Demosophia

We Got No Steenkin' Media Bias

Anticipatory Retaliation posts extensively on the latest Democrat-inspired abomination: that Republicans are mean-spirited and Democrats are just too nice to win. Uh-huh. What Susan Estrich, and other Democratic pundits, are objecting to is, of course, really that the Swiftvet "smear campaign" has apparently been effective, while the Moveon and Mooreon campaigns apparently haven't.

I say "apparently" because the Democratic media-supported smear campaign, a constant barrage of memes, disinformation, and presumptive lies, has been going on so long it's become the "new normal," and any impact it had never gave its candidate a decisive advantage. But does anyone seriously doubt that if we could suddenly waive a magic wand and clear up that list of false impressions and mistaken assumptions Bush would currently be ahead by 20 points or more?

Did many, for instance, ever pay attention to the fact that Joe Wilson was lying through his teeth? Ask a typical Kerry voter if s/he knows that Joe's report to the CIA supported the conclusion that the Iraqis sought to buy Uranium, precisely the opposite of what he claimed. I'll bet the proportion of Kerry voters so aware isn't more than 10%

And this little Estrich quote really takes the cake:

You can't just answer the charges. You can't just say it ain't so.

Except, of course, that the Kerry campaign never answered most of the charges brought by the Swiftvets. They just engaged in ad hominem attacks against the people in the group, called them liars, and simply sewed the assumption that the Swiftvet campaign was directed by Bush (as though Vietnam vets could never have a separate brief with Kerry).

At this point about 36% of the public are convinced that there's at least some substance to the allegations against Kerry's Vietnam record, and the only reason it isn't more is that Bush's statement about honoring Kerry's record probably quelled some of the doubts, and also convinced the press that they were justified in ignoring the story. Yet Kerry continues to direct his counters not at the Swiftvets, but at Bush. He doesn't answer the charges. With extraordinarily obnoxious cheek, considering all the allegations, levelled by Kerry himself, that Bush pulled a "bait and switch" to justify removing Saddam from power, Kerry pulls the "bait and switch" of the century, claiming that the very person most responsible for his defense is, in fact, the author of the attack. And by doing so justifies a counter-attack with less substance than a wet off-brand paper towel.

This is, of course, all fairly perverse... especially since one of the primary claims of the Swiftvets has been acknowledged by the Kerry Campaign to be true (albeit, with prejudice). Not that most voters would know that, if their only source of information were the MSNBC, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, NYT, LAT, WaPo media machine.

My theory is that voters are starting to switch allegiance because they're beginning to gag on the subconsciously accumulated inconsistencies in the media/Democrat elite's preposterous narrative. There's only so much BS you can take on the salad, before you realize it's not dressing.

Update: They may be switching more than Presidential allegiance. Nielsen Media Research reports:

That marked the third straight night Fox has surpassed its larger broadcast rivals in the first case of a cable channel attracting more viewers than any of the three major networks during a scheduled event covered by all of them, experts said. (Hat tip: Cap'n Ed)

Posted by Demosophist at September 4, 2004 10:19 AM | TrackBack