Josh Green has an interesting theory on the Rand Paul implosion:
The second point, which gets directly to why Rand Paul is suddenly flailing, is that the local Kentucky media–in particular the newspapers, and especially the flagship Louisville Courier-Journal–has been decimated by job cuts, as has happened across the country. This came up several times in discussions with Kentucky politicos and local journalists. The reason it matters is that because there is no longer a healthy, aggressive press corps–and no David Yepson-type dean of political journalists–candidates don’t run the same kind of gauntlet they once did. They’re not challenged by journalists. And since voters aren’t as well informed as they once were (many are “informed” in the sense of having strongly held views about all manner of things–they’re just not “well informed”), they can’t challenge the candidates either.
Thus, when Rand Paul appeared on “Maddow” and the other shows, I expect he was prepared to offer the same sermon I heard on the trail. Problem is, he was encountering an aggressive, experienced press corps that appropriately had its own agenda and was eager to challenge Paul to elaborate on his views.
I must admit that, when I first heard the “diminished local press corps” theory of why Paul was skating by, I was not entirely convinced. I’m a lot more persuaded now, and as much as I’d have liked to see him Sunday on “Meet the Press,” I think he probably made a wise move in backing out.
Is there anyone out there who honestly thinks that David Gregory has the chops to aggressively confront Rand Paul in the same manner that Maddow did? Anyone? And if so, have you seen David Gregory in action? Do you recall Gregory aggressively confronting anyone who has spewed bullshit on his show, ever? Senile Senator John McCain is on MTP almost every other week- do you remember any of his insane ramblings being shot down?
David Gregory can’t take the time to be informed enough to casually do what Maddow did. He’s too busy pushing a he-said she-said both sides do it narrative, and doesn’t really think the issues are important- the horse race is what matters. That is the problem with our current beltway media- everyone wants to announce the race, but no one knows anything about the sport or the horse.
BTD
Have you ever read Josh Green before John?
He writes crap like this all the time.
Mr Furious
I agree John, but will say this… The blood in the water around Paul might very well have emboldened Gregory.
Though, as I said in a thread last night, it’s even money that rather than join the frenzy and start chowing on Paul, he would through him a rope and pull him out.
cleek
you can’t get called for bias if you’re not trying to assess the truth of the pol’s claims.
baldheadeddork
I don’t agree with the Josh Green piece, either, but for a different reason. There were unqualified, unprepared and batshit insane candidates waltzing through primaries and then running into suddenly hostile reporters long before the news business went to hell. The local Kentucky press did question Paul about his libertarian beliefs, but people (including the national press) don’t care until he becomes the nominee.
The reverse phenomenon is happening with Sarah Palin. When she was on the ballot for Vice President her intelligence and ideas were big news stories. When she’s giving speeches to stadiums filled with rubes, it’s a sideshow if it gets mentioned at all.
freelancer
They need to shake up the format and make it some kind of Judge Judy/Mock Trial with J. Reinhold political pie fight.
WyldPiratd
Gregory aggressively challenge anyone? No.
I’ve seen Gregory aggressively suck cock and give rim jobs–figuratively speaking–to all sorts of powerful political figures. It’s sickening, too.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I suspect that even among his peers, Gregory stands out as exceptionally lazy and CW-oriented, but even if someone else had done the work for him (as someone now has) Gregory would never ask tough, even awkward questions, for fear of a single accusation of the dread liberal bias, which single accusation would make Mr Gregory soil what I don’t doubt is a very expensive suit.
PeakVT
It’s a lot cheaper to talk about the horse race.
baldheadeddork
Hey, what do you want to bet it never occurred to Paul’s clown-car campaign staff that by turning down the invitation, MTP going to use him like a pinata all hour – and he won’t be there to make his own case.
