Trump Is Devouring The GOP, And Fox News Fed It To Him

[Surya Gayatri]

An entire right-wing media ecosystem has sprung up, where journalist-warriors flood social media with rumors of sharia law coming to suburbia and hype a fast-approaching "race war" in America targeting whites. The Republican establishment -- a loose coalition of party committees, moderate donors and business interests -- once hoped to harness this tremendous new energy to recapture the White House.

Instead, the Fringe Establishment is the one doing the harnessing.

.../

But boy, talking about shutting the barn door about three months too late. These are many of the same players who enabled Trump's bigoted rise and cheered his derogatory, especially when its target was the White House. The conservative media helped lay out a blueprint of fear and paranoia for him.

As Nathan Lean noted in his book, The Islamophobia Industry: How the Right Manufactures Fear of Muslims, back in August 2006, Fox News guest Mike Gallagher suggested an "all Muslims checkpoint line" at American airports. And after the Fort Hood shooting in November 2009, Fox's Brian Kilmeade suggested "special screenings" for Muslim U.S. soldiers.

Talk radio fearmongers and cable television personalities have "created an environment where people are comfortable expressing these kind of sentiments," noted CNN's Michael Smerconish this week. Indeed, Trump's right-wing media cohorts helped him unleash the hounds of bigotry and now some in conservative circles are desperately searching for a harness?

They're not going to find it.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/12/09/trump-is-devouring-the-gop-and-fox-news-fed-it/207367

_________________________________________

Good read. Astute portrayal of the hyposcrisy and hubris of the RW fear-mongers.

They have mongered themselves into the proverbial double-bind. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

Move now en masse against the Trump-monster they've created, and they end up with a third party run.

Allow him to be nominated as their standard bearer and they lose in a landslide in the general.

[malaise]

1. No sympathy here

K & R

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. Was thinking of this earlier ...

Trump has sucked all the air out of the room for any other Repub. candidates.
The only way they can get attention is by being as loud and shocking as he is, something Cruz attempts to do from time to time.

An odd mixture of hubris and karma colliding to create their worse nightmare: irrelevance.

[Surya Gayatri]

3. Trump is their worst nightmare come to life--a Godzilla risen from the fetid swamp of RW ideology...

Other candidates may try to match his inflammatory rhetoric, but it will simply come back to haunt them in the general.

This conundrum is tearing the party apart. We can only hope that it will never really recover.

[jalan48]

4. So if Trump is the face of the New Republican Party does that mean the others are too liberal?

Are Bush, Rubio, etc. the sane, reasoned voices in the room? Where does that leave the Democrats? Too far left are we now? Do we need to move further right to better represent the populace?

[Surya Gayatri]

14. A majority of the 30 to 40% of the American electorate that would vote

for the midway barker would most likely never vote for ANY democrat, whatever his/her position--center, left-of-center, far left.

[Hepburn]

5. IMO, Tweetie is then a Faux Snooze affiliate

I cannot turn on Hardball without seeing and hearing tRump.

[Surya Gayatri]

16. Not to mention Morning Scar...40 frigging minutes they had him

on yesterday or the day before. Even Scar got fed up and had to cut him off.

This is millions in free media exposure and campaign advertising.

[Hepburn]

17. Oh, man, the Joe Scum tRump daily puke festival!

Yeah, I was surprised when tRump got cut off. Says a lot, IMO, when that crew can only take so much from The Donald!

[certainot]

6. rw radio is the root of the problem

1200 radio stations on which hundreds of the most racist sexist and ignorant assholes to ever sit in front of the microphone can avoid cameras and hide behind call screeners with caller ID software and say basically whatever they want without being challenged. fox jerks have to be much more careful.

those radio stations can also be coordinated locally to state and local issues re ALEC and the think tanks more easily also.

amazingly, these 90 universities keep rw radio going by renting their logos and mascots to 270 limbaugh stations to help sell the trump racism and islamophobia, attack planned parenthood, and deny global warming.

if progressives wanted to end this 25 yr attack on democracy all they have to do is push a few universities to divest from rw radio and shame the others into doing the same. those are several hundred of limbaugh's loudest radio stations, about a 1/4 of all rw radio stations, and many are already having trouble thanks to stoprush. the rw radio monopoly would fall apart.

[Surya Gayatri]

24. Amen...Fox by itself can only do so much to get the bigotry ball rolling...

It's the echo chamber of a 1000 drive-time dogmatists that ramp the crazy up to a whole new level.

RW radio is the root of the problem

1200 radio stations on which hundreds of the most racist sexist and ignorant assholes to ever sit in front of the microphone can avoid cameras and hide behind call screeners with caller ID software and say basically whatever they want without being challenged. fox jerks have to be much more careful.

[certainot]

34. i think of fox as the visual icing on the talk radio lie turd pie

[Volaris]

7. Yep and that landslide carries with it down-ticket losses as well

To the point of losing the Majority.
First in the Senate, and two years later likely the House as well.
The Party history of Congress is that Congress was BLUE after the New Deal, and it stayed that way for almost 50 years.
The politics of Reagan and Chicago-school Economics are about finished with, and with it the historic outlier of a Red Congress.
They know it's happening and don't like it, and this TrumpCampaign/TeaParty Frankenstein they have created is likely the last tantrum they get to throw, especially (I think) if Sanders wins the Whole Shebang.

Fuck 'em.

[safeinOhio]

9. Spot on.

I've always thought.....just keep giving them more rope and when they hit rock bottom, toss them a pick and shovel......

