Everyone’s talking about this clip where David Frum asserts that the Republican party works for Fox News and that what increases Fox’s ratings often decreases Republican political success.
I think there’s no doubt that Fox benefits from Democratic domination of elected offices in Washington. I would expect Fox’s ratings to suffer if Republicans regain control of the House. (I could be wrong about this — the impeachment hearings that would eventually ensue would certainly give Fox ratings a temporary boosts for example.)
So here is a question: what size Republican Congressional delegation would optimize Fox’s ratings? I tend to think that 45 Senators would be too many but that 35 would be too few. It could be that 40-41 as we’ve had the last year is optimal. But maybe slightly fewer would be better because it would make it easier for Democrats to pass legislation that Fox deems communist, etc.
Let’s call it the Beck constant, the number of Republican Senators that would result in the largest audience for Glenn Beck. I’m going with 39.
Sentient Puddle
They’ve actually experienced record ratings since the ’08 elections, so I’m not entirely sure we can come to a reasonable answer with the data at hand. We need some point of data in the “too few” direction.
jrg
I’m going to go with Socialist Chicken Sandwich Nazi ACORN.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
I believe that this is what you are looking for.
HTH.
jrg
I’m going to go with Chicken Sandwich, Nazi, wolverines!! eleventy!!.
Jon H
I’d actually think that 27 could be optimal.
It would match the 27% craziness factor.
DougJ
@Sentient Puddle:
Yes, I agree.
Aaron
I would say zero. Deliberative institutions such as Congress go against Fox’s grain of patriarchal totalitarianism. Fox’s brand of populism only runs out of fuel when the population of the ignorant and uninformed die off
Darkmoth
It needs to be a small enough number that the GOP is the underdog, but a large enough one that they can produce a narrative of credible resistance.
Frankly, I think 40 was perfect. GOP can be heroes of the resistance, and herding 60 Dems is contentious enough to make us look like bumbling fools.
Scott Brown cost them money.
Short Bus Bully
The quants will never win. Numbers don’t matter, it’s the inflamed RHETORIC that determines the number of Fox News viewers, nothing logical like numbers or facts have any bearing on that.
Ask Limbaugh, he’s the one running the show here.
Bob K
OT – Yet another opportunity for the G(NO)P to show we the people how much they love us. I wonder if Jim Bunning is done giving his party the finger yet?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/22/jim-bunning-to-get-anothe_n_508618.html
SectarianSofa
Boy, Frum used to really annoy the hell out of me, but it sure is entertaining to see him throw darts at the tea party/fox noose axis.
OK, off-topic already, but I need help from the wise and media-wise group here. I’ve got a co-worker (mid-twenties) who has generally taken political cues from his father (apparently stuck in mid-50’s) , and has decided to see if he can get some more diverse news and issues media sources. He would prefer streaming media with video if possible, but streaming (or podcast or canned or on-demand) in any case. Suggestions, help? He watches ‘frontline’ on PBS, which I am not even very familiar with. News Hour with Lehrer might be too boring, or not. Maddow and/or Olberman is probably good (from MSNBC website, I assume). Others? Anything ideological balanced, or anything sane from the right-ish/conversative side of the spectrum?
thank you.
Bill E Pilgrim
It’s actually a good demonstration of Richard Dawkins’ rationale for inventing the concept of memes, which, you may recall, came from his similar theories about how genes can be seen as practically “using” organisms as vehicles to replicate themselves.
Similarly memes he saw as units of ideas that proliferate through human brains, in a way that seems as if it’s the memes that are driving things, not the other way around.
Fox News, once a useful propaganda tool of the Republican party, is now using the Republican party for its own aims, to grow stronger and stronger, as a pure organ of dissemination of extreme right wing ideas, and may well end up blindly destroying the original host in the process.
Hmm.
JGabriel
DougJ:
Close, but I’d make it 39-41. As long as it’s within 1 member of obstruction, the audience will be on the edge of their seats. Will a commie Dem flip and support us? Will a traitorous Fox Party senator flip and give the win to Black Obama?