Cat Lady
The Louisville Courier-Journal opined at length on Paul’s extreme views, and as a result wouldn’t endorse him – it wasn’t a secret. The national press was too busy schmoozing to sniff out the story, and Rachel Maddow, like Jon Stewart, has a sharp staff. The rest of the media clowns are as useless as tits on a bull. David Gregory would have asked Paul about his strategy against his Democrat opponent and what his relationship with McConnell was going to be going forward. It never would have occurred to him to focus on the CRA. Too shrill.
Mr Furious
@baldheadeddork: It will probably turn out to be a mistake on his/their part.
Gregory’s MTP was likely his best/last chance to get hold of this thing and end it. Bailing has instead created a new set of questions, and not helped him with a media that was probably ready to cut him some slack.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Cat Lady:
Yeah we could probably write DG’s questions for him here: Would you repeal HRC? Do you support “entitlement reform”? I very intentionally use scare quotes, DG would not. Hey, where do you stand on tax cuts? The closest thing to a tough question would be about “drill baby drill,” which RP would use to shill for “clean coal”, (again, me: scare quotes, them, no)
Libby
Admit what I find most amusing about this is that Rand is scared of Dancing Dave. Only the biggest fluffer on the bobblehead circuit. Idiot handlers should have given the first interview to MtP to set the tone for his media appearances. Then Maddow would have come off looking more harsh rather than killingly smart.
Maddow by the way showed some real class publishing that blog post w/ video defending Rand against some out of context quotes by NYT.
RSR
I think the campaign decided the risks far outweighed the potential benefits. In fact, would even an non-ball busting interview have emboldened others to keep the heat on?
I get their thought of going silent for a little while; flying under the radar.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Aggression is in some ways in the eye of the beholder. Paul comes across as a spoiled git who has never been seriously challenged or contradicted. In fact, anyone who ever wondered what Bush II’s political career would have been like if he didn’t have serious money and an army of highly-trained handlers should watch Paul II.
All that said, I agree that expecting Gregory to do anything but whip out the Desitin to soothe Paul II’s butt hurt is stupid. However, Paul II also managed to step in it during a Good Morning America appearance. He’s going to be a bit jumpy about anything that involves people asking him questions.
Taterstick
I suspect that plenty of the members of the “media” have seen the attention that Maddow has gotten and are pissed as hell. I do have to give Tweety credit though – he was singing her praises on his show yesterday.
However, I don’t have any illusions about anyone else suddenly finding the balls to handle an interview in the same way. Hell, I don’t have any illusions about anbody else in the fucking media knowing HOW to conduct an interview that way!
Taterstick
@Libby: Really? gota link?
jrg
I’m sorry, but if anti-choice, pro-drug-war Rand Paul didn’t have the good sense to realize that opposition to Civil Rights legislation (on the grounds of “big government”) would make him look like a hypocrite pandering to racists, a more aggressive local media would not have helped.
That’s like saying a paraplegic lost a boxing match because he lacked a sparring partner.
Cat Lady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
More DG questions: Has Sarah Palin offered to campaign for you? Will you accept her offer if she does? Are you and Scott Brown the face of the new Republican party? Will you offer your libertarian ideas to Harry Reid on fixing Social Security, which everyone knows is hopelessly broken? Will your mavericky foreign policy views alienate you from the Republican caucus? etc. etc.
I can haz DG job plz?
gbear
I wonder if Dave Gregory cries inside when he peeks beyond his bubble and reads what everyone thinks of him?
I hope so.
Fear of outside information is probably what keeps him so ill-informed about everything.
Admiral_Komack
“Is there anyone out there who honestly thinks that David Gregory has the chops to aggressively confront Rand Paul in the same manner that Maddow did?”
-Dude, David Gregory wouldn’t confront Rand Paul; he’d give him a blow job.
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top:
I’m not sure he needs them, especially now that Maddow has already done the prep work. Gregory could have the interviewing skills of a cheeleader (Couric’s reputation was no better before Palin), and still come off as hard core next to Paul.
With even the mildest questioning of his precepts, Paul sticks his foot so far down his throat that it dangles out of his ass like a foot-shaped dingleberry.
.
