Without question, yesterday was not a boring day, in either the media at large, or the specific corner of the media where politics is the focus.
We'll leave you to click through on your own to read about things like the Petrino scandal erupting at Arkansas, the latest from the Trayvon Martin shooter George Zimmerman, or the latest on North Korea's "satellite launch."
In our corner of the media world, on Tuesday, in American politics at the national level, the general election portion of the 2012 Presidential race began in earnest. For at least one candidate, that meant the first of many quiet "trash days" for some of his more extreme viewpoints.
It's true that Rick Santorum's surprise announcement that he was getting out of the 2012 GOP race for President, and President Obama's blistering - and accurate - address about tax fairness dominated the political media landscape Tuesday. Still, some astute media watchers have already began watching for the first signs of Mitt Romney'salmost inevitable pivot towards the center - what journalist Timothy Noah is already calling the "Etch A Sketch Watch."
We've been in complete agreement with Greg Sargent at The Washington Post's Plum Line blog for quite some time on this subject, that Mitt Romney's general election campaign strategy will almost certainly need to have the forgetfulness of the American electorate, if Romney is to gain any traction with so-called independent voters. When Romney's advisor Eric Fehrnstrom confirmed the Romney plan with Fehrnstrom's "Etch A Sketch" comment a couple of weeks ago, it was only an accidental admission of what virtually everyone in politics already assumed was Romney's intent.
We think moving toward the center will damage Romney with the extremists in the Republican party. It's also the only chance he has to gain more votes from independents and moderates. We also believe that that President Obama was absolutely correct when he said that the 2012 election may present the most obvious choice - and most lopsided results - since the Johnson-Goldwater election of 1964.
A perfect example of this showed up this week in what has been a swing state for much of the last decade, Colorado. In a poll released Tuesday, Romney is getting killed in the Rocky Mountain state. President Obama has gone from a statistical tie in December in Colorado, to a thirteen point lead now - and the trendlines for Obama are only going up.
It's a similar story for Romney and Obama with women, nationally. The most recent Washington Post/ABC News poll released Tuesday gave Obama a 27 point lead among women.
Among Latino voters, in a Fox News poll released in early March, President Obama got the support of 70 percent of Latino voters, while Romney got 14 percent - almost half of what Sen. John McCain got in the 2008 election.
And don't even talk to Mitt Romney about the appalling level of Republican voter apathy right now. The Republican enthusiasm gap, as we mentioned recently in another commentary, is yawning like the maw of a giant political leviathan.
We're not saying this election is in the bag for Democrats - not by a long shot. Even if President Obama wins his race, some of the most important races will be in Congressional and state level races - places where Democrats still have a great deal of work to do.
Even so, like Tim Noah and Greg Sargent, we're anxiously awaiting to see how the Romney campaign is going to attempt to toss out some of the extreme positions Mr. Romney vigorously supported throughout the GOP Primary race. As Romney now attempts to court the more moderate, sane, middle-of-the-political road voters - without drawing angry rebukes from the Tea Party/extremist wing of the party - it'll be mighty hard to bury the hatchet and get rid of his previous positions when everyone is watching.
As a very well-known Republican politician once said about another major challenge, "Bring it on." We can't wait.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Hoist By Their Own Petard
It may seem odd to some, but we've been talking about the GOP's coming civil war for a long time. If you're someone who pays attention to state-level news from across America - as we do - it's obvious those previously quiet intra-party conflicts have now broken out from behind the doors of formerly smoke-filled rooms.
From the Minnesota Republican Party - where the GOP is seven figures in debt and in danger of losing their own state party headquarters - to the Ohio Republican Party - which as Politico reported yesterday, has been "in a state of open warfare for months" - the extremist Republicans have finally turned their dogmatic machine on their own party, with the kind of results we've been forecasting for years now.
In Nebraska, that battle has spilled onto the floor of the state Legislature, just as the 2012 session is about to end.
Nebraska Republicans in the Unicameral have decided to take up the topic of restoring funding for prenatal care to women living in Nebraska - an extension of the issue they warred over with the Republican Governor in early 2010.
At that time, after some changes in federal law affected a change in who Nebraska's prenatal assistance services covered, Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman vetoed a bill put through by both Democrats and Republicans, to attempt to re-create the program Nebraska formerly had.
That previous Nebraska program covered pregnant women who needed to have prenatal care, but were in severe financial distress and could not afford it. That one-time Nebraska program also had one other key feature: it did not discriminate between long-time Nebraska citizens and immigrants to Nebraska. The program was simply designed to help women get prenatal care, in order to help decrease infant birth defects - and in turn, decrease the long-term cost to the state.
Back in 2010, the "pro-life" wing of the Nebraska GOP teamed up with Nebraska Democrats who cared about women, and went after Gov. Heineman to defend their bill - and lost.
