You hear a lot these days that Republicans are “in disarray.” But they’re not, really. It’s just that the way our political institutions work, a congressional minority party doesn’t generate a high-profile leader. Now you combine this leadership vacuum with the fact that the right has developed a very robust ideological media apparatus on talk radio and on Fox News and you have a problem. In effect, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are more prominent public figures than are John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, to say nothing of legislators who might actually be appealing figure. And since only a tiny minority of Republican members of congress are willing to suffer the dread “RINO” tag, the vast majority of elected officials seem to feel the need to kowtow to the whims of conservative movement media leaders.
The problem is that the incentives facing a media figure are very different from the incentives facing a politician.
A politician needs, basically, a majority. And the decisive votes are bound to come from people who don’t like politics much or really care about it. For a media figure, however, a much smaller audience than “half the people” would still constitute enormous success. But you need to appeal, intensely, to the small minority of people who care enough about politics to bother watching, reading, or listening to political commentary.
One problem is that tv formating leads to sound byte politics. Actually the internet leads to blog byte politics--where you send off links that nobody reads and get responses with links that you don't read...
When I debate online I make an effort to dig into the oppositions arguments and I know of a few others who do as well. And yes, we all slip up and/or are on the fly. But the entertainment factor in the conservative movement is just as true within "liberals" out in the world as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment