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To paraphrase the good Commissioner James Gordon, MSNBC just isn’t the villain the Republican National Committee deserves, but it surely’s the one they need at the moment.
Yes, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus‘s strongly-worded memo to Republican elected officers and committee staffers banning them from showing on a cable information community — which has made a virtue of antagonizing not in basic terms GOP policymakers however the party’s rank and file voters — is a publicity stunt. It is usually moderately brilliant politics.
On concerns ranging from abortion coverage, to the expanding federal debt, to reforming the nation’s health care gadget, polls constantly exhibit that the Republican position is more in line with public sentiment than the Democratic position. And yet, surveys additionally persistently express that the public, by way of large margins reducing across all demographics, views the GOP as rigid, uncompromising, and “excessive.”
This can be a failure of messaging, no longer coverage. The Republican National Committee and those politicians who name the GOP dwelling had been woefully inept at framing theirs as the position favored by majorities. In spite of the fact that the liberal place is extra ceaselessly the “extreme” position, Republicans had been unable to convincingly keep up a correspondence this fact to the public.
With Republicans unable to create a foil out of their Democratic counterparts, the GOP may benefit by way of framing MSNBC’s aggressively liberal hosts and commentators because the opposition. As a political strategy, this one is of most effective transient merit and dangers greatly diminishing returns if it becomes an enduring policy; MSNBC won’t ever be on the ballot. That said, shedding the “extremist” label have to be a purpose for the birthday celebration ahead of 2016, and positioning the GOP in opposition to MSNBC is an efficient position to start out.
Why MSNBC makes an efficient foil for the GOP is self-evident. The community or its hosts have had to issue a minimum of 19 apologies in the last two years for inaccurate or deceptive studies or for engaging in conduct unbecoming of a consultant of the community. Typically, these apologies are issued most effective after the general public outcry has grown deafening. Far extra incessantly, the community’s hosts are allowed to conduct themselves in ways in which different networks personalities will not be. The bar has been reduced to a level that the public and the us of a’s media watchdogs simply expect extra of MSNBC’s competitors.
With the primary MSNBC apology of 2014 coming less than a month into the new year, the RNC is puffing up its chest, throwing down the gauntlet, and declaring that they have got had sufficient. Priebus has demanded an apology from MSNBC President Phil Griffin, and for more than only one offending tweet. Until such time, the community’s hosts can raise on talking about Republicans in uncivil phrases with out their participation.
RELATED: RNC Chair Calls for Full GOP Boycott of MSNBC over ‘Demeaning’ Tweet
This strategy has its detractors. Speak express host and former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) railed towards this tactic as a self-defeating one. He lamented that it sequesters Republicans into ideological camps. The Day-to-day Caller’s Matt Lewis wrote that the RNC must make a combat towards MSNBC about the reasonable American citizens who vote GOP fairly than the birthday party’s critical committee. He argues that the party is healthier served with the aid of elevating the biracial and multiracial conservative households that take offense to the repeated implication –- or, in lots of circumstances, the direct and unguarded assertion — that conservatives harbor racial antipathy.
They’re both perfect in a method, but their concerns are too curious about this information cycle and no longer the following. Walsh is lifeless right to object to a call from some conservatives for a boycott of MSNBC’s advertisers –- it is a time and again failed strategy and people who name for boycotts look impotent once they inevitably fail. But airing “grievances” on that community makes for just right tv and does now not increase the GOP’s brand. It in simple terms aids in the advent and promotion of theirs. Lewis’ issue is equally legitimate, but his recommendation, that the GOP make this gripe in regards to the injustice executed to Republican voters slightly than the Republican Party, is perfectly complimentary with this (doubtless brief) slim and circumspect boycott of MSNBC.
The RNC can bristle with offense over the remedy of its voters by using this cable community, one who has develop into virtually indistinguishable from its extensively-watched parent network, NBC News, and do so in the identify of these wronged conservative combined-race families. These usually are not mutually unique strategies.
Priebus and the Republican National Committee are enjoying hardball. They are doing so against a comfortable goal, however they have got to start someplace. The birthday party has been unfairly branded as radical and intemperate, and ready for this unjust characterization to self-perfect is a dropping sport. The GOP shall be neatly-served, for the time being, by way of showing just who the extremists really are.
UPDATE: MSNBC President Phil Griffin has apologized to the RNC and to multiracial families far and wide. In a remark, Griffin additionally announced that the unnamed staffer chargeable for this latest offense has been let go. Their calls for having been met, the RNC’s boycott will, most likely, now finish. The GOP has been short on victories for a while. Even supposing this is a small one with restricted implications, a win is a win. All in all, sensible politics.
[Photograph by way of John W. Adkisson / The New York Occasions / NBC Information]
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