Libby
@Taterstick: I do have the link, if you’ll forgive me for not digging it out and posting it here, I feel like shit today and need to go lay down. It’s in the second to last graph of the top post at my blog The Impolitic, which I think you can get to by just clicking on my name.
Maddow post is long but it’s worth going to the end and watching the short Jay Smooth vid mocking Rand’s dancing around the Qs.
And actually, the last link in my post to the fake Obama facebook update page is pretty amusing too. The bit about Rand made me LOL anyway.
Joseph Nobles
Another reason Rand was surprised by Maddow’s interview is that he’d been on before, speaking about his dad’s performance in the 2008 Republican primary. The experience was a lot less painful for him, but his dad was a known quantity at that time. A mention was made that Rand might run himself, but that’s all that it was.
But now it’s him and his positions on the stage, and he’s much less of a known quantity. Maddow just chased him down, and kablooey.
And David Gregory just may have done his best Maddow imitation. As BJ has noted before, this is a full-on Village freak-out, and David Gregory knows his place in the Village. Of course I object to Paul’s rancid politics, but he has pissed off a lot of the people I enjoy seeing pissed off.
Platonicspoof
Not since at least 2000 .
Did I miss something?
gbear
@Taterstick:
Wolfe was trying to balance Maddow’s interview with Paul by trying to conduct the same kind of interview with Paul’s opponent Jack Conway. Conway rubbed Wolfie’s beard in the dirt.
Admiral_Komack
@WyldPiratd:
Great minds think alike (Curses! WyldPiratd posted first!). :-)
JGabriel
@Mr Furious:
… to pull him out, and Paul would still find a way to hang himself on it.
Paul is just comically inept. He may get better with experience and training, but right now he’d fail an interview with Dora the Explorer. He’d start a response to a question about the NAFTA Superhighway with something like, “I don’t how much you know about Latino culture…”
Paul can’t survive an interview with anyone outside of the Fox Network.
.
Mr Furious
OT: The Fucking banner ads…
“EVONY—You Can Play Discreetly”
Can’t you assholes advertise discreetly? Those cleavage shots make this look like I’m on a goddamn pr0n site.
Mr Furious
@JGabriel:
LOL. You might be right.
Platonicspoof
Delete lines through text now in comments, blogroll, etc., starting at the second sentence in comment 21.
You’ve torpedoed the blog, Admiral.
IE 8 and XP SP2.
licensed to kill time
@Platonicspoof:
The Hyphen Bomb strikes again! I never see the delete lines in Firefox.
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top:
I don’t think he needs them, especially after Maddow already did the prep work. Gregory could have the interviewing skills of a cheerleader (Couric’s reputation was no better before Palin), and Paul would still find a way to screw it up.
Paul may get better with experience and training, but right now, even under the mildest of questioning about his precepts, he’ll inevitably stick his foot so far down his throat that it dangles out of his ass like a foot-shaped dingleberry.
.
Ash Can
I’m betting the folks running Paul’s campaign saw what was happening when he was speaking on the national stage and just decided to slap a muzzle on him — at any and all short-term cost — until they could train him to sound less like a raving loony and more like an actual Senate candidate. The guy shoves both feet into his mouth up to the kneecaps every damned time he opens it. Having David Gregory throwing batting practice to him wouldn’t help him one bit if he can’t even swing the fucking bat.
ETA: And what JGabriel said.
Alex S.
I’d like to see a fresh Kentucky Senate poll. Not from Rasmussen or Research2000, but either Quinnipiac or SurveyUSA. Maybe Paul’s missteps actually helped him.
cat48
Gregory only grills guests if he thinks the tax cuts for the rich might not be renewed. He becomes very intense about that!
Cheryl from Maryland
No. That’s what Balloon Juice is for — we watch so you don’t have to.
Platonicspoof
@licensed to kill time:
“What doesn’t kill IE will just make it . . . crippled”.
