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GOP strategists plot anti-media strategy for 2018 elections

Shoeless

Member
Why do you think they've been pushing gerrymandering and Voter IDs for so long. They realized that demographics are steadily reaching a point where they need bullshit to survive. The only popular vote they've won since I was born was under the circumstances of a dual-wartime incumbent.

I'm only vaguely aware of how that works in the US. I'm Canadian, it's SUPER easy to vote over here. I'm aware of the gerry mandering shenanigans, but not sure what the issues are with voter ID.
 
Didn't major outlets block an ad saying that various outlets were FAKE NEWS that the Trump and the right went nuts about?

actually that doesnt sound like real talk, more like bullshit.

He kinda has a point though?

It's one thing to be concerned about this but the amount of hysteria in these threads, quite frankly gets so absurd that it ends up being counter-productive.
 

Beartruck

Member
Of course they would, specially after that guy in Montana assaulted a reporter and still won the seat. They think it works now with how their President is talking about the media.

Problem there was he did that after early voting. Record numbers of people called in asking to change their votes the day after.
 
I'm only vaguely aware of how that works in the US. I'm Canadian, it's SUPER easy to vote over here. I'm aware of the gerry mandering shenanigans, but not sure what the issues are with voter ID.

The idea behind Voter IDs is to make it tougher for people (usually groups more likely to vote democrat etc. minorities) to be able to vote under the guise of combating an imagined epidemic of voter fraud.
 

DietRob

i've been begging for over 5 years.
GOP is slowly creeping towards radical levels. FBI, Homeland, and CIA need to put a stop to this before they breed a nation of "Radical Conservative Terrorists"
 
If the god damn media normalizes this like they did all last year with Trump I am going to be super upset. Last year they considered Trump a joke for too long and still try to play the whole "both sides" thing at times. Enough is fucking enough. If the GOP goes this route, everything that isnt Fox News, Breitbart and that ilk better be going fucking hard on the GOP. Fuck it, go further and be propaganda for the Dems as well.
 

Beartruck

Member
I'm only vaguely aware of how that works in the US. I'm Canadian, it's SUPER easy to vote over here. I'm aware of the gerry mandering shenanigans, but not sure what the issues are with voter ID.

Voter ID laws are in place because minorities are statistically less likely to have specific forms of ID, which helps republicans.
 

Shoeless

Member
The idea behind Voter IDs is to make it tougher for people (usually groups more likely to vote democrat etc. minorities) to be able to vote under the guise of combating an imagined epidemic of voter fraud.

I'm guessing then that this means having a driver's license, passport or just about any other form of government issue photo ID isn't enough to get you into a voting booth.
 

~Kinggi~

Banned
He kinda has a point though?

It's one thing to be concerned about this but the amount of hysteria in these threads, quite frankly gets so absurd that it ends up being counter-productive.

Not really. When Sean spicer came out and declared the crowd to be the biggest ever, that was shocking and scary to me and a lot of others. It is so much worse than that now, with the actual president attacking freedom of speech and facts. All it shows is how far we have regressed.
 
I don't think painting the media as the bogeyman is going to work nearly as well as it did with Killary. She's not on the ballot and neither is the media.
 

Loxley

Member
Well, we're fucked.

Jesus Christ some of you give up easily. This defeatist attitude some folks on the left have is just as toxic as anything the GOP is guilty of, because all you're doing is helping them.

"That's right liberals, there is no hope. Just stay home for midterms because you can't win no matter what."
 

BriGuy

Member
That's cool. Sow that distrust in the foundation of our democracy until we bypass dysfunctional and become fully and irrevocably nonfunctional.

The GOP is a fast becoming a real cancer to this nation, and if they aren't excised soon, they're going to kill us. That's not hyperbole either.
 

Aurongel

Member
Well, we're fucked. Enough people will buy into this normalizing of the rejection of journalism that we'll just be shouting at people who can't hear outside their bunker for a long ass time. You shouldn't mainstream this idea. It's so destructive. But here we go.

Yeesh, you sound like all it takes is a stiff breeze to shatter your faith in the system.
 
Winning elections is what politics is all about and unfortunately for us the Republicans are pretty damn good at it. Democrats need to figure something out, and if it isn't 100% clean and kosher the liberals need to STFU and let them try and win.
 

Cairax

Neo Member
Real talk... we can get a report that a baby spilled water and someone will say we're doomed and/ or terrified.

It's one thing to be concerned about this but the amount of hysteria in these threads, quite frankly gets so absurd that it ends up being counter-productive.
See, these guys get it
 

Syf

Banned
As an outsider I look at the US and see the GOP as this writhing mass that's slowly killing you.
 

Aurongel

Member
In an increasingly connected world, fighting endless wars with the news media is just a way of creating distracting bouts with the public and giving yourself the perception of always being embattled.

Once Republicans from contested districts start challenging Trump in the lead up to midterms, I think we'll see many of them put on a friendlier face to the media. With Democrats making huge gains thus far in special elections, it isn't really a viable strategy to start targeting the media when they need that air time to promote their policies.

