‘Politico.com in the Left Ditch, Wheels Spinning’
Hugh Hewitt ponders when it all it wrong with the Politico:
Over at Politico.com, Joe Scarborough has given a lesson on all that is wrong with public discourse and at the same time gives yet another example of why Politico is forfeiting the crucial branding it worked so hard to achieve at launch. What had been begun as a rigorously fair and balanced Beltway news portal has become anti-conservative and anti-Republican in two short years. This is the deep current of the Manhattan-Beltway media elite at work, and it is a sad thing to see Politico swept away in it.
Scarborough is a well-meaning, typically upbeat, generally center-right talking head with a half-dozen years of Congress under his belt and a nice morning talk show that relatively few people watch. Joe isn’t ever going to be mistaken for Brit Hume, but on the few days I have watched him, he turns in a decent product.
His columns, not so much. Different skill set than Joe brings, but Politico has drafted him because Politico’s drift left has been accelerating, and throwing Joe up on the front page tells the world that the editors are trying to keep their center-right readers even as those same editors know that Joe S. cannot possibly bring a single conservative pair of eyes with his byline. The Post picks up Jennifer Rubin, and conservatives start visiting the Post much more often. Politico picks up Scarborough and nothing happens.
This particular column is the perfect example of why Scarborough isn’t a “conservative” columnist at all. Not only does it serve up the anti-conservative slant of the week just ending, it also contributes to the very media environment –poisoned and vitriolic– that it purports to condemn.
I’d say the key moment when the Politico decided to jettison a sense of centrist fairness might be found here.
Hugh is a very sharp guy, and I never understood why he showed such respect for Politico on his show. To me, Politico always seemed to be just another collection of leftist propagandists. When the Journolisters were named, that confirmed my suspicions.
The description of Joe Scarborough as “center-right” is egregiously wrong. I used to watch Morning Joe over at MSNBC before becoming sick of it and him. There Scarborough surrounded himself with hard-left ideologues and never disputed any of their mindless diatribes. Scarborough is in fact a lefty. He is also a dishonest lefty pretending (like David Brooks et al) to be a conservative. He lied to his Florida constituents for years and lost his seat because of it.
More lefties in a ditch. Who’s going for the slurpies?
There was an election two years ago where independents swung left. Last year they swung right. Conservatives need to think carefully about whether they can afford to alienate the independents or not. Whether conservatives are justified or not in their rhetoric is a different issue than how independents view their rhetoric. I am beginning to think that conservatives are going off the deep end, becoming paranoid, and about to spin out of control. I favor conservative policies but I am beginning to worry that conservative bloggers are going to alienate so many independents that conservative policies will not be carried out.
Conservatives obviouslly don’t understand how others percieve them. It’s like with schizophrenics who don’t understand they are mentally ill. Conservative bloggers don’t understand they are alienating independents with their defensive, paranoid ranting about the left. Get a grip, man up, grow up.
Focus on policy, not on politics. People want to know what policies are good and why, and which policies are bad and why. We don’t care about who said what to whom or who called who a bad name.
Since independents do hold the swing votes, we also have a responsibility to look past the conventional wisdom of image and “civility”, and accurately perceive the substance of what even the most civil are proposing to impose upon us … then respond to it with wisdom and foresight, not pique over how we were talked to.
The problem with civility is that the intellectually dishonest can exploit it to frame the debate, to impose policies that would not withstand honest review because they can discredit the opposition as “uncivil”.
The greater incivility is not the raising of one’s voice or the carrying of a provocative sign … the greater incivility is to couple dishonesty with the force of law to force one’s misplaced idealism … or the greed-in-sheep’s-clothing of wealth redistribution … or the muzzling of principled criticism (while letting the unprincipled variety spread like kudzu) … down our throats with the sugar coating of erudition.
I keep saying it … civility in response to intellectual dishonesty is counterproductive to the defense of liberty.
Want civility … demand honesty.
Ah yes. I agree with everything you said except for the part where you typed words.
Halfway through you first paragraph, my concern-troll-dar pegged at maximum. If you want to constructive criticize a specific Republican or tea partier or conservative for doing something specific, that would be okay. But painting those groups with a broad brush as plunging into some pit of lunacy, you’re just going to get yelled at by people with higher-quality rhetorical tools than you have in your box. Didn’t we just go through an exercise in the need for specificity in responsibility? If you’re really an independent, please man up and stop spooking at trends and feelings.
See what I did there? I told you exactly what you did wrong so that you could chose to considering correcting what I perceive as your errant behavior. I didn’t offer my unqualified medical opinion as to the state of your mental fitness to debate or damn you with guilt by association. I did insult you, but gently, because you ticked me off.