Stay tuned for the next exciting development in the gladiatorial match between the gloriously angelic FP Real Americans and the evil Democratic Satans!
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El Cid
For merely empirical research purposes I’d like to start off with a Republican Congressional representation of 0% and then see how that works.
MikeJ
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Palin Supports Creation Of Third Party: ‘That Can Be Part Of A Healthy Process’
cleek
i’d say 49.
they need to be in the minority, obviously. but they also need the most number of Fox viewers; and Fox viewers should translate to more GOP Senators.
49 gives them the most Senators, hence the most GOP voters, hence the most Fox News viewers.
Violet
I think 41 is perfect. They need to have enough so that the base thinks they’ve got a shot at making something happen. If they had too few, like 10 or 20, the base would know nothing could really happen and the GOP powers would start to see that they have to change to get things done.
But with 41…well, it’s enough so that if they vote as a block they can stop things from happening – the Dems can’t get the magic 60. It’s the number that leads to the maximum noise from teabaggers.
YellowJournalism
I say start off with 40, then have three leave under disgraceful conditions that Beck and others will defend as acts of true patriotism and defiance against the Democrat party.
I watched the first five minutes of Beck yesterday, comparing a photo of Nancy Smash to Washington crossing the Potomac to demonstrate that the health care bill is not a historic moment because it wasn’t part of the American Revolution or some shit like that. (From the amount of excitement in his voice while discussing minute men, the guy must pull out 1950’s-era high school history books to get himself off.) I was laughing so hard, I had to turn it off before I scared the neighbors. I flipped back again later, and he was getting the title of Winston Churchill’s book wrong as he tried to rally people around “fighting back” against the soshalism.
MikeJ
@cleek: 49 Senators doesn’t necessarily give them the most voters. 49% of NY and CA is more than 90% of Alabama and Mississippi.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
I think we are missing the point.
For a year, the mantra was, stopping healthcare will be the downfall of Obama and the Democrats.
Now, the mantra is, the passage of healthcare will be the downfall of Obama and the Democrats.
This shift happened in about 24 hours.
These guys are so facile and slippery, why try to keep counts of the crazy shit they are barking about? It’s like arguing with your crazy aunt.
CT Voter
El Cid: I’m with you. I think we scrap the current plan and simply start over.
With 0 Republicans.
SGEW
@MikeJ:
Said the necrotroph to the host organism . . .
David in NY
Wait. The reality of the situation doesn’t affect Fox in the least. According to Fox, the Republicans were on the defensive against the dirty fucking hippies even when they controlled the Presidency, both Houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court. Not so very long ago. How they can be dictators and victims at the same time I never understood, but that was the way it was.
liberty60
Like with his Waterloo comment, Frum is on target- What benefits Fox/ Rush is not Republican/ conservative victory, but failure; getting their audience angry and impassioned is what they want.
I would toss the rightwing blogs in there as well; Erick the Red may not admit it, but he is better off today than he was in 2008.
As to the question at hand, or for any question regarding the Tea Party- just study Stalinism since they emulate it so perfectly.
They need True Believers [ Michelle Bachman];
Apostates Who Must Be Purged [Lindsey Graham, Bart Stupak, Bruce Bartlett, Dede Scozzafava; ]
Useful Idiots Who Must Be Cultivated- [Joe Lieberman/ Ben Nelson, any Blue Dog];
Mortal Enemies Who Must Be Fought-[Obama, anyone who stands between them and Obama, anyone who looks like Obama, anyone who fails to denounce Obama]
I wish I could say I was being snarky, but seriously, with each passing day, the similarities between RedState and the Original Red State get closer and closer.
geg6
@Jon H:
I like the beauty in that symmetry.
That damn 27%. It pops up in everything.
