Republican Rout: Democrats take it on the chin-as do their barkers in the Old Media
Barone, Michael
"Republican Rout" Democrats take it on the chinas do their barkers in the Old Media. BY MICHAEL BARONE yUP, THIS WAS AN HISTORIC ELECTION. For the first time since 1924, a Republican...
...Within hours of the broadcast, a poster on freerepublic.com noted that the documents looked like they were produced on Microsoft Word...
...the popular vote was 49 to 48.5 percent Republican...
...but those nominees will have strong incentives to win its allegiance and its support...
...was getting out of the war in Vietnam), Ronald Reagan could in 1984, Bill Clinton could in 1996...
...Back in 1988, I conceived the project of covering the campaign from five rooms—the two rooms where the Bush and Dukakis campaigns put together their strategies for the day and the three rooms in which the news directors of the three evening broadcast newscasts put together their programs for the night...
...The ceiling on Republicans in this polarized electorate would seem to be a little higher than for the Democrats, perhaps 53 or 54 percent...
...The point here is not just that Kerry was ill-served by Old Media but that Old Media, in its frenzy to beat Bush, has done much to discredit itself...
...12 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 2004/JANUARY 2005 MICHAEL BARONE 40 percent...
...they have 146 electoral votes...
...It turned out there weren't 377 tons, they weren't there when American troops arrived, and there were many more weapons—something like 400,000 tons—which were secured...
...He had to win the election on other grounds...
...Not until September 20 did Rather retract the story...
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...The important thing here is that none of these states except Maine looks to be out of reach for Republicans in the future...
...Bush carried six of them with 73 electoral votes and finished within a few points in six others with 69 electoral votes...
...Not Bush...
...Bush's victory has two important ramifications...
...The Democrats aren't going to run in the most favorable posture, as the incumbent party in a time of peace and prosperity, until 2012 at the earliest and quite possibly a lot later...
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...Turnout here was up 14 percent, a remarkable fact considering that organizational activities were far less here...
...Dollars...
...George W. Bush, Karl Rove, and Ken Mehlman have created a new Republican Party, a party dependent on the widely dispersed volunteer activities by individuals coming together in a common cause: a party for the post-industrial era...
...Turnout was up 18 percent over 2000 in these states, reflecting the turnout efforts of both sides and the interest of voters who knew their choices could matter...
...This was at a time when Bush's job approval rating was high but also at a time when the economy was doing poorly and we were embarked on the war on terrorism...
...Importantly, Bush narrowed the Democratic margin here notably in Delaware, New Jersey, and Washington to the point that they look winnable in the future...
...But Old Media didn't have the field to itself...
...Well, we've got it at the NEW OXFORD REVIEW...
...Calvin Coolidge could do that in 1924, Franklin Roosevelt could in 1936 (the economy had rebounded somewhat from the Depression trough), Dwight Eisenhower could in 1956, Lyndon Johnson could in 1964, Richard Nixon could in 1972 (when it was apparent the U.S...
...Bush's vote in these states was up 23 percent from 2000, Kerry's up 21 percent from Gore—a crucial Republican advantage on hard-fought ground...
...Clinton rallied after the Oklahoma City bombing and increased his and his party's popular support in his confrontations with Newt Gingrich's congressional Republicans...
...On election night Rather said that the blogs were directed by Karl Rove and the Bush White House, which just shows how little he understands: CBS may be a centrally directed organization, in which everyone does Rather's bidding, but the blogosphere is decentralized, run by no one, and it can summon forth expertise from all corners of the country...
...DECEMBER 2004/JANUARY 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 13 REPUBLICAN ROUT Consider the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT) ads...
...This party cannot be transferred automatically to another nominee in 2008 or in years hence...
...Old Media kept repeating that the SBVT's charges were "discredited," but they weren't, and they were relayed to the voters in ways that Old Media couldn't prevent...
...The Republicans held the House...
...It turned out that Kerry was not in Cambodia on Christmas 1968, as he had stated solemnly in 1979, 1986, and 1992...
...To understand the institutional strength of the Republican Party, compare it with the institutional strength of the Democratic Party...
...Pope John Paul II valiantly called for a New Evangelization, and we sit around hearing from fey priests about how we need to get in touch with our inner rainbow...
...If Republicans can create the same volunteer-fueled organizational machine in some of these states that they did in the October battleground, they can make the political landscape even more favorable...
...We push the pedal to the metal — for the Lord...
...We know why we're Catholic, and we're not ashamed to tell the world about it...
...It is possible now to find a not entirely partisan audience which, when assured that something is true because it was reported on CBS or in the New York Times, will burst into laughter, as one audience on the Tonight Show did this fall...
...We don't hear much, if anything, about the Church's teachings on abortion, contraception, euthanasia, homosexuality, premarital sex, pornography, consumerism, the indissolubility of marriage, Purgatory, or Hell...
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...entirely partisan audience whic when assured that something is true because it was reported on CBS or in the New York Times, will burst into laughter...
...George W. Bush's victory was all the more impressive because he was not running as the incumbent in a time of peace and prosperity...
