This is DU Front Page material if I ever saw it...

[Atman]

On Edit...link added (sorry!)

What Democrats are up against in today’s GOP

by Gene Lyons

Posted on Wednesday, March 9, 2005

Many Democrats still don’t grasp what they’re up against in today’s Republican Party. Naïve souls, they prefer to see national politics as a giant PTA meeting, and to comfort themselves with civics text bromides about the virtues of compromise and bipartisanship. Even in the face of the Clinton impeachment and the naked power play that decided the 2000 presidential election, they have trouble comprehending the sheer ruthlessness of the GOP political juggernaut. This is nothing new. Even during FDR’s presidency, Will Rogers joked that he belonged to no organized political party: He was a Democrat. Today, however, the party simply must learn to effectively counter the well-organized army of think-tank, opinion page and cable TV propagandists who parrot the GOP party line, no matter how illogical or preposterous.

In effect, organizations like FOX News, The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal editorial page, Rush Limbaugh and right-wing talk radio are simply adjuncts of the Republican Party. To this add scores of Washington pundits often employed by tycoon-financed "think tanks" such as the American Heritage Institute, Cato Foundation, etc. For all the braying about "liberal media bias," which may be the most successful GOP "spin point," Democrats simply have no equivalent propaganda machine.

Unlike Democrats, typically all over the place, Republican-oriented pundits agree almost all the time—and not just substantively, but tactically, too. Faxes and e-mails go out from the Republican National Committee, and GOP sophists jump into line like the Rockettes.

According to David Brock, the onetime Republican "hit man" whose book, "The Republican Noise Machine," explains exactly how the system works, the White House’s "explicit goal is to get us to the point where there are blue facts and red facts."

Judging by my e-mail, it’s working. Hardly a day passes that I don’t hear from perfectly decent, intelligent citizens who believe that there’s proof Saddam’s WMD were smuggled into Syria or that documents implicating him in 9/11 have been found. This was Orwell’s great fear: that the very concept of objectivity would disappear from political discourse. "Collective solipsism," he called it; the ability to convince people that 2 + 2 = 5.

A few recent examples:

<snip>

Link to full text

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Not unless you give us a link it isn't ... (n/t)

[rodeodance]

3. "the GOP political juggernaut."---I have always used the term jaugger-

naut--as i fits them very well. IT reminds me of the gigantic Borg machines that floated thru space destroying everything in their paths. Yet they were vulnerable in some regards. So, I remain hopeful.

[ohtransplant]

2. 2 + 2 doesn't = 5?

What's it going to take to awaken the masses?

Right now I live in a bizarro world where people vote against their self interest - against the national interest in fact. When will logic and common sense matter again? Not a cheerful thought...

[DoYouEverWonder]

12. "There..are...FOUR LIGHTS!"

How many lights do you see there?
I see four lights




No..There are five..are you quite sure?
There are four lights

[leyton]

14. Ah, a fantastic episode. eom

[itzamirakul]

4. Please provided the link to this article....n/t

[sinkingfeeling]

5. Atman, shame on you...you made me touch the Arkansas Fascist

Gazette!! I usually read Gene Lyons somewhere else.

[Atman]

6. LOL! I didn't know anything about the Gazette...

Sorry...Feel free to post a friendlier link!

[quaoar]

7. Excellent column

Glad to nominate it.


What do such examples tell us? First, that neither the Bush White House nor most GOP pundits actually give a flying filigree about "political correctness," " family values, "" moral clarity" or any of it. What counts is winning. What counts is power.

One more example: Last week, I wrote that Howard Dean, recently elected chair of the Democratic National Committee, appears capable of giving his party a wake-up call because he’s scrappy, smart and fearless. Hence, the GOP party line on Dean is that he’s a snobbish elitist and an advocate of cultural decadence. Also crazy, because, as we all know, anybody who sees through Bush must be consumed by anger and hatred.