Martian Buddy
@Mr Furious: Actually, I think this was the best choice available to Rand (or his brand-new GOP minders) given the circumstances. Rand’s problem is that he’s a gormless tool who doesn’t realize that you’re supposed to use the dog whistles rather than openly stating that business should have the right to re-segregate if they so choose (or hang out the “no dogs or Irish” signs again, or whatev.) Even with Gregory pitching underhand, there’s still a good chance that Rand would end up beating himself about the head with the bat. He’s much better off taking flight while the rest of the wingnut flock heckles the press with cries of “liberal bias!”
grape_crush
Close Strike
Whew.
Mark S.
A little OT, I was looking at these pictures of a Rand Paul gun rally. Just as I lose a lot of respect for people who burn flags, I lose a lot of respect for people who bring guns to a political rally. I can’t look at pictures like that without thinking of brownshirts and blackshirts.
licensed to kill time
@Platonicspoof: Someone get that browser a wheelchair, stat!
Bill E Pilgrim
Actually I’d say that by avoiding David Gregory where he would have been given pretty much free rein to spew nonsense and not avoiding Rachael Maddow where he wasn’t, Rand Paul got it just about perfectly wrong.
All he did was make himself look both crazy and spineless, in that order.
Not that Republican voters will care, if they bought “Only dead fish go with the flow” without cracking up they’ll support anything.
UncommonSense
John wrote:
It’s not so much that Gregory can’t be bothered to do what journalists used to do once upon a time. It is that he genuinely does not think that is his role. Literally.
David Gregory isn’t just failing to challenge his guests on Meet the Press. He isn’t even trying.
That’s why Cat Lady’s sample questions are probably exactly what he would have asked if Paulito had kept their date. Ironically, it would have been the easiest interview of the week.
That's *Master* of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN)
@Mark S.:
I go with blueshirts, myself. The current Republican coalition reminds me so much of Franco’s that it’s scary. And not scary in a good way.
patrick II
@Martian Buddy:
I agree. Right now Rand Paul could do a monologue and screw it up. He himself brought up the subject of how “unamerican” it is to say mean things about BP because “accidents happen”. He needed no one to prompt him.
He has probably been advised to stay off of national television until he gets his talking points memorized, and to never again say what he is actually thinking.
And Another Thing...
@Libby: What a crock of a post, too tired to do a link but NOT to tired to post several lines of please, please click thru and get some traffic. Sheesh..
stevie avebury
Let’s face it. If he’s too scared to face David Gregory then Katie Couric would eat him alive. LOL!
Brandon
The worst outcome of all of this is that David Gregory is going to come away from it all thinking he claimed his first scalp without actually doing anything.
Little did Rand Paul’s clown shoes campaign realize was that Gregory was actually there to provide him his Hugh Grant on Leno moment. Cast him his rope and let him “put this behind him”. He would have been able to say from then on out, “why is that Conway clown still talking about Civil Rights when I dealt with that and put it behind me? Because he doesn’t want to talk about the issues.” Instead he still has to deal with it and his only hope is that there is enough pity among the villagers for him because of his stand on cutting benefits for poor people.
His problem though is that his views have encroached on a number of entrenched Village figures, such as Charles Lane, who has actually written a book on the bad precedent set by a Supreme Court clearly sympathetic to Southern whites e.g. bigoted. Other would be sympathetic figures in conservative/libertarian academia, like David Bernstein at George Mason, have made their careers arguing against the expansive Commerce Clause of the New Deal by arguing exactly against the point that Rand Paul makes regarding enforcement of Civil Rights on privately owned businesses.
But…if he played his cards rights, showed contrition, apologized, said he did not articulate himself correctly, explain his Libertarian philosophy (without fear that Gregory would call him on the contradictions) in a more family friendly manner either while cracking a joke or invoking patriotism and then argue against the strawman that liberals think he’s racist and have called him Hitler, thrown in a claim of threats against his family for good measure to turn the victim ship back around on him, he would have easily climbed out of it. The path/narrative was already by Gregory the assclown, oddly Rand Paul’s people didn’t recognize the opportunity.
jl
I agree with some of commenters above, and am doubtful. It was a local Louisville paper doing a pre election interview that first noticed Rand Paul’s odd and partial support of the Civil Rights Act and pursued the issue.