This time, however, the forces in favor of helping women - and passing LB 599, a bill that would restore funding for Nebraska's prenatal assistance program - are being led by state Sen. Mike Flood, one of the most powerful other Republicans in Nebraska.
As the vote-counting on LB599 currently stands, it appears that the bill will pass the Nebraska Legislature solidly - but the bill still needs to have at least 30 votes, for a veto-proof majority.
That's a number the anti-immigrant faction of the Republican Party - including Gov. Heineman - is committed to making sure the Nebraska Legislature doesn't reach.
Meanwhile, pregnant women in Nebraska - who are in severe financial straits, for whatever reason - are still left hanging, as they have been for the last two years.
Anyone who hasn't been completely blinded by partisanship could have told you these kinds of battles were brewing in the Republican Party several years ago, just as we did.
After all, when the Nebraska GOP's methods have blinded them to the point where they simply throw bombs at anyone who disagrees with the party line - even when those people are their own members - what do they expect?
From the Minnesota Republican Party - where the GOP is seven figures in debt and in danger of losing their own state party headquarters - to the Ohio Republican Party - which as Politico reported yesterday, has been "in a state of open warfare for months" - the extremist Republicans have finally turned their dogmatic machine on their own party, with the kind of results we've been forecasting for years now.
In Nebraska, that battle has spilled onto the floor of the state Legislature, just as the 2012 session is about to end.
Nebraska Republicans in the Unicameral have decided to take up the topic of restoring funding for prenatal care to women living in Nebraska - an extension of the issue they warred over with the Republican Governor in early 2010.
At that time, after some changes in federal law affected a change in who Nebraska's prenatal assistance services covered, Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman vetoed a bill put through by both Democrats and Republicans, to attempt to re-create the program Nebraska formerly had.
That previous Nebraska program covered pregnant women who needed to have prenatal care, but were in severe financial distress and could not afford it. That one-time Nebraska program also had one other key feature: it did not discriminate between long-time Nebraska citizens and immigrants to Nebraska. The program was simply designed to help women get prenatal care, in order to help decrease infant birth defects - and in turn, decrease the long-term cost to the state.
Back in 2010, the "pro-life" wing of the Nebraska GOP teamed up with Nebraska Democrats who cared about women, and went after Gov. Heineman to defend their bill - and lost.
This time, however, the forces in favor of helping women - and passing LB 599, a bill that would restore funding for Nebraska's prenatal assistance program - are being led by state Sen. Mike Flood, one of the most powerful other Republicans in Nebraska.
As the vote-counting on LB599 currently stands, it appears that the bill will pass the Nebraska Legislature solidly - but the bill still needs to have at least 30 votes, for a veto-proof majority.
That's a number the anti-immigrant faction of the Republican Party - including Gov. Heineman - is committed to making sure the Nebraska Legislature doesn't reach.
Meanwhile, pregnant women in Nebraska - who are in severe financial straits, for whatever reason - are still left hanging, as they have been for the last two years.
Anyone who hasn't been completely blinded by partisanship could have told you these kinds of battles were brewing in the Republican Party several years ago, just as we did.
After all, when the Nebraska GOP's methods have blinded them to the point where they simply throw bombs at anyone who disagrees with the party line - even when those people are their own members - what do they expect?
Monday, April 9, 2012
Measuring Up
Our initial plan today was to talk about the Affordable Care Act - and the lack of any real alternative plan from the Republican Party. Regardless of the pending decision of the Supreme Court, the ACA will still be able to stand without the mandate. We'd be happy to compare President Obama's ACA and the plan of the Republican Party – but after nearly a year-and-a-half of chanting 'repeal and replace', the GOP still doesn't have a replacement plan.
We've chosen not to focus on a comparison of health care plans today, though. As veteran journalist Mike Wallace might have told us, that would be too easy for us.
So we're focusing on the more difficult-to-nail-down Wallace, who died over the weekend at the age of 93. Mr. Wallace is a hard subject to focus on, in large part, because he was the kind of journalist who so much of the media never really understood - and really still needs to.
Mr. Wallace didn't have formal training as a journalist. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1939 with a Bachelor of Arts degree - not a journalism or broadcast journalism degree, as many thought he had. He became a pro by studying broadcasting and journalism - but not formally. Wallace simply found his way into the college radio station, enjoyed it, was good at it, and stayed in the media for nearly the rest of his life.
Frankly, our entire staff is familiar with stumbling into successful careers in media and communications, much like Mike Wallace did.
For all the incredible but hostile interviews he conducted, and for being credited with developing things like the "ambush interview" - where a reporter catches a subject off-guard - Wallace actually had an incredible sense of journalistic integrity. His colleagues Ed Bradley, Morley Safer, Harry Reasoner all shared that same journalistic integrity - as some like Dan Rather and Lesley Stahl still do.