[Volaris]

28. Yeah. Eventually Republican Rule will get so bad that even the idiots will see it for what it is

We keep staving off the worst of it, but if Sanders gets the nomination and then loses the General (not LIKELY BTW, but possible) we will just have to embrace the horror for long enough that it gets REALLY BAD ENOUGH that the rubes who voted for their own enslavement and abuse figure out the game that's being played. Flat-out Republican Rule with no bureaucratic or governmental checks would last about 6 months, and then they would have the confidence to cancel the SocSecChecks, and by Monday every State Capitol building in America would be on fire.
That's what it would take, but if that's the only way then So Be it I guess...

[safeinOhio]

29. I love to ask Trump supporters

about his comment last week, American wages are too high. So, I asked if they would take a 25% cut in their pay check to make America great again, or how about a 50% cut to make her really great?

[Volaris]

31. It's not that American wages are too high, it's that the wages of the developing world are too low

At this point, the only way Globalization keeps it's promise is if the poor bastard in the Ipod factory in China were legally required to be paid an American minimum wage.
Not an in-country equivalent wage, mind you, but an ACTUAL 7.75/hour, and in American Dollars should he so desire it.
If said Poor Bastard is going to contribute his Labor to the maintenence of the American Economic Empire, he should be one of the richest fuckers in his country.
Why?
Because when he figures out that the only thing he isn't allowed to buy with his middle-class wealth is a free, fair, and open election, the Rulers in the Forbidden City are done for, and The Rulers know it.

Because Modern Democracies are built brick and mortar on the foundation of the Middle Class.
Because EVERYTHING else leads to oppression.

[DemoTex]

8. An opportunistic infection ..

For which there is no known cure. The GOP is walking dead.

[Surya Gayatri]

19. An auto-immune cancer that will consume them from the inside out.

[Le Taz Hot]

10. I just subscribed to a TV service for the first time in

MANY years. (Btw, I didn't think it was possible but TV is even worse than it was when I pulled the plug.) Every time I turn on CNN, and I mean EVERY time, they're talking about Trump. He's getting BILLIONS of dollars in TV ads from them completely gratis. Yes, I said billions because I can't even imagine what it would cost to buy ad time say, conservatively, 12 hours a day for days on end on CNN.

[Surya Gayatri]

11. Yes, the mainstream media is aiding and abetting tRrump's insane bigotry just as surely

as the RW echo chamber.

[firebrand80]

12. Wow, great article and spot on.

I was just discussing this with my wife a week ago. Republicans welcomed and fomented this paranoid, racist, extremist rhetoric for years. The current GOP majority in Congress is largely built on it. They used this energy to turn out their voters in midterm elections.

Now these same folks they whipped into an anti-Obama frenzy want Trump, or Cruz (who, in the bizzaro political world we live in, looks kinda moderate compared to Trump). The GOP establishment is freaking out because they know damn well either candidate would lose in an electoral college wipe-out, as well as a down-ticket disaster. They would lose every minority group in the country for a generation.

The GOP is left with the top candidates in their primary race being completely unelectable. They can't bring those candidates down without risking a rank-and-file revolt.

Sorry GOP. You created this monster, now you have to live with it.

[mitch96]

13. I still think T-rump is working for the Democratic party

If he runs, the Repukes are dead. If he goes third party, he splits the repukes and they are dead... Best thing for the Dem's.
My usual mindset is to follow the money...But he has a lot of money.. So what's in it for him?? Besides glory??

m

[Surya Gayatri]

15. Megalomaniac, self-delusional glory.

[Helen Borg]

18. Too late...

He's getting the nomination and he will go down in flames in the general.

[Surya Gayatri]

21. Don't see how anybody can catch him now...they're going

to have to put a hit order out to get rid of him.

I wouldn't be flying in any small planes if I were the Donald.

[jalan48]

20. Trump pushes the political agenda further to the right.

In this way he makes the ideas of "mainstream" Republicans seem more acceptable. Bush, Rubio, Walker, etc. become "moderates". But are they really?

[Atman]

26. Bingo.

It will still be Jeb v Hillary. It's been the plan all along. Throw enough batshit crazy out there and the two established Wall Street families get to keep running things. Trump is just the current shiny object.

[Surya Gayatri]

27. If tRump's assigned secret agenda is to prepare the terrain for a JEB ! victory,

he seems to have got off message somewhere along the line.

Maybe he never got his secret marching orders...

[Atman]

32. The election is nearly a year away.

We're all being played for fools now.

The CIA and the military have already made their choices. We have little to do with it.

It's all about who will provide the best ROI for The System.

Smart people will vote for the SCOTUS not the POTUS.

[Initech]

22. Fox News brought this, it should be forced to eat it.

Just like eating a page of newspaper.

[pangaia]

23. It is possible we are missing something here?

I might place myself in the 60% group of who in DU stays closest to all that is going on... I mean, I try to stay abreast, have opinions, but I am not a political junkie, by any means..

So, this is maybe just a little bug chewing on the back of my head.

But.... is this possibly the end game of the corporate/right wing/ fascist takeover; the final act of what I first saw just beginning in the late 1970s?

We laugh and ridicule. But, should we not be concerned that perhaps .. this is the big one ?

[Surya Gayatri]

25. The explosion/implosion may prove to be catastrophic when it comes.

Will we all be caught up in the mayhem when the house of hypocrisy comes tumbling down?

Will crazed RWers take up their weapons to right the perceived wrongs against them in the nation's streets?

[pangaia]

33. You ask good quesitons.

I don't have any notion of what form it will take...violent, quietly.. as it has been for the last 35-40 years... suddenly.. "What happened?"

[2naSalit]

30. It took a while

but they finally got enough rope.

[hifiguy]

35. They built the Monster.

They have no grounds for complaining now that it is pulling the castle down on top of them.

The difference being that the Frankenstein Monster had a sympathetic side.