Republicans Dominate...When The Media Stays Out Of It

50 states.  30 of them have Republicans governors.  25 of them have complete and total Republican control - the governorship, senate, and house.  On a national level, the House of Representatives - specifically dedicated to giving voice to smaller pieces of the American pie, with races hard to nationalize - continued to be held by Republicans, despite an Obama electoral advantage.

And this is a party on the edge of extinction? Well, that's what the mainstream media has been gleefully telling  us.  Of course, Glenn Reynolds would say, as he clarifies the issue better than most:

The bigger role the national media play in a race, the worst Republicans do. So the GOP does well in state legislative races and governorships, and U.S. House races, because national media basically ignore those. Does worse in Senate races, where national media will sometimes take notice, worse still for Prez, where the national media pretty much control the game.


Reynolds also references Tim Groseclose:

"Groseclose contends that the general leftward bias of the media has shifted the PQ of the average American by about 20 points, on a scale of 100, the difference between the current political views of the average American, and the political views of the average resident of Orange County, California or Salt Lake County, Utah.”


And that's how, ladies and gentlemen, at a time of national crises, a man with no plan can beat a man who had a dozen of them. It also explains, conversely, how a Republican like Chris Christie can win the governorship of a blue state like New Jersey.

...when people are focused on who will govern in their interests better...those people will chose the serious candidate with a plan.


That's the very same focus the media worked so hard to prevent in the 2012 general election.

It's time to push back against the media and call them out.  They have inserted themselves into the playing field, and are thus fair game.  James Taranto:

...the major trend in news coverage over the past few years has been an aggressive reassertion of authority coupled with a disavowal of impartiality. The theoretical underpinning of this attitude is the critique of “false balance,” which I discussed in this space last month, and which has been endorsed by both President Obama and Margaret Sullivan, the Times’s new “public editor.” It boils down to the claim that if one side in a political argument has a monopoly on truth—and guess which side that always turns out to be?—journalists are not only justified in taking sides but duty-bound to do so.


But my push-back here is somewhat worthless, as I concluded recently.  It is our political leaders - if that is what they wish to be - who must take almost a Newt Gingrich approach to the media  and challenge every question, question every assertion, and refute every false statement  they make.

The 2012 debacle need not re-occur in 2016, and it won't, if the national electorate is  made aware that their media is in the tank for one political party, and is participating in an attack on American democracy by distorting information and hiding facts from the people in order to bolster their preferred policies and politicians.

I've spent over 7 years screaming my head off about it, to no avail.  It is time for the big boys of the party to step up - not the Krauthammers and Steyns, but the Ryans, Rubios, Christies and Haleys, and anyone else who feels they have a future in the Republican party.

If you want that future - you're going to have to start fighting for it now.  Otherwise, you may as wll tilt at windmills come four years hence...