I think this strategy works for Trump because he's a cult of personality but for anyone less well known than him it becomes a messaging liability.

#hottake
 

Shoeless

Member
GOP is well on the way to becoming a straight up fascist party. Theyre not quite there yet, but theyre walking down that path.

If it actually does end up devolving that way, that's going to be quite harmful for white people in America, given enough time to proliferate. If you start identifying political affiliation, sexual orientation, religion and xenophobia all into race, then this puts white people in America down a dark path.

Given enough time you're just assumed to be a racist, intolerant, violently hateful homophobe as a matter of birth. Even if you're NOT this, if someone who is this sees you, they walk up to you, clap you on the back thinking 'you're one of them," and start hurling racial slurs because "You're white. You must be Republican."

That's a slippery slope to go down.
 
I'm guessing then that this means having a driver's license, passport or just about any other form of government issue photo ID isn't enough to get you into a voting booth.

In Alabama, it meant reducing the number of DMV locations in black majority areas in order to increase the distance one would need to travel. In some cases, counties would have no DMV locations.
 

whipihguh

Banned
This is deeply upsetting. I'm not sure it will even work, but the GOP being willing to make this jump is another step on their continued path of extremism.

I fear it's only gonna get worse from here on out as the demographics continue to slip from their fingers. If they continue this path instead of moderating their positions, radicalizing their base is gonna be their only path to victory, at least on the federal stage.
 

steveovig

Member
Us liberals also have to get energized and start voting for stuff besides Presidential elections. Tom Perez needs to get our lazy asses to the polls.
 

cameron

Member
This type of strategy is unsettling for sure, and illustrates one way how far gone the party is.

But Independents and moderate Republicans who voted for Trump aren't blaming the press for the GOP's agenda stalls/failures. They're not blaming CNN for the lack of health care reform.

And from Quinnipiac in May: https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2456
Trump and the Media

American voters disapprove 58 - 37 percent of the way the news media covers Trump. Voters disapprove 65 - 31 percent of the way Trump talks about the media. And voters trust the media more than Trump 57 - 31 percent to tell the truth about important issues.
 
Yeesh, you sound like all it takes is a stiff breeze to shatter your faith in the system.

Do you really think tens of millions of people WON'T turn on the media if one of the two mainstream parties in this country -- in particular, the one that currently controls most of our government at both the federal and state levels -- makes it their mission to paint the media as the enemy? Is that really your theory right now?
 

ICO_SotC

Member
I feel like that has been their strategy since Rush Limbaugh took off in the 80's.

Yes. I've been hearing republicans blame the "liberal" media since the 80s. It's why Fox News came into existence.

Openly admitting it's their strategy to cover for their failures is new, though.

Progress?
 
There's something genuinely worrying about the fact that a political party needs an enemy to whip up its voters against and, in the absence of one, makes one up and paints the bullseye on them.

This seems to be the exact opposite of future-proof, though, and it seems like it guarantees a shrinking voterbase for future generations.

It's just the way human psychology works, especially in herd behavior.

The knife cuts both ways: the recent upturn of the Democratic party is pretty clearly being rallied against common enemies (the Trump-Putin Power Hour), for example; yes, issues of policy also matter, and so do personal ethos and performance records, but nothing energizes a movement quite like a villain.

The problem is that Trump has elevated himself to an almost cartoonish status as a villain for the left, and the best they have to offer is "Maybe the media's kind of rude?" to try and create a boogeyman for the right.
 

etrain911

Member
If the god damn media normalizes this like they did all last year with Trump I am going to be super upset. Last year they considered Trump a joke for too long and still try to play the whole "both sides" thing at times. Enough is fucking enough. If the GOP goes this route, everything that isnt Fox News, Breitbart and that ilk better be going fucking hard on the GOP. Fuck it, go further and be propaganda for the Dems as well.

I haven't seen a positive story about the GOP from anywhere that isn't Fox, et al. since the election. The only negative coverage the Democrats have gotten has been when they endorsed a pro-life member, whenever Hillary talks about the election, Obama's speech, and when Ellison lost the race for chair of the DNC. Otherwise, it is a constant (and well deserved) stream of bad news for anyone with an R next to their name.
 

Taramoor

Member
In Alabama, it meant reducing the number of DMV locations in black majority areas in order to increase the distance one would need to travel. In some cases, counties would have no DMV locations.

In Wisconsin it meant that a Hunting License without a picture was an acceptable form of ID, but a Student ID from a college was not.
 

subrock

Member
hopefully the increasing organization wrt fact-checking that we're seeing among several prominent online sources will be in full swing by then. It would be nice to have some immediate smack-downs for these state-level lie-fests ready at every stage of the political conversation.
 

Acheteedo

Member
They're backed into a corner, they simply *have* to adopt this strategy, even though it won't work, the alternative is to let their actions be widely reported and accepted as truth, which is political suicide since they're a fucking mess.
 

Sephzilla

Member
Ok, so if a candidate is seriously going to try the whole "fake news" strategy, wouldn't any network that has their own news network that would be on the receiving end of this basically say "no you can't run ads on our network of stations" ?
 
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