Bane Capital and the GOP's Dark Night

[Geee]

American Spectator:

The media always has an established theme -- a narrative -- into which the coverage of political stories is shoehorned. Sometimes that results in important stories being ignored because they just don't fit. That's okay with the media bosses this year because they're not in the news business. They're in the business of helping Obama get re-elected.

The narrative is important because it shapes the flow of information voters get and thus defines the political debate. If the narrative controls what the voters hear, read, and see -- and it usually does -- then the voters are thinking and deciding on the basis of the information to which they're exposed. Were it not for conservative talk radio and publications such as the Spectator, the media would be pretty much in total control of that information flow leading up to the election.

Before the Iowa caucuses, the media narrative of the Republican primaries was pretty much a personality contest about who was more electable, who was more conservative -- or, as the media phrase it, more radical -- and who was going to score in Iowa's beauty contest in which social issues usually play a disproportionate role.

Mitt Romney's campaign had launched a barrage of negative ads against Gingrich and when Gingrich finished fourth, it was clear that the former speaker needed to do something to change the narrative. It was the right moment for him to do it, and he could have with -- for example -- a speech critical of the media I suggested on this page some weeks ago.

But Gingrich's ego was injured. The fact that Romney's negative ads worked really got under his skin. On the morning of caucus day, Gingrich called Romney a liar on a talk radio show, and in the thirteen days since the Republican primary campaign has followed a script that could have been written by David Axelrod. It has formed a media narrative around the top two candidates that is so damaging that both of them need to do everything in their power -- which may not be enough -- to change it.

For two weeks, Gingrich and Rick Perry have stuck to the theme that Romney, as a venture capitalist in the Bain Capital firm in the 1990s, destroyed jobs and hurt people in ways that the two intimate (but don't say directly) were unethical, unfair, and possibly illegal. The two -- directly and through an independent "SuperPAC" supporting Gingrich --- have carpet-bombed Romney for his role in Bain, but making themselves collateral damage.

[Valin]

Geee

 

I was listening to Bill Bennett's Morning In America and Byron York(?) was saying the Bain attacks were a mistake, and from now on the Gingrich script should read three words.. Massachusetts...Massachusetts....and Massachusetts.

[Geee]

He was Mr. Geee's #1 choice before this started. Again, it is not the attacks, it is what he is choosing to attack.

[Valin]

He was Mr. Geee's #1 choice before this started. Again, it is not the attacks, it is what he is choosing to attack.

 

 

I agree, and in spite of it *I still support him. If you've seen the ads you'd understand why he got angry. They have really turned me off towards Romney. Now he's going after Santorum in a similar way.

 

* my guy always loses. I have a perfect record when it comes to this sort of thing.