Napoleon
OT but new USA Today post passage poll shows plurality saying passage of HCR a good thing.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-03-23-health-poll-favorable_N.htm
SpotWeld
Are we assuming a strickly two-party system?
The number could have some variants depending on a few “Green Party” or “Libertaian Party” members at some future date.
And the amount of freakout that Beck cound muster at a openly gay female of any party would be pretty epic.
David in NY
I think the Republicans could take the House and Senate and Fox’s ratings would still be up because we have an African-American President. That has the nutcases in a tizzy that isn’t going to quit any time soon. The audience is just certain that the black man must be a socialist who will take away their guns, etc., and they will be loyal Fox followers until his term is over.
Robin G
@David in NY:
I’ve known some girls who functioned like that in relationships.
gbear
I’d say that 27 is the perfect number because it would make all the republican senators cry. Fuck Fox News.
Apparently an especially moronic teabarfer tried to organize a protest in front of Tom Perriello’s residence but got the address wrong. The story is in Politico, but Wonkette covers it and gets my link. Indeed.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Whoops, time for FNews to call a meeting to talk about how to handle this …
I think the GOP is about to give the term “epic fail” a whole new meaning.
eric k
I think 38 or 39, that way there will always be a few conservative Dem senators in play in order to pull off a filibuster so they can do a bunch of even the liberal* Ben Nelson or Blanche Lincoln says….
*I mean by their standards of course, not reality.
geg6
@liberty60:
Yup. I’ve said this for years about the GOP. One of my areas of concentration in my undergrad poli/sci (major) and history (minor) programs was the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. And they have the Stalinist system DOWN. The only thing they are missing is their very own Beria.
Oh, wait. That’s Cheney. Sorry.
SpotWeld
Also, 42…. the answer is always 42
Kiril
just in case you felt like using some actual data in your calculations
http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/ratings/10_year_chart_of_cable_news_ratings_primetime_147533.asp?
http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/ratings/10_year_chart_of_cable_news_ratings_total_day_147400.asp
looks like 2001-2003 was very good for fox
New Yorker
I kinda feel bad for Frum. Obviously I disagree with him on pretty much everything related to policy. But in terms of politics and the poison represented by the Limbaugh-Beck-Palin Industrial Complex, he and I agree. It’s simply not healthy for a republic based on reasonable disagreement to have a not-insignificant portion of the populace whipped into a violent rage.
Also, I’d like to have a non-insane GOP to act as a check against Democratic sloth and corruption. I’m afraid that without a decent opposition, the national Democratic party will turn into the pathetic circus that is the New York State Democratic party. Hell, look at NYC: it’s been 5 straight GOP wins for mayor.
Of course, it’s going to be a while until the GOP becomes non-crazy, since it requires a total reconstruction of the current party.
geg6
@Napoleon:
Bwahahahahahaha! A nine point turnaround in just two fucking days?
Can’t wait to see how it’s playing in October when large parts of it have actually gone into effect.
JGabriel
DougJ @ Top:
Frum has been developing this theme of Fox undermining the GOP for its own ratings for a while now, but I don’t thing I’ve seen him go so far before as to suggest that Fox has actually taken control of it.
Sounds like Frum might be reading you, Doug:
.
joeyess
“The Beck Constant”? I don’t think it matters what their numbers are. As long as they’re in the minority outrage will ensue.
I think the Beck Constant theory is dangerously close to “Peak Wingnut”.
Bob K
This just in: Emperor Palpatine dissolves the senate –
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/gohmert-fight-health-care-bill-by-repealing-popular-election-of-senators-video.php?ref=fpblg
Little Dreamer
42, obviously!
Wag
A cogent arguement from James Fallows at the Atlantic about why Medicare has been such a good thing for the country, and why the new reform package will help the rest of us.
