Newshoggers Archive: The media and the Republicans

Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.

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Monday, November 9, 2009

The media and the Republicans

By Ron Beasley

This is a follow up to Jay's post below. The corporate media just like the Republicans think that if they say something often enough it will become reality. A case in point is all the recent talk of a Republican come back because the Republicans won two governors contests against two really bad Democrats. At the same time the Democratic House wins the same day in a red district in NY and a purple district in CA are said to be anomalies. As Chris Edelson points out the Republican Party remains a very unpopular failed party.

Not surprisingly, media insiders are missing the story. They are
transfixed by gubernatorial elections in 2 states last Tuesday, and are
talking up the idea of a Republican resurgence. They're losing sight of some central facts that are unaffected by Tuesday's elections:
The Republican party has a favorable rating of 23% and an
unfavorable rating of 66%. (Democrats are at 42%-50%). Republicans in
Congress have favorable-unfavorable ratings of 15% and 70% (Democrats
are at 40-53). If this is a resurgent party that has captured the
national mood, I'm Herbert Hoover.
It's no coincidence that voters give Republicans such abysmal
ratings. The Republican party stands for absolutely nothing other than
the pursuit of power. For 30 years, the Republicans have claimed to
stand for 3 things: (1) small government (2) family values and (3)
strong national defense. They don't actually stand for any of these
things, and it's not clear that they ever did.

1 comment:

KatNovember 10, 2009 at 5:11 AM
>> The corporate media just like the Republicans think that if they say something often enough it will become reality.
The GOP and corporate media may publicly denigrate it, but apparently they privately pay very close attention to scientific research -- which recently proved that if you say anything often enough, large numbers of people will believe it's true.
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