There is an ironclad law covering this.
“Any organization not specifically organized around conservative principles will inevitably drift leftward over time” as slacker socialists begin to infest it, and rot it away from the inside. I’m talking to you, Pew, Ford, etc…
(I added the last part)
“Conservatives obviouslly don’t understand how others percieve them”
Whoever wrote this is obviously perceived illiterate.
That said; if those who consider themselves Independent (like Jared Loughter) are prefectly willing to accept the perception even if the perception is built upon a lie then there is no reasoning with such insanity.
The authentic truth shall set US free.
@#4 – Independents are swinging wildly because for the first time in more than a generation the political direction of the country is going to have a significant impact on their daily lives and their (and their descendants) standard of living. That’s always true in the abstract but given the rancid economy the issue is far more immediate and urgent. Unfortunately neither party has an answer much less a workable solution: the right it overly timid and the left is simply disasterously wrong and independents, like myself, are left with nowhere to turn.
If there were such a law as “Truth in Naming” for political Websites, Politico would be required to rename itself “Democratico”.
Ritchie the Riveter is correct. Intellectual dishonesty is the bane of our process, not incivility. But it gets easier and easier every decade to get away with sophistry.
Schools neither demand nor teach logic. “Feelings” and sound bites trump logical thought.
If the media diagrammed the logic tree of politicians we might begin to see the absurdity, internal contradictions, and inconsistencies of political speech. But sadly, most in the media (with a few notable exceptions) are not merely unwilling to do so; they are incapable of thinking or writing logically.
I am pretty sure Scarborough has Stockholm Syndrome, from being locked up with all the wild eyed moonbats at MSDNC. He sounds like them most of the time these days, well that is on the few occasions that I ever bother to stop the channel changer on the show for a bit. Most of the time he is the metaphorical equivalent of the tree falling in the forest. No one heard so tell Joe is a sound even made?
Ed, you’re far too kind to Scarborough. He took a hard left ages ago, his show may seem center-right until the BUT shows up in all his comments.
He’s wearing the other team’s jersey inside-out.
The problem for political internal pollsters has always been in trying to figure out which way the “swing voters” are going to jump. One problem is that of nomenclature, while swing voters often claim to be indepent those who claim to be independent aren’t always swing voters in the traditiona sense, that is in the past a swing voter is one who didn’t decide who he/she was going to vote for until just a few weeks before the election. Which is why both parties would go for the October surprise gambit. Now some of those claiming to be independent are those who do not trust either party types. They can be hard leftists who have lost faith in Obama or Tea Party types who are suspicious of the RINO’s in the Republican party. It really looks like centerists are declining and the actual number of real swing voters may have declined.
The news cycle and the internet influence spreads by word of mouth even when the big three broadcasts networks ignore it.
More and more the public seems to watching the hands not the mouths.
What I don’t understand is why Drudge lists the following predominantly at the top of the second column starting the WebSite listings:
ABCNEWS NOTE
MIKE ALLEN PLAYBOOK
MSNBC FIRST READ
WASH POST RUNDOWN
Can someone explain that? Any ideas?
I’m remembering a comment I heard Joe Scarborough make years ago about how his constituents loved to hear him talk about the founding fathers. He said something like, they eat that stuff up, or words to that effect.
When I heard him say it, it sounded a bit like he was letting slip that HE didn’t think much of our founders, but was just slinging red meat for the bubbas in his district. It was very subtle then, but as it turns out he WAS just mugging for the bubbas. No wonder his sadder but wiser constituents turned him out. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
James Solbakken
Don’t be so hard on old Joe. He is suffering from Stockholm syndrome. Just call him Stockholm Joe. He’s been suffering for years. Like the rest of MSNBC, they really have no viewers.
I’m tired of hearing from, about “centrists”. There is no such animal. There might be “swing voters”, but most of those folks didn’t bother to pay attention until 30 days before an election, and are looking for pretty lights and sounds, not policy, or even previous actions.(How else can you explain Cardosa and Costas in California, after they sold out their constituents?)
“Centrists” do nothing but muddy the water, which means unless they are truly ignorant, they have a purpose to their rhetoric. Time to call them out, and/or point out their logical inconsistancies.
Politico has become apart of the Obama agenda to limit public dialog about any matter of interest to America. First Amendment is just another word for it won’t be aired.
To bad, free discourse and public dialog is as much American as apple pie and baseball. If Politico wishes to hide itself under the rock from whence it came, it shows the weakness of the liberal socialist agenda.