El Cid
Right wing and FREEMARKET job-slashing hero Jack Welch, GE’s former CEO, is saying things that the TeaTardicans will not like (TPM Video at link from CNBC):
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO
WHY DID GEORGE SOROS MAKE JACK WELCH A SOSHLIST?
geg6
OT, but the banner ad at the top is for Passages Malibu, the celebrity rehab place. Rather ironic for a thread about Beck, isn’t it?
gbear
@Napoleon: That damned fickle electorate. They just want to be on the side that’s winning.
QDC
I’m not sure about that, DougJ. One of the striking properties of wingnuts is their capacity to channel the outrage of the disenfranchised no matter how much actual power they wield. I mean, they’ve taken over a political party. Even if Republicans currently hold a minority of seats, that is a remarkable amount of power. And yet attheir protests, they act like they’re utterly disenfranchised, poor southern blacks from the 1960’s. So long as San Francisco, Harvard, the New York Times, and gay people continue to exist, wingers will be convinced they are the put-upon victims of the culture war. This will be true whether they have 8 senate seats or 80.
Violet
I find it really funny that the stock market keeps going up today. Guess that healthcare is really bad for America.
Comrade Dread
I’m going with 42, simply because our entire civilization has proceeded beyond Douglas Adams’ satire and I suspect that someone discovered the Ultimate Question recently and the universe was replaced by something even more incomprehensible.
KDP
I think 40-41 is optimal number of R senators.
And, oo-oo-oo, my local newspaper just called to confirm that I did indeed submit a letter to the editor. This may mean they’ll publish it. Woot!
David in NY
@Kiril:
Thanks. I was remembering that they did very well back when the Republicans controlled everything, tax cuts increased revenues and wars were free (2001-03). I’m not sure actual Republican victimhood is necessary to good ratings, since in theory the liberals are always about to subvert the Republic and the Republicans must prevent them from doing so at all costs.
anonymous
Constrained crazification optimization problem?
What would be the boundary conditions?
Violet
@KDP:
Good job! Let us know if it gets printed!
Martin
No, what’s key is the knife-edge. The magic number is 40, so everything gets filibustered, everything is on a party-line vote, everything is ramped up to 11.
Polish the Guillotines
If we’re calling it the Beck constant, I’d vote for 38 — as in 1938 — as in the year of Kristallnacht. Sure, that’s all Godwinish, but we are talking about Glen Beck.
Zach Pruckowski
I’d say anywhere from 38 to 55 is good enough for their purposes. It just needs to be a level where the outcome isn’t basically assured one way or the other. So long as there’s a chance of stopping Democratic legislation or having Democrats stop conservative legislation, they’ll be able to make some noise.
Ash Can
I don’t think it makes any difference. What drives Fox’s ratings is issues, both real and imaginary, and how much hysteria the entire RW Wurlitzer can gin up over them. There could be 7 Republicans or 70 in the Senate. If they can make renaming a highway wayside in Mud Butte, SD sound like the Democrats Destroying Our Freedom (c), they’ll keep the 27-percenters glued to the screen.
Brian J
@geg6:
You seem like a smart, reasonable person, and there are plenty of others here, too, so I’d like to ask the same question I asked in this thread at Marginal Revolution: how would anyone know who is receiving a health care subsidy? I mean, how is this any different than receiving some other sort of government support, like food stamps?
DougJ
@David in NY:
But I think they were just basking in the glow of 9/11 then.
me
42 probably but 27 of them would be completely nuts.
ChrisZ
I’m going to postulate that this “constant” is not actually constant. If the Republican Party doesn’t move far from ~40 after a few election cycles, I think the optimum number goes up as Fox watchers increasingly want to avoid thinking about politics rather than getting angry about it. No one likes always being the loser.
I will therefore preliminarily propose that the Beck Number can be found by the following formula:
B(t) = 45 – 6cos((t*pi)/4) [I think this makes it an 8 year cycle?]
Where t is the year in question.
Mark S.
