The Republican Brand: An Empty Hat

The GOP became the removed-from-power party when Barack Obama won the 2008 election. The Republican Party ran a Senate veteran with a relatively novice politician to follow its flawed Presidential incumbency. They lost the election. The GOP squandered time for the necessity of rebuilding in favor of expedience. By the midterm elections it embraced a faction called the Tea Party. In so doing, the GOP became fractious, forgetting that it took six years for candidate Richard Nixon to successfully reinvent the Nixon brand: Nixon’s the One. Nixon had a plan. The Republican debates demonstrate no such plans from its cast of candidates and puts the brand in jeapordy.

To its credit the Republican National Committee replaced Michael Steele at its helm. However, the RNC retained the same elite hypocrisy as the John Boehner House speakership demonstrates. Being the party of business became the party owned by business. The recent debt ceiling crisis and deficit debate debacle that Speaker Boehner allowed makes matter worse. It difficult to argue that such GOP stewardship has been looking after the best interest of its stock holders, Republican and Independent voters. Some observers allege that the disparities in the Republican Party stem from ideological differences. However, those allegations are phony.

One might think that it must be hard to be both phony and shallow. Failure to distance the Republican brand from its Tea Party faction as well as from self-appointed spokespeople like Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin has corralled the GOP into a political pen. Bigots have come to roost. The Republican debates may have demonstrated reach and audience, but the star candidates lack substance. They are becoming highly paid political celebrities who are famous for being famous. Unfortunately, that is all there is to them. They don’t stand for anything; they stand against things, President Obama foremost among all. They don’t represent anyone other than themselves. A television audience is a poor substitute for a constituency.

The concept of “take the country back” deserves derision, not applause. It is an expression of rube rhetoric that may sound good but does not mean anything. Does it mean taking the country back to another time in history, like before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 -- an idea floated by Rand Paul? Does it mean taking the country away from a person or from a group? I ask because neither the President nor the Congress is a foreign occupier of our government. Even so, the Tea Party faction likes the “take back” slogan fragment because it is an identifier, like a verbal secret handshake.

Although they won’t admit it, the Tea Party folks are pissed off because they lost the most important election of our time in 2008. They have hated the loss now for three years. They will continue to hate it for another five years if the secret handshakers in Congress continue to make the O in GOP stand for obstruction.

There is a limit to just how much empty-hat policy the country will tolerate. Griping about everything the president does or doesn’t do is no substitute for policies on issues such as civil rights, ending the wars, and immigration reform. Karl Rove’s acolytes drove Hispanics and Blacks from the GOP to appeal to the white Christian right. That was their master plan, their conservative agenda. Gallup reports, “The Republican Party in 2011 remains demographically and ideologically similar to the way it looked in 2008. The only change is that “Republicans are now slightly less likely than they were in 2008 to be male and to be highly religious.”

The Tea Party rejuvenated the GOP sufficiently in the midterm elections to keep it out of any meaningful rehabilitation. Had it undergone rehab, the Republican Party would have admitted it is powerless over the greed that subsidizes it and that subsequently tarnished America’s reputation and finances. It would have made amends to everyone it hurt, like the American people. Seeking some forgiveness is no longer an option. Repudiation is in order, such as bringing criminal charges against Bush, Cheney and Rove -- indicting them with high crimes and misdemeanors.

Instead, the GOP has served up a meaningless series of television debates among candidates who are incompetent for the presidency. The debates offered lots of talking points but no policy, just empty-hat ritual and rube rhetoric. The debates showed that the party lacks the courage for the conciliation required to rebuild the Republican constituency. It will require those attributes for the Republican brand to become inclusionary, to end obstructionism and to become a smart, loyal opposition.

The “O” in GOP stands for “Old.” The elephant logo dates from 1874. It looks like something one would expect to find hanging on the wall at Applebee’s. I can venerate the GOP for what it once was in my father’s lifetime. “I like Ike” was then. Today, the GOP brand is like old-time religion -- significant to a former time, just not to this time. The once venerable Republican Party has become more about political celebrities, who vie for money by denigrating the incumbent president than it is about conservative policies articulated by credible candidates. Deep down inside, it is shallow.

Originally published as Republican Brand: An Empty Hat on Blogcritics.

The Fair in Fairness

“Dear Mr. Liberal,” wrote an opinion writer in Milwaukee’s Journal Sentinel, “Why do liberals claim they're for free speech but want to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, which could stifle conservative talk radio?” That is the latest drum beat of the self proclaimed center-right. I found the question irresistible. “Mr. Liberal replies,” I responded. “Liberals do not. We [liberals] have better things to do than to try to hush Rush Limbaugh or stifle Sean Hannity, like listening to NPR.” I thought I was being cute, as I bated the commentator.

But, nooooo.

A young Republican shot back, “Yes, but ‘you’ liberals do not write the rules, vote on them, pass them into law...Nancy Pelosi liberals do.” She continued that it “is not about Hannity and Rush, both of whom I loathe. It is about slowly choking off the First Amendment. It is sickening how vocal liberals are with their incredible amount of misinformation.”

Let me share another point of view, that of Michael Reagan in his blog, Michigan Redneck II. “P.S. My dad, President Reagan, killed the ‘Fairness Doctrine.’ As a result, this rule change allowed Rush, Hannity, and me to have radio talk shows — that’s why the new proposal to bring it back is being called the ‘Hush Rush’ bill. Now the liberals are dying to shut us up.” He is seeking contributions, too.

