The GOP recently notched its lowest approval rating in half a century, notes John Cook, who also compiled this graph.It's interesting to compare this figure to the evidence I recently found that CNBC's viewership declined as market volatility eased. It's best to think of channels like Fox News and CNBC as more like the Weather Channel and less like NBC. National disasters bring viewers in torrents, which means their fortunes rise and fall with a sense of crisis -- and for Fox News' core viewership, it's clear their party is crisis-mode. I'm sure that if you looked at profit margins for mags like National Review and the Weekly Standard, you'd find a similar profit bump.
"The more viewers Fox attracts, the more voters the GOP repels," Cook writes. I suppose that's technically true-ish, but I'd reverse the clauses. As the GOP collapses into itself, it's core self-identifiers are grasping for the outlets that unfailingly keep the faith. You know what they say about Fox holes.
What drivel. Why does The Atlantic allow itself to be associated with crackpots like John Cook?
All of this happened just after 1976, when the GOP also had a major identity crisis - the Watergate years, followed by a glib and potent Carter presidential campaign in the 1976 elections which snagged in blocs as disparate as fundamentalist Christians and "progressives,"left the GOP dazed and confused - and looking for some common thing around which to rally.
Unfortunately, we have no Ronald Reagan. We have Bobby Jindal for brains, and Mitt Romney for charisma. If they could be co-Presidents, we'd have the beginnings of a GOP comeback.
But the conservative media were energized by the crisis represented by the Presidency of Jimmy Carter, which saw a resurgence in naked Soviet adventurism all over the world and a steady dimunition of American influence worldwide - and a president who could only pontificate on the matter and lecture his fellow Americans to get used to it.
The Iranian hostage crisis was the last straw for the Carter administration. Obama has already had a mini-hostage crisis with the two journalists imprisoned by North Korea. Another mini-hostage crisis, this one ironically again in Iran, looms on our national horizon. (Honestly, it doesn't look good for Americans overseas in countries which have a bone to pick with the United States - we've established that all you have to do is grab a couple of us on trumped-up charges and throw us in jail, and the White House will send a used-to-be over to hold hands with you.)
The Obama administration will soon learn that it has no special immunity from criticism. If FoxNews is the only national television network which will report candidly about the shortcomings of those in power, its fortunes will only increase - unless the Obama White House finds a pretext under which to censor them.
Well Bill Clinton recently secured the release of the journalists from North Korea, sooo...
Ill just let this little bit of retardation speak for itself
"Honestly, it doesn't look good for Americans overseas in countries which have a bone to pick with the United States - we've established that all you have to do is grab a couple of us on trumped-up charges and throw us in jail, and the White House will send a used-to-be over to hold hands with you"
Unfortunately for you and fortunately for everyone else the GOP's troubles run much deeper than you seem ready to admit. The growing influence of those under 30 and hispanics does not bode well for Republicans
The more reasonable side of the GOP should look at that chart and positively freak.
FoxNews profits from your downfall. You have a major media outlet whose financial fortunes are, apparently, directly tied to you *not* being in power.
Think about it.
We have Bobby Jindal for brains, and Mitt Romney for charisma.
I read this and said, "HA! Good one. Oh wait. You're serious."
If FoxNews is the only national television network which will report candidly about the shortcomings of those in power, its fortunes will only increase - unless the Obama White House finds a pretext under which to censor them.
Why in the world would they want to do that? Nothing turns a young voter into a lifetime Democrat more effectively than an hour of Fox News. In fact, the fevered conspiracy theories like this one do more to undermine Republicans than anything their opponents could dream up.
Doesn't really surprise me. As the GOP radicalized itself and lost influence, FOX News became the last bastion of unabashed far right wing rhetoric. Conversely, MSNBC's ratings are lower now that the Dems are in power which means they are under scrutiny.
Interesting and counterintuitive. The tea parties, birthers, and now screamers at health care town halls seem to be insulating the remnants of the GOP into a little mutual support group. Inside, no one is quite brave enough to tell one of the other last bastions they're embarrassing the party and need to leave. Outside, moderate independents, moderate former Republicans, and Dems who would once have crossed party lines recoil.
This isn't new, but modern media does help you to find like-minded thinkers. There seems to be a lot of reinforcing of "everyone is angry and we're about to rise up!" which does not actually apply to the posters' or viewers' community at large. (The left can be just as guilty of "everyone I talk to thinks like me." But for this particular case, the right is much more harmed by "everyone I talk to, the blogs I read, they're all angry. No one but Fox and the anonymous e-mailers report on the conspiracies I know are behind it all...")
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kxaGfClPws and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX4F_cb9AXk
shows the other side of the coin - "town halls" being publicized only to SEIU and other heavily pro-Democrat unions, where actual constituents are physically manhandled by what are presumably union goons when they try to enter a meeting which is advertised as being for them.
I guess no one's upset about this sort of thing happening because it's not news - neofascist tactics on the part of the American left never have been.
Perhaps Fox News' profits are increasing because the people go where they know the news isn't being managed to benefit the administration in power.