[Stand and Fight]

8. Excellent Column

Sadly true, but excellent nonetheless... Somehow it makes me feel a greater hopelessness for this country.

[Atman]

9. Kicking this!

Jeez...I'm surprised at the few responses. I thought this would be viewed as more important!

[Andromeda]

24. I got this today in my e-mail...

and this article DOES belong on the front page.

Gene Lyons is a smart, savvy, down-home kind of journalist who still has principles and believes in telling it like it is.

[Cocoa]

10. he never gets around to explaining what dems don't know this

maybe this is a problem too, taking a list of republican excesses and somehow turning it into a criticism of dems.

[Colorado Blue]

11. Ruthless they are - but they would NOT be able to get away

with this if the general public wasn't intellectually lazy and generally uninformed.

I'm beginning to think that several decades of sitting in front of the boob tube has just about finished big chunks of the USA.

Sad!

[dxstone]

13. Definitely an excellent piece...

But I'm afraid I totally agree with Colorado Blue... and honestly, this stuff has been apparent for at least the last 20 years, man...
It's coming to a head now, and it's very sad to see that even with the pressure turned up considerably, so many people remain this brain-dead...
No doubt a terrific article; Lyons really points up what may be the ultimate crux of the problem we're facing here...
D

[Lone Pawn]

15. Not a very good article.

Paraphrased, in case you don't want to read it.

"Oh, boy, Republicans are scary! They're evil political players, and we keep pretending the truth will set us free, while we self-destruct every time a Democrat votes the 'wrong way!'

And Democrats are entirely unaware of this! I can't believe that nobody knows this!

I will now present a litany of tired cases of Republican malfeasance! Gasp at how presumably unprepared the Democrats are for this!

Republicans are Evil!"

This has been common widom, I believe, for nearly two decades--certainly since the Republican Revolution. The problem isn't that we aren't aware of what we're fighting, the problem has historically been that we haven't been aware of how to best fight it. This article really doesn't say, but just continues to harp on how nasty Republicans fight--something we've been talking about openly and bluntly ever since the stolen 2000 election.

[VOX]

16. Yes, DUers know how evil, well-organized and tenacious the GOP is...

But if this article opens just one eye of an uninitiated, uninformed or apathetic individual, then it is indeed a VERY good article.

One of the big reasons for the success of Republicans is their perpetual incantations on "Godless liberals," etc. And you don't see them easing up on THAT message.

[Atman]

17. I agree...WE know, but we are not "normal."

Believe me...I hang around with a group of people, several of whom think they're "up" on things. One guys is very well read on the Wal Mart issues, but still watches Fox. Very few "real people" have the time/inclination/desire to dig as deep and pay as close attention as the average DUer. We're here, in large part, because politics is a sport to us the way Monday Night Football is to middle America. But I dare any of you to go a week without checking into DU...you'd think the world got all better and that everyone loves Bush.

Go on...try it...I dare ya!

[GetTheRightVote]

18. I must agree with you, but not to long ago I was one of them

thinking the world around me was not perfect but doing good enough, now I no longer live in that bubble so there is hope yet for them as well. Most working Americans who are like this do not have computers or work to many hours to spend this kind of time on catching up on the issues so I help to spread the word as the guru for up to date news, it may be up to us to bring a little light into their worlds.

:kick:

[AuntiBush]

19. It has fallen on your shoulders.

GetTheRightVote has it right. I once lived in that "bubble" too. Then, I awoke in 2000. This past Nov 2004 was a hard blow. And now, day after day the wickedness I see coming down from the pike has become more then most can bear.

If it were not for folks as yourself, I would not be informed "finally." Thank you and keep up the hard, yet good work. We'd have no one else to depend on if you gals and guys ceased to exist.

And to the above poster's mention of us being "quarterbackers." No, I have to disagree. This place is my sound-off board. A place where like-minded people can relate w/one another rather then feel the pain alone. A place where critical thinking occurs.

