The National Republican Congressional Committee, which came under fire earlier this year for a deceptive series of fake Democratic candidate websites that it later changed after public outcry, has launched a new set of deceptive websites, this time designed to look like local news sources.
The NRCC has created about two dozen of these new faux news sites targeting Democrats, both challengers and incumbents, and is promoting them across the country with localized Google search ads.
The NRCC’s single-page sites are designed to appear to be a local news portal, with logos like “North County Update” or “Central Valley Update.” The articles begin in the impartial voice of a political fact-checking site, hoping to lure in readers. “We’ll take a look at her record and let you decide,” starts one. Then they gradually morph into more biting language. At the very bottom, in a box, is the disclaimer that the NRCC paid for the site.
This isn’t, apparently, illegal. But it sure is telling.
The Republican party has a deep, long term problem. The GOP is wrong on every major policy question. Economics and recession? Wrong. Environment, climate change, public health? Wrong. Health care? Wrong. Income inequality? Wrong. Tax policy? A joke. Foreign policy? Explosively wrong. Infrastructure investment? Wrong. Border security and immigration? Comically (if there weren’t so often tragic consequences) wrong. Race in America? Viciously wrong. Industrial safety? Wrong. Regulation? Ask the phosphate loving folks of Toledo. Scientific research? Wrong….and so on. No links for now because I’m in the middle of day-job urgency, but they’re all there.* For now, the take-away is that the major policy options that are the central pillars of the Republican party’s approach to governance have a track record, and to a startling degree (not to folks here, I know) those options have failed. See, for just one example, Sam Brownback’s Kansas.
This is a problem come election season. The voting – age population nation wide is, as widely documented, moving away from the Republican party. A focus on certain issues produces real problems for the Republican brand – hence the desperate rush to hide from Obamacare repeal now that the program has actual winners who vastly outnumber any loses. It’s simply toxic for a Republican to have to answer what he or she would do if the ACA were actually to give way to the status quo ante. Americans really don’t want to send troops hither and yon…and so on. Y’all know this stuff Ginger Rogers style: backwards and in high heels.
So what do you do if you are a Republican strategist determined to hold on to the House and capture the Senate, knowing that if Americans were motivated to vote in the proportions that have the full range views on the core Republican policy platform, the Republicans would lose. To avoid fighting an election on that turf, your weapons are three:
*The gerrymander, to make sure that Republican votes are worth more than Democratic ones in the amount of representation a given vote can “buy.”
*Voter suppression, because it’s always easier to simply deny the vote to the wrong folks than it is to risk even the engineered participation of gerrymandering.
and finally,
*Lie. Pretend to be something other than you are. Claim you are a “compassionate conservative” or even better — pretend to be an objective source of facts that are in fact bullshit.
It’s like that old lawyers joke: when facts and law are both against you, pound the table.
One more thing — here’s the most telling detail in the story of the NRCC’s costly gambit, btw:
[NRCC communications director Andrea] Bozek’s response? “They’re just jealous,” she said, “that they didn’t think of this strategy first.”
Ummm. No. This is a strategy for the desperate, for those with nothing left. It needs countering, to be sure, but not emulating.
One last note: the basic GOP approach to elections: to deny the franchise; to construct the mechanics of elections to achieve near-certainty of result; and to create a fictional simulacrum of the media to make reality harder and harder to distinguish — all these are the tools of authoritarians, of one-party states, of dictators. Which is to say, this is the work of an organization committing treason against the ideal of American democracy.
Factio Grandaeva Delenda Est.
*I’m actually thinking about a long essay that expands on these one liners, which may someday see the light of day…but probably not soon, given the real world’s claim on my sorry butt.
Image: Workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Fable of the Mouth of Truth, 1534.
Belafon
I don’t have time to find it at work, but I believe the Republican party has to have its voter registration drives cleared by the courts first because of something they did in the 80s.
Cervantes
Well, you know everybody says the same thing, their policies are unpopular, but so far that doesn’t seem to hurt them. They’re generally expected to take control of the senate in November and maybe even gain House seats. There are still enough zealous fools out there to give them electoral victories, give their structural advantages. It will be nice if they hit the iceberg in 2016 but that’s a while off and I don’t see any guarantee of it. Meanwhile, they’ll be in a position to shit all over us.
