.
Once again the Sultan is right on.
That doesn't go far enough. Republicans need to put their lives and treasure to the tasks of utterly destroying the liberal manipulation of the news and entertainment industries.
Liberal monopolies in these industries are responsible for much bloodshed around the world, and will very likely be responsible for much disaster here at home.
The gravest threat this nation currently faces is the political manipulation of the public by the media to support criminals and fools being elected to public office.
The Media is a Democrat enabling machine. It needs to be smashed.
The Republican candidates were being asked about the flag in order to connect their party to the Charleston church massacre by way of the flag. The whole premise of the question was guilt by association. There was no practical reason to ask Scott Walker, running for president from the notorious Southern outpost of Wisconsin, about a flag flying in South Carolina.
What they were really being asked is, “Have you racist Republicans ended your support for killing black people.”
The first thing Republicans need to understand is the press hates them. Every question they're asked needs to be analyzed with liberal hatred in mind.
Absolutely correct. We are not engaged in a war upon all we cherish - our families, communities, churches, vocations and children. Our nation is being disassembled from within by ideologues who hate us, from the POTUS to most elected officials, to most bureaucrats, to leaders of industry, even to our church’s leadership. We have allowed the enemy to gain the reins of power and now we are adrift with little but our frustration.
It is well past time to stand in the breach and demand, “This far and no further!”
How hard is this?
How do you feel about the Confederate Flag? Do you think it is a symbol of racism? Do you support the flying of it?
“The Confederate Flag is part of this Nation’s history. To some it represents racism. To others it brings to memory ancestors who were called to serve and die. They were called to fight and they did. The burden of the cause was not theirs. Do I fly the Confederate Flag? NO. Do I own a Confederate Flag? No. The Confederate Flag is the past. I am interested in the future.
Whats so difficult answering “we have far more important issues to deal with like Jobs, the economy, tax reform. If you have a question about those topics i will be glad to discuss them in detail and tell you what i plan to do about them.”
Just keep coming back to those issues.
“Again, if you have a question about Jobs, the economy, tax reform i will be glad to discuss my ideas with you.
Excellent summary of how the MSM and liberal buddies do their dirty work.
Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.
Makes me wanna order a few online before they become extinct.
yep
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