Compare the mighty, intrepid and inquiring WaPo Charles Lane’s flaccid BS flacking Rand Paul.
JGabriel
UncommonSense:
It’s French instead of Spanish fascism, but the villain, Joseph, in Buñuel’s Diary of a Chambermaid sure comes across like a modern day teabagger.
.
eemom
imo the simple truth is that Rand Paul is exceptionally stupid and spectacularly ignorant. He’s Sarah Palin without the, um, starbursts.
The funny thing is that the McCain campaign knew that about Palin from the get go and therefore kept her carefully sheltered from the media. (Except for thinking she could survive Katie Couric and being proved wrong.) The Paulites appear to have assumed their guy could open his mouth amongst the emmessemm big boys without instantly choking on both feet. Now they’re in full freak out damage control mode. It is to ROFL.
JGabriel
@Brandon:
Paul’s people almost certainly know that Gregory would try to help him. It’s just that his managers also know, as I said above, that Paul might to hang himself on the life preserver rope anyway.
They’re more afraid of how Paul will answer even innocuous questions, than of anything Gregory might ask.
.
Martin
Actually, I do. When he was in the WH pool, he was often a standout for twisting the knife into McClellan and Snow. When he got rolling, he was a serious pain in the ass calling them out for their shit. But clearly something changed in his relationship with politicians that has caused him to take an entirely different tone now. Maybe being in the pool insulated him some to the need to get access, or maybe he was just hyper-focused on getting the boss’s attention as a go-getter in order to land this job, but I think if he treated his current guests the way he treated Scottie, y’all would be much more pleased with him. Sure wouldn’t know it to look at him now, though.
Remember how great Chuck Todd was during the primaries walking through polls and the various strategies? He was awesome. Now? Now he’s just kinda sad. Same kind of thing.
Keith G
I can not read minds, but I can try to interpret behavior.
Rachel behaves as if driven by two impulses: 1) her position comes with a social responsibility to sift through information and bring “stuff” to light. 2) continually learn, and to admit not knowing and to use that as a motivation to dig deeper and learn more.
Yeah she is partisan and can get a bit screechy, but aside from those drawbacks(?) she can be Murrow-like in her pursuit of information – with a lot more humor than the original.
It’s unfair to compare the halfwit from MTP to her since I think she is rather peerless on TV news.
the Reverend boy
To even have this uproar in the so-called liberal media, and that Rand’s statements are even debated tell us how far we have to go as a nation. An appearance on MTP would have been Rand Pauls most softball encounter apart from Larry King.
The fact that this any of this is being discussed is proof-positive the nation is on a slow train wreck. Especially when one party wants to govern and the opposition is consumed by paying obeisance to its extreme.
Rb+4 (hey, its happy hour and I’m Episcopalian)
demo woman
Paul skipped out on Meet The Press because he could not be assured of the questions ahead of time. Of course David was not going to grill him but since Maddow had treated him with kid gloves before he chickened out. Maddow did her homework and Rand Paul is not used to that. Cluck, Cluck, Cluck
frankdawg
I’d like to ask Mr. Gregory a simple question: What does Karl Rove’s dick taste like? If it tastes like shit is it because of the amount of time it spent in your ass the last decade?
The only thing that Press the Meat can do to further destroy the brand is to put Timmy’s kid in charge – & you KNOW the geniuses at NBC would love to do that.
JMC_in_the_ATL
I find it interesting that Maddow can do the prep necessary for a full hour of digging 5 nights a week while Gregory can barely limp through Sunday morning.
JCT
I agree that this would have been a love-fest, serious mistake to chicken out because they could have started to change the momentum a bit. Not that I’m sorry about this.
