<$BlogRSDUrl$>

My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2006-10-27

Fight Like A Girl

[all the following courtesy Hugh Hewitt]

Why, one wonders, does it take the mild, smallish second lady to finally take down the MSM?

For two years now, the GOP has been completely bumfuzzled by the way they've been treated by the old media. I've speculated before that that inability to take on the bias and get the message out may be worth between 8 and 12 points in this election cycle.

Well, this video should be sent out to EVERY Republican spokesperson, candidate and office holder in the country.

partial video here.

transcript here.

My favorite line?:

BLITZER: Because of the dunking, you know, using the water and the dunking?

CHENEY: I understand your point. It's kind of the point of a lot of people right now to try to distort the administration's position. And if you really want to talk about that, I watched the program on CNN last night, which I thought as your 2006 voter program? Which I thought was a terrible distortion of both the president and the vice president's position on many issues.

It seemed almost straight out of the Democratic talking points, using phrases like "domestic surveillance." When it is not domestic surveillance that anybody has talked about, or ever done. It's surveillance of terrorists. It's people who have Al Qaeda connections calling into the United States.

So I think we're in the season of distortion, and this is just one more.


The best part of this exchange is what happens not more than 90 seconds later:

CHENEY: You know, Jim Webb is full of baloney. I have never written anything sexually explicit. His novels are full of sexually explicit references to incest, sexually explicit references -- well, you know, I just don't want my grandchildren to turn on the television set.This morning, Imus was reading from the novels. And it is XXX- rated.

BLITZER: Here is what the Democratic Party put out today, the Democratic Congressional -- Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Oh. So it actually WAS straight out of the Democratic talking points.

So what lessons does the GOP have to learn from Lynne Cheney? How about these:

A. Be prepared. She was on the program, ostensibly, to talk about her children's book! but all of the newsworthy parts of the interview had absolutely nothing to do with her book. It would be easy to say she was sandbagged into that interview, but given the drubbing she dealt to Wolfie, it looks like she suckered him, instead.

But the point is, she was well-informed about all the issues, she was able to reference the culture immediately and relevantly (note the Imus reference), and she KNEW both the background and the important facts (like that CNN had a program last night in which it talked about a man she knew the background of).

B. Challenge Assumptions. You know the OldMedia has its blinders, but that doesn't mean you have to confine your talk to their terms. Note, in particular, how she challenges the assertion that the man referenced earlier was "innocent."

C. Call A Lie a Lie, a Distortion a Distortion, and Bias Bias. I particularly like how she chucks in the line about bias as an accepted assumption, a la OldMedia, but doesn't dwell on it or ask for any breaks from it.


Sadly, most of the time Republicans go on TV they get this "deer in the headlights" thing going with regard to what they're doing, and they fall back--usually very clumsily--on the tired old talking points.

If more Republicans dealt with media like Lynne Cheney, the entire superstructure of the media bias would crumble. By the end, Wolf Blitzer looked like a thoroughly scolded schoolboy in front of a veteran teacher, all pretense and no substance.

Note: Gov. Mitt Romney had a wonderfully similar moment the other day when he reminded an idiot reported that he was the one who represented the people and the reporter represented only the media. That has to happen more often.
Posted by: Michael / 10/27/2006 11:34:00 PM

Weblog Commenting by HaloScan.com

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?