@Bob K:
Why is there such a passionate subset of conservatives who want to repeal the 17th Amendment? Of all the fucking issues in the world, you would think that even for a conservative who pines for the 19th century this would be pretty low on the list. I mean, hell, if they are going to advocate for things that will never happen, why not go after the 16th Amendment (income taxes)?
New Yorker
@Bob K:
“How will the emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?”
That’s the spirit, Louie: if democracy doesn’t give you what you wanted, have a temper tantrum and dissolve democracy. Funny, I don’t recall any liberal Congressmen/women demanding the repeal of the 17th amendment after the Senate authorizes Bush’s excellent imperial adventure in Iraq.
Ed Drone
@SectarianSofa:
“Talking Points Memo” has TPMTV, with video, and good stories, though it’s less a streaming-video site than your friend may want.
Ditto “the Great Orange Satan”
There are sure to be others, but I can’t think of them right off. I tend toward text-based blogs, alas.
Ed
Napoleon
@geg6:
Heck within 2 weeks I think you will see much better numbers then this poll. Both local and national news have had extensive pieces on what the law contains and although some Rep talking points have slipped in on the whole there is no way with all the attention to what the law actually says that favorables do not go up even more in short order.
ksmiami
I like the 0% representation cause the current GOP is rotten to its core and needs to be put out of its misery. F*** FAUX NEWS
ChrisZ
I should note that my above formula should be used to calculate the optimal number of senators to be elected in the given year.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@geg6:
I’ve been saying for a couple of years now that one of the keys to the last couple of decades of US politics which nobody seems to look at is that when the Soviet Union collapsed and Marxism became a global laughingstock, the folks in the US with authoritarian personalities gravitated over to the right almost exclusively rather than being more evenly split between left and right (because it is no fun being an authoritarian in a political movement that has no authority – sort of like being a nymphomaniac stranded alone on an island in the middle of the ocean). There are a lot of personalities running around the right today who back in the 1960s or 1970s would have had an equal chance of turning up as Maoists or Trotskyites (I met a few of them back in the day). But after 1991 they had no where to go but into the GOP, which very stupidly welcomed them with open arms.
You are what you eat, apparently.
geg6
@JGabriel:
Then you may not have read his latest:
http://www.frumforum.com/waterloo
David in NY
@DougJ:
“basking in the glow of 9/11”
Well, yeah, sort of. But what’s your theory: “Good Fox ratings require a Republican minority unless we’ve just been subjected to a traumatic terrorist attack”??? Sounds a little ad hoc to me.
I’m of the “They’ll make their own reality, but it helps if there’s factual grounds for demonizing Democrats, no matter who’s in the majority” school of thought.
Violet
@SectarianSofa:
Tell him to try The Young Turks. It’s not middle of the road politically, but it’s run by young people so he might like that. If he’s watching Olbermann, he can obviously stomach some ideological shouting.
JGabriel
David in NY:
Republican control in 2001-2003 may or may not have been a factor in Fox News’s success for that time frame. I don’t think the correlation tells us much, since it seems clear that a large portion of the American public, enraged by 9/11, wanted to see the most belligerent, pro-violence, news coverage available – and that’s what Fox was offering.
So, my guess is that, 2001-2003, rather than either being responsible for the success of the other, Fox and the GOP both reached a peak of success that shared the same cause, rage.
.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@El Cid:
I think it’s time to name the GOP as the Party of Wile E. Coyote.
geg6
@Brian J:
They won’t. And there are huge penalties for releasing such personal information if some asshole at the insurance co. or hospital or whatever would reveal that kind of information. It would be like me telling students which ones have Pell Grants and which ones don’t.
And just FTR, I went over there and read a couple of those comments. Whoooo. I’ve never been to that blog, but I sure hope you don’t hang out there a lot based on what I read. That’s a real load of garbage I see being spewed over there. And with the stupidest arguments I get from parents who are just outraged! outraged! that their neighbor’s kid got a Pell Grant and they didn’t! And they are exactly.the.same.in.every.way. So how could it be that one family gets one and the next one doesn’t when their incomes are the same! Just love how everyone assumes they know exactly how much their neighbors make, have in investments or liabilities, etc., and that every family is a cookie cutter image of every other one.
bemused
@SectarianSofa:
thomhartmann.com His radio show is 11 to 2 central time. It’s also on xmradio 167, 2 to 5pm.