...Rather succeeded not in hurting Bush but in hurting CBS...
...It has been challenged and, for many voters, replaced by New Media—talk radio, Fox News, the blogosphere...
...You know, "Let's all hold hands now and sing 'All Shall Be Well,' and then let's give one another a big hug...
...A robustly orthodox Catholic monthly magazine, we don't shy away from the "hard" teachings of Christ and His Church...
...It Causes Uncontrollable Fits Of Laughter...
...In 2000, the popular vote for president was 48 to 48 percent...
...Finally, there was the New York Times's October 25 story about 377 tons of missing weapons in Iraq...
...he could have apologized for his 1971 testimony when Tim Russert asked him about it on Meet the Press in the spring...
...N EXAMINATION OF THE RETURNS for president shows that Karl Rove's organizational camaign—identifying and turning out new Republican voters—has reshaped the electorate and changed the shape of the electoral vote battlefield...
...It reflects genuine enthusiasm for Bush and his party...
...And we get camp-fire sermonettes with all the substance and nutrition of a marshmallow...
...This was at a time of military turmoil in Iraq and as Old Media continually emphasized bad economic news...
...That's only 57 short of the 270 needed to win...
...But, leaving aside the question of how they could have responded, it's pretty plain why they didn't: they assumed Old Media would ignore the story...
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...He won it as a strong, determined leader who would protect America from deadly enemies...
...The lesson of this year is that the power of Old Media is on the wane...
...Hey, it's time to streamline our old clunker, beef up the suspension, soup up the engine and slap a supercharger on it, dump the sludgebox transmission in favor of a 6-speed manual gearbox, kick out the duplicitous pansy priests, and get movin...
...News & World Report, is co-editor of The Almanac of American Politics and author most recently of Hard America, Soft America (Crown...
...We cannot know what events will bring...
...Only a few of these states—Missouri, Virginia, Arkansas, Arizona—look to be conceivably vulnerable in the future...
...Do Not Read This Magazine During Sermonettes...
...This, despite the fact that he won only 51 percent of the vote...
...Where's the beef...
...Turnout in these states (excluding California and Washington, where at this writing absentee ballots apparently have not been fully counted) was up only 6 percent...
...It was one thing for Old Media to vastly inflate stories harmful to Bush—violence in Iraq, the Abu Ghraib prison scandals, the later-proved-bogus charges of Richard Clarke and Joseph Wilson...
...For starters, the exit poll showed the electorate to be 37 percent Republican and 37 percent Democratic, a significant contrast with the 39 to 35 percent Democratic advantage in the 2000 exit poll...
...This was a puzzling strategy, to say the least: Kerry might consider paraphrasing an old ad and say, "I lost my job through the New York Times...
...Berkeley CA 94706...
...No bozos or sissies, please...
...These five rooms, I thought, determined most of what Americans would learn about politics and policy during the presidential campaign...
...Clinton was reelected in 1996 with 49 percent of the vote...
...We've got "attitude" (says Karl Keating) and "cheek" (says Newsweek...
...In 2000, Bush carried these states by 56 to 41 percent...
...The popular vote for the House was 52 to 45 percent Republican...
...But those are the smallest possible majorities, won under the best possible circumstances...
...In 2002, Republicans won the House vote by a 51 to 46 percent margin...
...This is a solid core for Bush Republicans in the future...
...No wonder the sacred liturgy often resembles a hootenanny...
...So did William McKinley in 1896, after which the Republicans became the majority party for 34 years...
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...My point here is that you couldn't cover the 2004 campaign from five rooms, or even 500...
...But they were powerless to prevent Bush's getting through directly to the public at his convention, in the second and third debates, and on the stump in the last weeks...
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...They were deter- mined not to give any credence to testimony that undermined that narrative...
...On these things, they were pretty successful and were able to hold Bush's numbers down during most of the spring and early summer...
...First, it establishes, or goes a long way toward establishing, the Republican Party as the majority party in America...
...Now consider how the Republicans have done under George W Bush...
...1 ET US TURN NOW TO OLD MEDIA—the usual Sus- pects, the New York Times first of all, the J news pages (but not all of them) of the Washington Post, the broadcast networks CBS, ABC, NBC...
...As it did in the spring, when the Swift Boat Vets organization was set up...
...Despite Clinton's impressive skills, and in part because of his personal weaknesses, they squandered the chance...
...During the fall, many in the Kerry campaign lamented that they had not responded earlier...
...Second, Bush's victory administered a knockout blow 10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 2004/JANUARY 2005 MICHAEL BARONE RONALD REAGAN BUILDING, NOVEMBER 3, 2004...
...Now look at the 13 states that started off as battleground states and were still battleground states in October...
...The SBVT's initial small ad buy was amplified by coverage on New Media, coverage that was justified by the holes the SBVT were able to shoot in Kerry's narrative...
...Add two-thirds of Nader's vote to Gore's and you get 50 percent...
...Many Democrats argue that Clinton and Gore won functional majorities...
...Add one-third of Perot's vote to Clinton's and you get 51 percent...