Violet
Lying and cheating isn’t really new for Republicans, is it?
beth
Oh I get it – the Republican party is being run by 12 year old girls. It all makes sense now.
...now I try to be amused
Democracy has always depended on powerful people accepting that they lost an election. I suspect democracy survives when the losers of elections believe they will win another one in the future. The GOP could become dangerously destructive indeed if they believe they will never win another election without cheating, or ending elections altogether.
I suspect the GOP would play dirty tricks even if they had something to run on, because that’s what they learned in College Republicans. As they say in stock car racing, if you ain’t cheatin’ you ain’t tryin’.
Elizabelle
Meanwhile, there’s this on the liberal NYTimes website, up toppish:
I give them credit for the “perceived”.
SatanicPanic
@Cervantes: The Senate is an undemocratic institution. It’s sad we can’t just ditch it.
cleek
weren’t there some fake TV “news” shows going around last election cycle? they looked like local news but had two people talking about how evil the liberals were…
can’t find it on the web – the namespace is polluted.
dmsilev
@Violet: Not hardly. “I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends… that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.” – Adlai Stevenson, 1952.
jl
All they have left is blind grabbing at increasingly craven and shoddy trick in putrid muck at the bottom of the barrel.
I agree with Cervantes that in the short run, the rancid corporatist GOP rump that uses racism to pull in frightened bigoted whites will be dangerous. But have to hold them at bay until the demographic tide moves forward, and fewer whites take refuge in bigotry and ignorance, and since those will be the younger ones, that will sadly work on a longer time scale with the demographics.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Cervantes:
Sam Wang seems to think it is a “Fuck if I know” with a slight D lead right now
Elizabelle
Oh, and I love this.
Top reader comment on the NYTimes “competence” story: from “Brick Hamfist” (whatevah) …
10-ton whining Elephant strapped to his ankles 24/7. That is Cole-worthy.
Linky: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/14/us/politics/strategists-see-double-edge-in-raising-competency-argument-in-campaigns.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSum&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
(NYTimes comments link is found at top right of page. Then hit “Reader Picks” to bring this jewel up.)
Tone In DC
@Cervantes:
I have a feeling the same people saying that were saying two years ago that OvenMitt would win the election going away, and the g00pers would take the Senate in 2012.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Cervantes:
Sam W@ng seems to think it is a “Fuck if I know” with a slight D lead right now.
jl
And, not completely off topic: an entry in annals of Democratic Presidentin’ dignity found via TPM blog, in memory of Lauren Bacall.
Lauren Bacall and Harry Truman at the piano.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/gallery/lauren-bacall-harry-truman-1945
I wonder what Truman was playing.
Davis X. Machina
@Cervantes:
In 2010 the Tories went to the nation with the following offer: “We want you to vote for us. We’re telliing you up front we’re going to do things calculated to make most of your lives worse. And you know that, up front, because the last time we were in — during the political lifetime of most of you — that’s exactly what we did, and we promise to do it all again. Oh, and asylum seekers, Bulgarian electricians, jihadis in your chippie…..”
And that got them within a Nick-Clegg’s ego-length of the finish line…
Seanly
Their other problem is that both the increasing diversity of the American population and the aging of their base spell eventual doom for them. They can either begin to moderate their positions or just make themselves into a rump party full of crazy assholes.
The Democrats have come so far to the center that they’re now the moderate Republicans of old. I’d love to see the next national party being a more progressive version of the Democrats (aka less corporate influence), but that’s a big pipe dream. More likely is that we end up with conservative Democrats joining fleeing Republican moderates to make a center-right party while the remains of the Democrats become more progressive. 27% of the nation would be the True Republicans but that number would decline as their remnants die off. (NOTE: prognostications not likely to be correct)
Elizabelle
@Tone In DC:
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
Yeah, and the WaPost’s Dan Balz (today’s Broder) was asking recently if the Democrats have ALREADY lost the Senate.
Because, you know, so many of us have already voted.
I think the Democrats CAN pull through in the Senate, which is why we’re seeing so many “Oh no, they’re losing” stories.
BGinCHI
They aren’t out of ideas, Tom. Cheating is their idea.
It’s called by many names, but fundamentally it is corruption. Analogous to a sickness or rotting….