Sly
The number of acceptable Senators is entirely dependent on the size and uniformity of the Democratic caucus. Fox needs the GOP to be marginalized but noisy and in lockstep, so they can hold up the process long enough for the bloviating shitheads to ceaselessly demagogue everything. That’s how they get their ratings.
When the debate is within the Democratic Caucus and public policy is basically operating under the notion of a 60 member Senate with unanimous consent required for everything, then ~40 GOP members is ideal.
Cacti
I don’t think it depends on numbers so much as it depends on having a cause to whip viewers into a righteous, frothing rage.
If in the majority, they need an imperialist war to wave their pom poms for, and castigate anyone who opposes it as the enemy’s secret gay lover.
If in the minority, they need 40 seats so that obstructionism will always be on the cusp of succeeding.
SRW1
So sad that Douglas Adams didn’t live to see this day. As has been alluded to by several comments, we may now know what the ultimate question was all about!
A Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, Slainte!
Stooleo
So how long until Texas secedes from the Union?
JGabriel
@geg6: No, I’d read Frum’s Waterloo essay, I just think it didn’t go so far as to argue that Fox had taken control of the GOP as Frum argues in the latest video that Doug links to at top. It felt more like he was arguing that Fox was undermining the GOP through its conservative media leadership.
It’s a very arguable point though. Re-reading the core of Frum’s argument, either interpretation is credible:
I read “lead” and “leader” as leading the people (or, more specifically, conservatives) than as leading the party. I don’t think Frum had quite made that logical leap yet, because I think he would have been more specific if he had. But it’s close enough that maybe you’re right.
.
Brian J
@geg6:
I go over there for the authors. It’s important to expose yourself to the other side. Pretty much every mainstream liberal blogger, like Brad DeLong, Matt Yglesias, and Kevin Drum, reads MR, so I figured it’s a good place to go. If nothing else, there are some good links, but there is a lot besides that. Even if their (Cowen’s and Bryan Caplan’s, the guy he links to) thought exercise turns out to be wrong, it’s still good to consider what they are saying. They appear to be raising legitimate questions, not something on the level of spreading a William Ayers-style smear.
I do not go over there for the comments. Not all of them are bad, and while I’m sure I’ve said something stupid there a couple of times, nobody seems to respond to me unless it’s an answer that is easy to come by. It doesn’t always resemble a healthy discussion, or so I think.
patrick II
Frum: So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry.
Frum shows no signs of understanding the underlying disconnect in his summary of what he sees as the problem. Frum is a free marketer, and sees HRC as a loss for free marketers and all the wonderful things free markets do. But it is the free markets inability to work for the common good — this time the common good of the republican party as frum understands it — that is causing its defeat. Limbaugh, Beck, et al do what they do for profit in the free market.
Frum is adamant about the wonders of the free market for health care, (and just about everything else for that matter) yet he is blind to the complete self- contraditiction of his thesis in his complaint about the republican entertainment media. If he applied his free market ideas to his own situation the way he applies it to everything else he would understand that the republican waterloo by means of republican free market media is a good thing because only good things come out of the free market.
I attribute the glum faces on republicans to not just the loss of hrc, but to the painful cognitive dissonance that has resulted.
DougJ
“Good Fox ratings require a Republican minority unless we’ve just been subjected to a traumatic terrorist attack”??? Sounds a little ad hoc to me.
Well, it’s my theory.
Chris Andersen
I recall all the way back to the election of Clinton in ’92 when Rush told people that his ratings would go through the roof with Clinton’s election. And they did.