And about our Dems. Most of them (except for today! which has me as about disgusted as I can ever be re the Bankruptcy going through), most of our Dem's and the entire history of the Democrat party is "FOR THE PEOPLE," so they don't BELLY-UP and SLEEP with WICKED CORPORATIONS who are GUTTING our American Eagle to death!

[ebayfool]

25. Exactly, what you said! I know DU is a little bubble of sanity, but ...

each DUer has the potential to take what they learn here & spread it outward. Ripple effect? I saw in ATA that Skinner estimated that there are @ 10% and 20% were banned. Of @ 66000 user registrations that would leave @ 52800 to 59400 active users. Pulling a # out my arse, say 1 in 10 are freepers (you just know there's alot of 'em!) say 47520 to 53460 are real DUers. Each DUer manages to reach & educate 10 people, 475200 to 534600 people. That's an impressive number of enlightened sheeple, each w/the potential to educate others on their own. I hate to see people here say that all is doom, because we are just little voices on a little way stop on the web. We have the potential to make a difference, I don't think the ripple effect is to be entirely ignored - the fundies spread their 'message' in a similar way. Slow, one on one, geometrically grown - hell, look how well it's worked for them! We can't feel overwhelmed (well, not ALL the time - that's how I ended up here, after all!) to the point of declaring there's no point in resisting, it will only get worse if no one is the opposition. They may have all the bad times coming down the pike as their just reward for buying into the repub yard sale, but the dems will have to pay & suffer right along w/them. Get pissed, push back, this IS our country too!

on edit:
(no math whizzes bagging on my poor math attempts, either! I do the best I can with what I got - at least they help you get the point!)

[Media_Lies_Daily]

22. Maybe the very tiny number of people that post on DU are very well....

...aware of this, but I can guarantee you that the vast majority of Americans, particularly Democrats, don't have even a semblance of a clue.

Rant all you want...but Lyons is trying to make public what most DUers have known for quite some time.

[bklyncowgirl]

28. This Democrats have been unprepared.

I thought this was a good article because it was written by a mainstream liberal writer for mainstream newspapers and it pointed out some obvious shortcomings of our political leaders.

The truth is that the Democrats ARE unprepared. They were unprepared in 2000, they were unprepared in 2002 and even after those wakeup calles they were totally unprepared in 2004.

Kerry ran his campeign as though there was some referee on the sidelines who was going to call the Swiftboat veterans on their lies. Rush Holt tried to get a bill requiring paper trails on voting machines. When the Republicans deep sixed it, the congressional Democrats uttered not a peep.

They didn't get it then, they don't get it now and unless it keeps getting hammered into their pointy little heads they will never get it.

[Kimber Scott]

20. We don't believe the MSM and the righties don't believe the MSM.

Therefore, the MSM is successfully castrated. Soon all the little "journalists" will be running around with their talking heads cut off.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

21. Gene Lyons...one of my favorite living writers.

[cry baby]

23. kick

[Festivito]

26. Misses the money and power grab intent.

Millons are spent keeping Rush, Hannity, etc. in power. The result is a raid on our SS taxes, income tazes, credit, and other resources worth trillions. A huge return on investment. Leading to collapse, new style bankruptcies, and land transfer to these few wealthy. Who, "played his audience for suckers."

[Guaranteed]

27. Damn. nt

[senseandsensibility]

29. Thanks for sharing this!

I remember Lyons as one of the few effective defenders of Clinton on cable and c-span during the early nineties. He was impressive on air, and it was only later that I learned he was a writer, and a damned good one!

[libodem]

30. We ARE the party of the people

that's why it's so hard to pin down an agenda or platform. It's people politics. Which translates individual independent politics. Sure we're the "social" ones organizing our little subgroups, caring about health, education and welfare, civil rights, the constitution, Representative government, an honest tax system, that protects the people, when they can't protect themselves. ie. the vulnerabe.....The Left as defined by ...the persons and groups pursuing 'egalitarian' political goals by reformist or revolutionary means. Party of the People! (big black fist, vertical motion) smiley face