Villago Delenda Est
@Violet: Tricky Dick transformed what was once a pretty legitimate “hold on now, hoss, don’t rush into things” party into a bunch of lying, criminal assholes who will do anything to grasp for power, simply to exercise power, not to use power to better the lives of Americans (beyond the .01%). They were once the party of emancipation. Now they’re the party that deeply regrets ever being associated with emancipation. They are the party of resentment and malice.
They are Richard Nixon’s party. They revel in it. Everything they complain about policy wise is projection of their own warped view of the universe.
As Tom indicated, they’re just wrong. Wrong in so many ways.
chopper
I would say the GOP has a derp long term problem.
BGinCHI
@Villago Delenda Est:
Could not agree more. They aren’t even hiding it anymore.
drkrick
@…now I try to be amused:
This. Back in the ’80’s I remember someone saying that the difference between the US and Lebanon was that after the ’84 election nobody expected Walter Mondale and his supporters to arm themselves and head to the mountains. Can we say the same about the GOP if in the future they become convinced that can’t win the Presidency or control of Congress? Especially the white supremacist wing that migrated into the GOP from the Democrats after the Civil Rights era.
Belafon
@Seanly: Yeah, they’re the moderate Republicans of the 50s and 60s, except for the part where Republicans were not supportive of Civil Rights (look at Eisenhower’s statement when Truman integrated the military), and the part where Republicans supported tax cuts.
SatanicPanic
@drkrick: They’re too old and chicken to become FARC. They’ll just whine.
BGinCHI
@drkrick: I suggest McKinley. It’s nice and cool up there, with good views of Russia.
Villago Delenda Est
@drkrick: Since 1992, the GOP has basically refused to accept that a Democrat being elected to the White House is in any way legitimate. Clinton and Obama were/are both, essentially, usurpers. One of our commenters here (I’m sorry, name has slipped my mind) stated outright that the irony of the Republican Party is that they are now monarchists.
Mike in NC
Apparently this is not an issue of concern to the GOP or their corporate media defenders. Winning elections is what matters. The end justifies the means.
Major Major Major Major (formerly J.Ty)
OT but uh
http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2014/08/12/vigil-333pm-tomorrow-feather-faerie-slain-near-duboce-park
My pacifist vegetarian buddy was fucking brutally murdered? What the fucking shit
drkrick
@Villago Delenda Est:
That’s true. I was at the Ford “Victory” party in ’76 (I got to hear Lionel Hampton, so that was nice) and while they were disappointed and suspected the country had made a mistake, there was none of this demented idea that Carter wasn’t a legitimate President. If Carter had won in ’80 I think the attitude would have been the same. Something changed in the Reagan/Bush years. Maybe it was the addition of the Moral Majority to the coalition that made them think they had a divine right to win.
dubo
No, it’s that if a Democrat tried to pull this, the backlash and condemnation from the media would doom them, but IOKIYAR
Bex
Saw a story on Kos this morning that said all the impeachment talk is polling very badly with independents. Please proceed, Republicans.
Patricia Kayden
“The GOP is wrong on every major policy question.”
Yes but they probably will take the Senate because of Democratic voter fatigue/lack of enthusiasm.
BGinCHI
@Patricia Kayden: What are voters tired of? Democracy?
Sherparick
The Modern Conservative Movement, at least its intellectual origins in the 1950s out of Buckley’s National Review, was always authoritarian, sympathetic to Falangist movement of Franco’s Spain and similar dictators in Latin America, and White Supremacy. As the Koch brothers and like billionaires make clear, democracy is the last thing they are interested in, preferring what Hayek and Friedman saw as the ideal Libertarian regime in Pinochet’s Chile. http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2014/08/milton-friedman-friedrich-hayek-augusto-pinochet-and-hu-jintao-authoritarian-liberalism-vs-liberal-authoritarianism-wed.html
Yves Smith’s Naked Capitalism had an excellent series on Libertarianism as real neo-fedualism, with a small aristocracy of wealth enjoying “Freedom” while the masses basically sell themselves into serfdom and slavery in return for a minimum subsistence and the right to keep breathing.
When you look at the Constitutional Conservative movement as they now call themselves, it clear that they see a minority ruled one party state as the objective. http://www.salon.com/2014/07/03/we_are_a_corporate_theocracy_now_the_christian_right_seeks_cultural_and_political_domination/
dmsilev
@Bex: That’s why the Republicans are desperately trying to convince people that talk of impeachment was actually the Democrats’ idea. Since a whole bunch of GOP folks can’t shut their mouths about it, that may too much even for the credulous morons in our political media. Maybe.