Frum makes a point I never really considered but which I think is spot on: by turning over their political fortunes to the right wing media, the GOP has tied its political success to the rating success of that media. That means that something that improves the ratings for Rush, Beck or O’Reilly doesn’t necessarily mean it will be good for the GOP (or the interests of its financial backers).
EconWatcher
@patrick II:
I don’t think Frum is a free marketeer. He’s a neocon (co-author with Richard freaking Perle, you’ll recall, of “An End to Evil,” which touts the benefits of never-ending war). Remember also, he accused Bob Novak of being unpatriotic because Novak opposed the Iraq war. Frum is not a good guy, nor is he a reasonable guy.
But he is an intellectual. And it seems there’s a level of complete idiocy that he simply cannot abide. That’s something, I guess.
And it does distinguish him from Bill Kristol, who specifically favors the dumbest politicians (Quayle, Palin) because he thinks he can be their Svengali (or Rasputin, as you prefer).
maus
Fox wins, regardless. Only thing that changes, when they’re in charge, they’re the default communication channel for the GOP AND the president.
Jesse
@geg6: Now that I live in Portugal, I can’t share the occasional BJ fun when a surprising or noteworthy ad would show up. About half of my ads are in Portuguese.
I have issues with Baltimore
The sun is entering a more active period in the solar cycle, so we may have to consider the Beck constant may not actually be constant.
patrick II
EconWatcher
I am not a political wonk so I don’t know what Frum’s overall economic philosophy is. But his article he quotes Milton Friedman and and in the line I quote from the article his concern about the defeat for free markets is at the heart of why he finds hrc to be harmful.
Being a neocon does exclude one from being a Ron Paul Libertarian with Pauls’ belief in disentanglement from foreign wars, but I don’t believe it excludes one from being a free marketer. For instance, many of the neo-cons were complicit in minimizing government regulation in early post-invasion Iraq because the wanted a “free” society where the market could do its magic. And in commenting just on Frum’s article, not his life’s work, it is still internally incoherent to champion use of free market magic for hrc, without seeming to be aware of his own regret at those principles applied to his own complaint about his party’s fealty to the almighty entertainment dollar.
SectarianSofa
@Ed Drone:
Great ideas. I’m similarly biased towards print. thank you.
Also,
@bemused — thanks — I’ll mention that one, too.
@violet — re. young turks: forgot about them. That should be a good fit. thanks!
georgia pig
Remember conservatives have continually criticized the Democratic Party for being beholden to interest groups such as feminists and teachers. What Frum is stumbling towards is a realization that we are witnessing the rise of a new special interest group: people who consume paranoid “conservative” entertainment that is fundamentally disconnected from reality. This is arguably the worst possible interest group because it is impossible to negotiate with it, unlike a union or a business group. I also wouldn’t be too happy representing this crowd as a Republican pol because it’s damn near impossible to know what they really want, hence the incredible levels of hypocrisy of people like Romney who are trying to cater to them. This group simply follows the whims of whatever fantasy takes root at the time, e.g., whatever nutty theory Rush or Beck can come up with.
SectarianSofa
@SectarianSofa:
Anyone have any opinions on http://bloggingheads.tv/ ? I remember watching Yglesias on there, but it seems like it features a lot of asshats and/or libertarians.
Ked
@SectarianSofa:
I came here (in a very roundabout way) through Bloggingheads. Haven’t been back there in a while, but occasionally they would have a truly excellent wonk-off. They have a couple of people who know nuclear issues very well, and some other niche things. Generally, the more focussed the discussion the better.
The left-vs-right thing can be tiresome. I saw far too many arguments devolve into “(party x) will do this because they are bad people”. You figure out who never to watch pretty fast (ie stay far away from Eli Lake).
And the commenters there… well, it’s crazy.
iriedc
@ChrisZ presented an excellent formula for determining the Beck Constant, know as B(t). I’d like offer a corollary:
∞- B(t) = PW^2
PW standing for “Peak Wingnut” of course.
Cheers.