How Much Of A Role Did The Media Play?

There were two big winners in the elections last night. Okay, three if you include the democrats. The Old Media won huge, and Pollsters, who called some races correctly for a change, saved their jobs. I'm no activist, but I've been watching politics for some thirty years and I've never seen the media insert itself into a campaign season the way they did this time around.

And they're still at it. McCain may have a harvest to reap. But it will be with the party machine, not with Republican voters. He's much further from the conservatives than is Bush.

News outlets simply don't hold themselves accountable to give a complete picture. They've become part of the process. It's as if they see themselves as having to define for the reader what ought to motivate them, rather than just reporting facts and letting the voters decide what's important.

Apparently, Anchoress thinks the way I do.

"The Dems managed to pull this off by telling America almost nothing of what they planned to do, (RCB - absolutely true!) and getting the press to carry them. The real monster created here is not the Dem congress…its the press, which has just been told, “yes, you can get away with what you’ve been doing - the smearing, the distorting, the burying of good news, the spinning, the framing of op-eds as news pieces…”

More than anything…more than ANYTHING…this election has given absolute carte blanche to the press, who will in no way attempt to restore faith with the American public. Hell, they got the job done, didn’t they? What’s to restore, clearly the distracted American public trusts ‘em just fine. And to be honest, I knew last week, when the press started admitting how unfair they’d been to the Republican candidates, that they wouldn’t be admitting it if they didn’t know the thing was won."


An example is the supposed "scandals" of the Republican Party that, this morning, I'm being told is the reason evangelicals switched to Democrats. Would they have switched if they were made aware (by the same folks that made us aware of Delay's legal problems) of a Louisiana Dem Jefferson Clinton? His illegal schemes dwarf those of even Abramoff, the so-called kingpin lobbyist. Or Harry Reid's real estate shenanigans? Will the American people ever hear of these scandals?
Obviously, only if old media decides corruption is the issue. So far, it looks like creaming Republicans is the issue, and scandal is a mere method.

On the pollsters, even before 1994, polls had been notoriously wrong on Republican representation. Don't forget that the last time the House changed party leadership, in 1994, the Republicans gained 54 seats. The polls may have been trembling, but they completely missed and minimized the magnitude. The polls have been predicting wrong ever since, until now - when some were wondering if they still had any relevance. In 2006, they were predicting 25 - 40 seats, and the actual number comes in at the lower end of that range. So we'll have to put up with them for at least another couple of cycles.

Captian's Quarters has a short, but interesting interview with Rep Jack Kinston here about some of the factors. After discussing trust issues...

"This left the GOP vulnerable on Iraq. The GOP lost the trust of the American people on the small and not-so-small stuff, and so they failed to trust Republicans on the bigger issues.

He doesn’t see how the Democrats can hold majorities on major issues. Too many conservative Democrats got elected."

President Bush is on the tube, Rumsfeld resigned.
I gotta go to work. Later.