...Kerry would have been better off if he had thought Old Media would cover the charges...
...CBS set up a two-man commission to investigate this flagrantly shoddy and biased journalism...
...The fact that Bush won it in less than ideal circumstances, with a war raging and economic recovery not clear, shows the strength, not the weakness, of the Republican Party...
...And he won it despite the vicious and partisan coverage of Old Media, which sought to undermine him at every turn...
...And when it comes to perverts in the priesthood and other atrocities, we don't pussyfoot around...
...These numbers suggest that in this polarized electorate there is a low ceiling, maybe 51 or 52 percent, on the Democratic vote...
...It Causes Acute Insomnia...
...Excluding California and Washington, Bush's popular vote was up 18 percent here and Kerry's only 4 percent...
...And Democrats failed to do as well in House races, at a time when few voters split their tickets...
...Nor was Kerry well served when on September 8 Dan Rather on 60 Minutes ran its story on Bush's Texas Air National Guard Service which was based,it quickly became apparent, on forged documents...
...They previously had to wait 32 years, from Lyndon Johnson's run to Bill Clinton's re-election campaign, to regain that posture...
...Finally, look at the 12 states and the District of Columbia which were conceded by both campaigns to be safe for Kerry...
...errors are quickly corrected and acknowledged...
...So come along for a smokin', heart-thumpin', rollickin' ride...
...Here the blogosphere prevailed...
...And during this campaign, Old Media overreached in its frantic and increasingly transparent desire to defeat George W. Bush...
...In other words, Republicans won 51 percent— more than Clinton Democrats ever did—in less than ideal circumstances...
...But with Republican nominees having, if my theory is correct, a higher ceiling of possible support than Democrats, they look to have a continuing institutional advantage in the years ahead...
...John Kerry carried them 56 to 43 percent...
...Once upon a time, they dominated news coverage of the presidential race...
...But not enough to win a majority...
...Fair enough...
...He won it, though he talked about this much less, with a domestic program which is innovative and forward-looking...
...h, 14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 2004/JANUARY 2005 Hot-Rod Catholicism Why is so much of Catholicism gutless, anemic, and wimpy these days...
...And in bending over backwards to beat Bush, they actually helped him—and hurt themselves...
...Old Media, full of gray-haired liberals who remember the skeptical coverage of Vietnam It is possible now to find a not as Old Media's finest hour, had a psychological investment in the Kerry narrative of decorated-vet- eran-protests-to-stop-evil-war...
...in 2004, he increased that margin to 59 to The lesson of this year is that the power of Old Media is on the wane...
...By August 19 Kerry concluded that he had to respond, and his side started attacking the ads and the hundreds of veterans arrayed against him...
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...I actually got Lee Atwater and Susan Estrich to consider letting me into the Bush and Dukakis campaign meetings, though of course they didn't...
...For the first time since 1924, a Republican president was returned to office with increased Republican majorities in both houses of Congress...
...It's like being back at summer camp...
...no one, including the vets backing him, has ever come forward to cor- roborate Kerry's improbable but frequently repeated stories that he was in Cambodia on other occasions...
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...And even California, Connecticut, and Illinois no longer seem so far out of range...
...WARNING: Do Not Read This Magazine Before Going To Bed...
...The election of Bill Clinton in 1992, probably made possible only by the third-party candidacy of Ross Perot, gave the Democrats a chance to reestablish themselves as the national majority party, the status they clearly held from 1932 to 1968...
...PHOTOS BY KATHERINE RUDDY DECEMBER 2004/JANUARY 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 11 REPUBLICAN ROUT to the credibility and position of Old Media in American society...
...The proof is in the numbers...
...The Democrats' failure to win a majority was remarkable, because in 1996, 1998, and 2000 they were running in the posture most favorable to any party, as the incumbent party in a time of apparent peace and apparent prosperity...
...In 2004, Bush won 51 to 48 percent and Republicans won the vote for the House by something like 51 to 47 percent (the final numbers haven't been tabulated at this writing...
...Yup, it was an historic election—and not just for the two major parties...
...Are you ready for a high-performance Catholicism...
...In 1994, after Clinton ceded control of his domestic agenda to the wife who had stood by him in the Gennifer Flowers scandal, Democrats lost their majorities in Congress...
...Al Gore carried these states 56 to 39 percent...
...Is it because there are so many touchie-feelie types in the priesthood...
...Republican Rout Democrats take it on the chinas do their barkers in the Old Media...
...In 1998 and 2000, the popular vote for the House was 49 to 48 percent Republican...
...early next morning, Minneapolis lawyer Scott Johnson posted that on powerlineblog.com, and quickly received comments from various experts that fatally undermined Rather and CBS...
...Next, look at the 25 states which were conceded by both campaigns to be safe for Bush, with 213 electoral votes...
...Nevertheless, Kerry concentrated on this issue for four of the five weekdays of the last full week of the campaign, even though polls consistently showed voters preferring Bush over Kerry on handling Iraq...
...r4 Michael Barone, a senior writer at U.S...
Vol. 37 • December 2004 • No. 10