Can you imagine the freak out among his aides right now? Folks thought the snowbilly grifter was hard to manage. Rand Paul is a full-scale bubble boy who has probably never had anyone challenge him on anything. Hell, if you define “challenge” as ” can you honestly state your opinion of these topics and support your contentions”?
Combined with that delightful sense of entitlement and a good dose of M-Deity syndrome and you end up with one creepy little weasel.
I hope Conway hammers him good. Assuming he ever comes out again to “play” after being so bullied.
Fern
@JMC_in_the_ATL: She has a team behind her – producers and researchers and such.
Bill Jones
It’s no coincidence that David Gregory looks like the mutant bastard offspring of the cowardly lion.
tammanycall
Here’s the direct link to post on the Maddow blog about the NYT’s misrepresentation of the Rand Paul interview. It was written by Laura Conaway, a member of the show’s staff and the blog’s main contributer.
Gretchen D
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Rachel Madow is too smart and informed and even gracious for most of her interviewees. She’s the best. David Gregory is awful – yes, we’re glad you watch him so we don’t have to.
Island in Alabama
@Martin:
Chuck Todd peaked with his last real political insight during the ’08 election bit where he and Brian Williams interviewed McCain and Palin. Todd blurted out his observation about the utter lack of chemistry between McCain and Palin, with a shocked Brian Williams standing beside him. Then they cut away to commercial and Todd has never been the same since.
I’ve always suspected that Brian Williams clarified any misunderstanding Chuck Todd may have about the role of The Ministry of Truth during that commercial.
MBSS
chuck todd can play with graphs and charts and that’s about it. he’s a douche even from 30,000 feet away.
josh green is an embarrassment to the name josh. he gets excoriated in the comments for his own slipshod reporting. he looks like a guy who jacks off to meghan mccain twitter photos while wearing a homemade ironman costume.
JMC_in_the_ATL
@Fern: Both Gregory and Maddow have teams. She’s choosing to use hers to their potential 5 times per week, every week. Gregory’s seems to consist of his stylist, make up artist, and an intern that schedules guests in between poaching headlines from The Washington Post and Drudge.
Glen Tomkins
The real responsibility
Why wasn’t Rand Paul called out on his libertarianism by his Republican opponent? It is at least some defense of journalists not being overly aggressive in focusing on that question before he was a candidate in the general, that his opponent in the primary didn’t make an issue of his looniness.
Why didn’t Grayson make an issue of his looniness? Because it’s the same looniness without which even so-called “moderate” Republicans would not have won election one in the South, and therefore not won election one nationally.
The whole idea of the Southern Strategy was that the Party would appeal to people who believed that, of course, the CRA, and de-segregation in general, was bad, wrong, a mistake. But the other key part of that, was that the appeal had to be a dog whistle. The re-segregationist appeal had to be covert, not overt, because overt racism would lose the middle, would lose more voters than the covert racism gained.
Grayson couldn’t call Paul on his re-segregationism without busting the dog whistle, without outing the double game his Party has been playing for over a generation.
Of course, the dog whistle is busted anyway. The Party has been flattering these re-segregationists for so long that they have lost the sense that they need to stay covert. The segs are tired of hiding what they believe to be Truths that should be shouted from the rooftops. The Party has told them that they are right so long, that the country agrees with them, that they are the future, that they have lost the sense that would have told them that the average voter would be appalled to discover what Republicanism really means these days.
The process worked. The party of re-segregationism elected an open re-segregationist to be their candidate for the Senate from KY. This is progress. Now it’s up to the voters of KY to do their duty with what we all now cannot deny.
tofubo
i stopped watching press the meat after the host became tim “everything you say is off the record unless you tell me otherwise” russert
tool time w/dancing dave has yet to have me as a viewer, too, also
tofubo
in addition to, also
our local “progressive station” has 3 strikes against it
a: thom hartman on tape delay
2: cnn as teh top of the hour ‘news’ update supplier
III: they just put on the dancin’ dave radio program on the weekends
i listened to music radio today (for more than 5 minutes) for the first time in years