Is Murdoch’s Fox actually undermining the GOP?

Once upon a time the GOP was mostly “small government” businessmen that periodically held their fiscally-conservative noses to take advantage of voters that just don’t feel comfortable with the Democrats (and liked the sound of lower taxes.) What happened?

They helped elect George W. Bush to the White House, and the federal government grew bigger, spending faster and looser than ever before.

Have the expensive, hapless, fruitless Bush~Cheney hunts for bin Laden & WMDs, the Wall Street meltdown fueled by the mortgage crisis in an under-regulated system, and Beck’s hooligans driven them to negotiate behind the scenes with President Obama?

Is the distorted coverage of extremism by the Fox network and their peers in the hunt for ratings actually damaging the long-term prospects of the GOP by embarrassing moderates who once managed to overlook these media-led sheep?

A quick overview of U.S. politics post-WWII:

During the latter part of the 1900s and into the Bush years the GOP often seemed one solid, united front of like-minded folks. Built around a core of old-money, anti-regulation businessmen that have, at times, deliberately taken advantage of voters that just didn’t trust Democrats and really liked the sound of lowering taxes, the Republican party is actually nearly as diverse a coalition as their Democratic counterpart.

To their great delight at the time, Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered any states that were bastions of white racism in the mid-1960s (primarily what we call the “old south”) to the GOP’s corner for electoral purposes. Once the anti-slavery party of Abraham Lincoln, the modern GOP wielded that sudden not-so-anti-slavery influx carefully. With disciplined message strategies and deftly worded appeals to woo this constituency while carefully avoiding any overtly racist public statements, the Republicans made steady inroads in D.C. during the latter part of the 20th century.

As Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Professor of Politics and African-American Studies at Princeton University, noted regarding President Carter’s recent observations about racism:

“There is something particularly compelling when Southern white men identify, name, and condemn racism. America can never forget what it sounded like…” to hear LBJ say something similar while he was President:

“What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too. Because it’s not just Negroes, but really it’s all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.

And we shall overcome.”

Nobody noticed more, or denied it more vehemently, than racists themselves. LBJ knowingly drove white racists to abandon the Democratic party en masse, and most turned to the GOP, where many have remained. While there are surely other objections that may lead people to criticize President Obama and/or his initiatives, assuming racism is not a factor for some of Obama’s detractors is either naive or self-delusional.

For the racists to think they’ve so clever as to conceal their beliefs from most of the rest of us, to figure that we just plain don’t realize what’s going on, is hubris so optimistic it beggars my imagination.

Looking to the future:

To the consternation of the fiscal conservatives in GOP, the Bush~Cheney administration’s actions spending to fund their fruitless hunt for Osama bin Laden and the disingenuous hunt for Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq have driven many moderates out of the party while crippling the financial might of the country, and they are left with the “not ready for TV” tea-baggers and some barely disguised racists as key parts of their voting base in many areas. The various ratings-driven, faux-histrionic “conservative” pundits are not solidifying the GOP power in the coming election cycle any more than the well-documented shenanigans of “family values” politicians such as Mike “Spanky” Duvall, Larry “Wide Stance” Craig, or Mark “Don’t cry for me, Argentina” Sanford. The voters of the U.S. have a long memory for hypocrisy.

Ironically, this leaves fiscal conservatives to hope for a kindred spirit in President Obama, who is considerably more socially and economically moderate than he is painted by the media. To rail against the status quo is a tactic of a desperate  opposition. Advancing constructive alternatives to create the change you desire is the more productive use of time.

Politics is the art of the possible; the work of enlightened, committed individuals enhances the possibilities for those outcomes they work toward.

President Obama has no choice but to spend given the state of the U.S. economy as he starts his first term: the impact of the unfunded military spending and the credit and financial crisis will reverberate for years, possibly decades.

While Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner takes point in the media limelight, the Fox network is whipping up a furor over Czars. With the President intent on bringing fairness to the Health Insurance industry, the dances taking place off-camera in D.C. must be mind-boggling as the powerful in the U.S. Congress work to restore the economy of the U.S.

Under conditions exacerbated by misinformation spread by self-agrandizing, self-proclaimed patriots, some calling for their states to secede from the union, the true fiscal conservatives must now work with a President that’s been vilified and insulted by some in their current party. Their influence may depend on their ability to distance themselves from the dwindling base — and apparent media darlings — of the GOP.