Fox “News” promoting GOP Culture War
One of the positives about the Reddit social media platform is that there are so many “subreddits,” each covering a specific topic, that anyone can either search or browse and then do a deep dive into a particular subject. For example, in the politics area, there are subreddits for folks of all political stripes, and even particular subreddits regarding certain political media outlets. It was in one such subreddit, r/TheMajorityReport (which covers The Majority Report, a progressive daily political talk radio show featuring host Sam Seder), where recently we found what may be the clearest and best comment describing how Republicans practice their cynical politics.
The particular Reddit background discussion leading to the comment concerned the appearance of Ana Kasparian of another political media outlet, The Young Turks, on Fox “News.” Ana is a former progressive who has moved towards the political right. Fox loves to feature such former lefties and use them as tools to bash the Democrats. Here’s the self-explanatory title of the Reddit discussion in question:
Fox News: Progressive journo Ana Kasparian unleashes on left’s obsession with ‘garbage’ identity politics: ‘I’m done’
After the jump, see the great comment that one Reddit user left:
Here is the comment, from Reddit user Zombull:
It isn’t about Ana. It’s about the news cycle. The right does not want voters paying attention to the fact that the GOP has no winning tangible political positions. They campaign on taxes? They lose. They campaign on the economy? They lose. They campaign on foreign relations? They lose. So they campaign instead by picking fights on culture war issues that the general public hasn’t really ever thought about, but that can be used to easily stoke people’s fear and revulsion. The right passes laws targeting vulnerable groups over some esoteric issue and the left obviously says “WTF? You can’t do that!” and the media picks it up because they love a good controversy and the culture war is on.
This is something we have talked about repeatedly on Messaging Matters. A great example is Florida‘s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who ignores critical problems in Florida such as skyrocketing insurance rates resulting from climate change, or gun violence, and instead spends all his time (and presidential campaign) attacking Walt Disney World, banning books, and injecting his right wing government policies into public education. Most Republican politicians are doing something similar, because, as commenter Zombull put it so well, the Republicans have no solutions to the problems that affect all of us, and any positions they do take regarding these problems (such as opposing universal background checks for all gun purchases) are generally unpopular, so instead they distract from the real issues by riling up their base and the news media with the Culture War.
As we have said from the very beginning, however:
Republicans know that, to win political battles, you must go on offense to frame the political debate in your terms, using language favorable to you.
If you’re fighting a political battle on the other side’s rhetorical turf, you’ve already lost.
Obviously, then, Democrats need to be the ones who go on offense and push their agenda and their issues to the media and into the public debate.
Photo by New England Secession, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/hiVBsH