While there were some notable times when Wallace fought against the corporate execs at CBS and lost, his own professional integrity never seemed to fail. So many in the media these days attempt to mimic Wallace's style and fail regularly - most notably, Wallace's youngest son Chris, who works for the right-wing propaganda distribution machine at Fox.
What most of them seem to have forgotten - or never learned - was that Mike Wallace's style may have been confrontational at times, but it was not his only journalistic tool, and not even his most commonly used one.
For those people who've studied Mike Wallace, and for those who knew him, they say his research and "homework" abilities were truly the key to his success. He worked hard to boil down complicated concepts and stories into understandable and relevant twelve or eighteen minute packages that would usually air just once, on Sunday nights. You can be sure that some of the millions of Americans who watched his work may not have even heard about some of the topics he reported on, before he introduced them.
Stories from Wallace's colleagues note how intent he was on getting things right. He was almost as focused on grabbing just the right story to tell, as he was about getting the story factually right. More than once, he was known to steal a story assignment from one of his colleagues - because he thought he could do the story better.
He usually was right to do so, something his colleagues have also admitted.
We've been proudly watching 60 Minutes lately, and to the eyes of our own staff, the current reporters on that show like Steve Kroft, Lara Logan, and Byron Pitts, seem to be measuring up very favorably to their more seasoned co-workers, like Leslie Stahl, Morley Safer - and of course, the late, great Mike Wallace.
More of our colleagues in the media should to try to measure up not to the flash and shock value of Wallace's most controversial interviews, but instead focus on getting their facts right while being able to tell the stories they choose effectively and quickly. By doing that they too might leave the ranks of the mere media figures, and legitimately join the ranks of real journalists, as Wallace himself did.
Here's to the hope more try to measure up - and succeed.
We've chosen not to focus on a comparison of health care plans today, though. As veteran journalist Mike Wallace might have told us, that would be too easy for us.
So we're focusing on the more difficult-to-nail-down Wallace, who died over the weekend at the age of 93. Mr. Wallace is a hard subject to focus on, in large part, because he was the kind of journalist who so much of the media never really understood - and really still needs to.
Mr. Wallace didn't have formal training as a journalist. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1939 with a Bachelor of Arts degree - not a journalism or broadcast journalism degree, as many thought he had. He became a pro by studying broadcasting and journalism - but not formally. Wallace simply found his way into the college radio station, enjoyed it, was good at it, and stayed in the media for nearly the rest of his life.
Frankly, our entire staff is familiar with stumbling into successful careers in media and communications, much like Mike Wallace did.
For all the incredible but hostile interviews he conducted, and for being credited with developing things like the "ambush interview" - where a reporter catches a subject off-guard - Wallace actually had an incredible sense of journalistic integrity. His colleagues Ed Bradley, Morley Safer, Harry Reasoner all shared that same journalistic integrity - as some like Dan Rather and Lesley Stahl still do.
While there were some notable times when Wallace fought against the corporate execs at CBS and lost, his own professional integrity never seemed to fail. So many in the media these days attempt to mimic Wallace's style and fail regularly - most notably, Wallace's youngest son Chris, who works for the right-wing propaganda distribution machine at Fox.
What most of them seem to have forgotten - or never learned - was that Mike Wallace's style may have been confrontational at times, but it was not his only journalistic tool, and not even his most commonly used one.
For those people who've studied Mike Wallace, and for those who knew him, they say his research and "homework" abilities were truly the key to his success. He worked hard to boil down complicated concepts and stories into understandable and relevant twelve or eighteen minute packages that would usually air just once, on Sunday nights. You can be sure that some of the millions of Americans who watched his work may not have even heard about some of the topics he reported on, before he introduced them.
Stories from Wallace's colleagues note how intent he was on getting things right. He was almost as focused on grabbing just the right story to tell, as he was about getting the story factually right. More than once, he was known to steal a story assignment from one of his colleagues - because he thought he could do the story better.
He usually was right to do so, something his colleagues have also admitted.
We've been proudly watching 60 Minutes lately, and to the eyes of our own staff, the current reporters on that show like Steve Kroft, Lara Logan, and Byron Pitts, seem to be measuring up very favorably to their more seasoned co-workers, like Leslie Stahl, Morley Safer - and of course, the late, great Mike Wallace.
More of our colleagues in the media should to try to measure up not to the flash and shock value of Wallace's most controversial interviews, but instead focus on getting their facts right while being able to tell the stories they choose effectively and quickly. By doing that they too might leave the ranks of the mere media figures, and legitimately join the ranks of real journalists, as Wallace himself did.
Here's to the hope more try to measure up - and succeed.
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