How Your RIGHT-WING Talking Point Sausage Is Made

[Segami]

Here are some helpful looks at how the Right Wing Message Machine works: The Washington Post explains how Ed Meese and Michelle Malkin coordinate their messages,

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/31/AR2010013102860.html?hpid=topnews>



and Glenn Thrush tracks a talking point as it goes from blogger to congressman.

<http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0210/Hoekstra_Axelrod_claim_on_Xmas_bomber_crazy.html>



Basically, the right-wing is "winning" the "information war" by being disciplined and completely shameless, but what else is new?

Do you want to know exactly how it works? This is basically exactly how it works:


"There is no conservative cabal, where the talk-radio guys get together with the Internet guys, who get together with the Fox News guys, who get together with a Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, and the talking points go out," said Mark Levin, a leading conservative talk-radio host.


Keep in mind that when Levin says "there is no" he means "there is a." Seriously, all of those "guys" literally do get together, often at Grover Norquist's weekly breakfast, or at various other coordinated meetings of bloggers and right-wing editors and writers and columnists hosted by the Heritage Foundation and the Family Research Council and a couple other groups that are actually the Wizards of Oz that Levin is claiming don't exist. And the Tea Party people don't like you to mention this (not because it renders their movement illegitimate but because it would turn off the people they are trying to appeal to who really do dislike the Republican party), but they are the well-funded activist arm of the Republican party establishment as it has existed since the Reagan era.


"The Conservative Action Project," headed by Reagan attorney general Ed Meese, is a group of pollsters and public relations firm executives who craft the message for the party faithful. Their memos have a funny way of ending up in the talking points of Republican lawmakers and conservative bloggers alike:


" CAP also worked unsuccessfully to defeat David F. Hamilton, Obama's first appellate judicial nominee. A Nov. 9 CAP memo calling Hamilton "an ideologue first and a jurist second" helped trigger blog blasts from Erickson and an anti-Hamilton speech at the conservative Federalist Society by Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Judiciary Committee Republican.


Now, this is the point of Think Tanks: to produce thoughts. But "liberal" Think Tanks tend to come up with ideas for "governing" the "country."* These guys, CAP and AEI and CEI and the Council for National Policy and the State Policy Network, they exist to relentlessly craft and refine messages to win news cycles and elections. (To be fair, all of their ideas for governing have been thoroughly discredited, and coming up with new ones is pretty hard!)



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<http://gawker.com/5461548/how-your-right+wing-talking-point-sausage-is-made>

[JDPriestly]

1. Conservatives control the culture.

And he who controls the culture controls the society.

[Segami]

2. Why vote? Has it become nothing more than just a placebo for the masses?

[BrklynLiberal]

4. I think I might substitute "media" for "culture" since nowadays the latter is created by the former.

[BrklynLiberal]

3. Wow! Just "wow!"

Once again I am thinking of how much we need to listen to Geroge Lakoff.

As long as we let the repukes frame the debates and the issues...it is going to be a really ugly sausage, and the masses are going to swallow it....raw!!!.

[MinM]

5. Ed Meese has been a dirty tricks GOPlayer going on 6 decades!

Back in 1968 Ed Meese, while working for the Reagan Administration in California, blocked the extradition of Loran Hall to New Orleans as part of Jim Garrison's investigation of Clay Shaw.

Of course he followed Reagan to The White House thanks in no small part to the October Surprise. Which rolled over into Iran-Contra, and now we have come full circle back to New Orleans.

[Juche]

6. One can only hope their ineptitude does them in

One thing liberals have over conservatives is human capital. Conservatives like Norquist (who is heavy on crafting the GOP message) are fanatic. He felt Palin was a great pick (she alienated the GOP from everyone but the base).

So one can only hope that the tone deaf, dogmatic, radical, uninformed acts of the GOP backfire.

However, who knows. most people in this country barely pay attention anyway. I don't think anyone who seriously pays attention and who isn't a radicalized conservative takes the GOP too seriously. At least I hope not.

[underpants]

7. Oh this looks great

marking for later read