“The Fairness Doctrine is the last of my concerns for broadcast news. I would settle for some proper grammar and sentence construction here and there,” one of my former radio colleagues, Gary Nelson of WFOR TV4 Miami wrote. “About the vitriol on talk radio,” Gary continued, “in doing a piece the day after the election on Bush losing the Hispanic vote, I interviewed a Colombian-American voter who said he had been a Republican all his life and had never voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. He said the ‘mean-spirited’ attacks on Obama changed him. ‘Rush Limbaugh cost John McCain my vote,’ he said.”

“That's why we now have right wing and left wing media. Some are even in the middle,” a voter on my “Fair in Fairness Poll” wrote. “Let people decide who to listen to. It should not be confused, but often is, with the Equal Time rule. The Fairness Doctrine deals with matters of public importance; the Equal Time rule only deals with political candidates.”

Thank goodness for the Internet and 1st Amendment, without which I would have no one to bate (aa-aa watch it!) nor the freedom to do it.

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To view comments on the Fairness Poll, go to

http://www.youpolls.com/details.asp?pid=4251

More Fairness

The Fairness Doctrine was a 1949 FCC regulation, not a law. When some in congress tried to give it a new name and make it a law, Reagan vetoed it in 1987. It came up again in 1993 and congress did not endorse it. Despite Nancy Pelosi’s pandering to the Christian Science Monitor on the topic, or George Will's sweeping generality in the Post that "liberals have been unable to dent conservatives' dominance" of talk radio, the doctrine is rather problematic under the Constitution's First Amendment. What I failed to point out is that Rush Limbaugh understands self-promotion. The election loss by his candidate and the Alaskan rube Rush idolizes demonstrates that conservative talk radio has little influence.

Augie Grant, PhD, a former radio colleague of mine, wrote of my posting “individuals on talk radio (on all sides of the political spectrum) are guilty of gross misrepresentation. Some is simple hyperbole, but there are enough outright falsehoods that intelligent people can't help but wonder whether there is a better option. Personally, I would like to hear that owners and hosts are willing to consider ‘truth’ as a value, but I'm not holding my breath. Perhaps the audience will wise up and leave the blowhards behind, but conflict is much more entertaining than rational discussion.”

“There is little question that the Fairness Doctrine stifled speech,” Augie also wrote. “In practice, it led to the idea that an issue has only two sides, an argument that is as naive as it is limiting. In a lecture on our campus (University of South Carilina) last week, Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard was asked about the Fairness Doctrine and shot back that liberals had their own voice on talk radio: NPR.”

To which another former radio colleague, John Posey, wrote that “the reason to go to NPR as an alternative - TRUTH.... regardless of your political persuasion. I never feel as though I have to shower after listening to NPR.” John also wrote “I have issues with the Fairness Doctrine and do not want to stifle anyone's speech. I've listened to left and right talk and don't care for either for the very reasons Augie (above) . . . presented. I do believe that Limbaugh and Hannity have a certain self-serving, self-promoting, invective-spewing quality and have taken ‘pathological’ to new levels. That being said, the problem is not the shrieking of Rush and Hannity per se, it's the vast number of ‘followers’ who believe every word they say.”

That hardly seems fair.

This That and the Other Thing

Back in September in my posting titled Radio or Not, I took issue with the Post’s George Will over his assertion that a Democratic Presidency would mean the return of the so-called Fairness Doctrine. I wrote that such a notion is bunk since conservative talk radio is cheap to produce. Will’s colleague Michael Gerson has brought it up again. They probably share a new corner of the Post’s commissary and both wrote that in 1987 President Reagan “eliminated” (Will) or “overturned” (Gerson) the 1949 FCC regulation.

No the president did not. The FCC overturned the regulation. By the way, as an independent regulatory agency, the FCC has the power to reimpose the fairness doctrine at anytime without action by either the executive or legislative branches. What Reagan did was veto a congressional attempt to make the regulation a law. The Supreme Court set the stage for the FCC dumping the regulation in 1984 (FCC v. League of Women Voters, 468 U.S. 364). The regulation has come up since then, but congress would not support it and nor did the Clinton administration.

The broadcast media of 1949 is a chapter of history, as will be the Internet. So who keeps coming up with the fairness doctrine (beware, brother, beware) with respect to the newly elected administration, other than Will and Gerson? I am going to guess they got it off of talk radio. Besides, other than the Palin worshipping Rush Limbaugh, who cares? That is unless Gerson and Will have information that the Obama administration plans to “pack” the FCC.

Anyway, there you have the “This” part. Now, here is the “That.” I have previously written that both “W and Cheney deserve a place in history – in a penitentiary.” I call on all US citizens to urge the president-elect to offer no blanket pardons to Misters Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld or Rove. I urge their prosecution for “high crimes and misdemeanors” (Constitution, Art. II Sec. 4).

Here is another by the way. “High,” according to Jon Roland of the Constitution Society, “does not mean ‘more serious’. It refers to those punishable offenses that only apply to high persons,” more specifically public officials. I have posted a poll on that topic at http://www.youpolls.com/details.asp?pid=4143 You can vote and see the results for the next few weeks. I will be writing about what we find later.

And now, here is “the Other Thing,” also known as the Alaska Senatorial race. As of this posting, with 60% of the vote counted, Democratic challenger Mark Begich leads the incumbent Republican convicted felon Ted Stevens by 1022 votes. To check them, go to http://www.elections.alaska.gov/08general/data/results.htm .