Cervantes
The Republicans are lucky there isn’t an actual Mouth of Truth. Goodness knows modern journalism is not going to provide one any time soon.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Patricia Kayden:
Source? I keep seeing this presented as conventional wisdom or a given, but where is the data?
Patricia Kayden
@Elizabelle: A Typical Canadian, eh? He sums up how I feel about President Obama very well. Doing the best he can with an obstructionist Congress and Democrats who barely have his back. That he’s accomplished as much as he has is a miracle.
Betty Cracker
@Patricia Kayden: And I will never understand the apathy if I live to be a thousand. I get that our democracy is money-buggered and frustrating as hell, etc. All the more reason to vote! People need to get their asses to the polls, even if they have to crawl over broken glass.
MomSense
@Major Major Major Major (formerly J.Ty):
I just read the article and even though I didn’t know him I was so teary. What a contrast between the hateful violence someone committed against him and the beautiful scene of friends and family lovingly saying goodbye. I hope his spirit soars free, beautiful Feather.
BGinCHI
@Betty Cracker: I’m pretty sure crawling over broken glass is currently in a bill in the Alabama state senate.
Patricia Kayden
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
Here are just a few articles:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/05/07/1297476/-Obama-Fatigue-Why-Two-thirds-of-Americas-Voters-Want-the-Next-President-to-Move-in-a-Different-Dire
http://www.mediaite.com/online/poll-gop-voters-much-more-enthusiastic-to-vote-in-november-than-democrats/
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/poll-gop-voter-enthusiasm-pew-109343.html
skerry
OT: Lesley McFadden, mother of Michael Brown, says police told her that her son was shot 8 times.
SatanicPanic
@BGinCHI: SCOTUS will determine it’s not that much of an obstacle
KG
the full joke is:
When you have the facts, you pound the facts. When you have the law, you pound the law. When you have neither, you pound the table.
Sadly, too many lawyers take “pound the table” as their default strategy. Which is one of the reasons I so despise litigation.
KG
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): it’s just received knowledge/conventional wisdom because we all know that Democrats don’t vote in midterms and Republicans always vote in midterms.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@KG: And that is written in stone? It will be if everyone just accepts the idea. Look at my link up thread; some reliable people see a slight D lean right now.
JPL
@Major Major Major Major (formerly J.Ty): That is so tragic. I hope they catch the monster who murdered him.
KG
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): it’s not written in stone. it’s just one of those “accepted village facts”, evidence be damned, there’s a narrative to write. there’s a lot of those accepted village facts that really aren’t true…
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@KG: I get that the Village does it. We don’t have to buy in.
Bill Arnold
@KG:
Sam Wang has been more reliable.
gogol's wife
@Elizabelle:
Excellent comment. I agree entirely about the elephant.
Kropadope
@KG:
Well, this is probably because so many with the law or facts on their side lost to table pounders. It’s hard to argue with “Grunt, roar, nerd.”
gogol's wife
@BGinCHI:
“a cancer on the presidency”?
We watched Dick Cavett’s Watergate last night, and it was quite a trip down memory lane. What I don’t think I fully realized at the time was that Nixon was in absolutely no danger from McGovern — he just had to break the law to get elected anyway, as naturally as breathing.
BGinCHI
@gogol’s wife: The last GOP President who was not an out and out criminal was Ike.
He would be a Democrat now.
KG
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): i don’t buy it. i don’t buy any of the conventional wisdom anymore… since i’ve turned 18, we’ve seen a president impeached, we’ve seen a guy win the electoral college while losing the popular vote, we’ve seen a black man elected president, and we’ve seen a senate majority leader lose in a general election. none of that shit makes sense within the conventional wisdom world view.
@Kropadope: eh, a lot of lawyers are just assholes… probably also has to do with the influence of insurance on litigation.
Major Major Major Major (formerly J.Ty)
@JPL: I was gang-beaten by a park at night about five years ago and I haven’t been able to leave my apartment today.
Luckily I knew at least the “headbutt, foot stomp, knee to the groin” school of self defense.
Not to sound like a gun nut or whatever but every gay man needs to know and be ready to deploy that.
Not ragging on Feather, I’ll bet he fought like hell, I’m just in PSA mode.
Oh he dies in three minutes. There’s a hard one to wrap your head around.
Amir Khalid
@BGinCHI:
As I understand, when Ike was thinking about going into politics he was courted by both parties.
gogol's wife
@BGinCHI:
Like his granddaughter.
Major Major Major Major (formerly J.Ty)
@Major Major Major Major (formerly J.Ty): And it is done. May your family find peace in your wake.
Violet
@Major Major Major Major (formerly J.Ty): I’m really sorry. Both for your experience and the one of your friend in the story you linked. Just horrible.
The story indicates there has been an upswing in violence in SF and especially in the Castro recently, perhaps due to demographic changes. That’s horrible. I didn’t know about it so thanks for linking the story, even though it’s tragic and difficult to read.
RIP, Feather.
Kropadope
@efgoldman: You mean all the 24 hour cable channels, which must compete with Fox, don’t you?
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Major Major Major Major (formerly J.Ty): My condolences. Although it is probably no real consolation, reading about Feather today was the first time I came across the Radical Faerie movement – so someone learned something today.
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Me too. I looked it up on Wikipedia. I had no idea what it was.
Kropadope
@efgoldman: Tom Daschle
Major Major Major Major (formerly J.Ty)
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): @Violet: Harry Hay (co-founder) is sort of “the most important gay man you’ve never heard of”. Fascinating figure. The SFPL has like 20 cubic feet of his stuff in an archive.
ThresherK
@cleek: “Karen Ryan”? Is that still her, or was that from the mid-00’s.
PS “Armstrong Williams” may or may not be a real person’s name involved with the same pretend-knews schtick. We’re still checking out.
Cacti
O/T but speaking of “they got nothing,” the St. Louis County prosecutor just knocked a leg out from the Ferguson cop’s inevitable “thug” defense:
Michael Brown had no criminal record.
KG
@efgoldman: Tom Daschle lost in 2004.
ETA: let’s also add to the list that a woman served as speaker of the house… that’s pretty big too.
Kropadope
@Cacti:
FIXT
Kropadope
@efgoldman:
Wasn’t that banned by the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11?
JPL
@Kropadope: Initially it was released that he didn’t have a record. As of now, the Ferguson police are hoping that he tests positive for pot. Of course, pot does not cause violence, but it won’t matter.
Kropadope
@JPL: I knew about DWBs, but never EWBs.
Villago Delenda Est
@KG: She was not defeated in her own district, though, unlike Tom Foley in 1994. She’s still in the House, and should the Dems retake it, she’d return as Speaker.
Original Lee
@BGinCHI: They’re tired of the controversy and anger and overblown anxiety. They’re tired of having to work their brains extra just to figure out if what they’re hearing/seeing is a legit concern or a molehill under a magnifying glass. I am hearing from an increasing number of people, usually in the 50-and-up demographic, who are so disgusted with the whole process that they are turning their backs on it. Plus, they’ve been brainwashed into thinking their vote doesn’t matter or make a difference. And these are the people who actually took a civics class in high school!
BGinCHI
@Original Lee: None of these explanations have any substance.
They are just excuses.
If they don’t vote they shouldn’t complain.
The Other Chuck
@Cacti: He’s black. That’s all they need.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cacti: I beg your pardon, he’s the descendant of freed slaves.
This makes him criminally liable for something, anything, automatically, so far as the Ferguson PD is concerned.
“If you’re looking for Justice, you’ve come to the wrong place” — Tyrion Lannister discoursing on the situation in Ferguson, MO.
Gvg
The reason the republicans are expected to retake the senate is that more dems are up for reelection this cycle. statistically that right there means they are more at risk. I think there is also another factor that the ones up for reelection were last elected in 2008 which was a dem wave year with big Obama coattails and some of them are in districts that are not very dem leaning in a year when Bush loathing is no longer impacting some republican leaning voters. It was considered likely to be a problem year for us from the first talk predictions after 2008. The reason it’s not worse odds is well the R’s are being just amazingly nasty. We’ll have to see.
Bill Arnold
@Gvg:
It’s about even odds today according to Sam Wang, Democrats favored 55-45 % to retain at least 50 seats including senators who vote with them. (If I’m reading it right.)
Edit I don’t think this attempts to place odds on post-election party changes. At 50/50 every senator is a potential game changer.
jc
“They cheat.”
Excellent post. Bulls-eye. Nailed it. More like this.