I don't know who devises and disseminates the Republican talking points every day, but they're brilliant. And since brilliance is not a quality that I readily associate with Michael Steele, I'm guessing it's Roger Ailes. Or maybe the G.O.P. hired the amazing network of people who got the word out for Barack Obama during the last campaign. Or maybe they just stole their playbook. Unfortunately, the Dems don't seem to be using it.
Well, however they do it, one key to their success is that they've cornered the market on the preparation and delivery of non-nutritious factoids at their very own chain of restaurants. McPublican's. Perhaps you've driven by one at a convenient location near you. No matter which direction you're going, you'll find them on the right.
McPublican's -- where every single morsel of mass media junk food comes wrapped in the flag. It all seems easy to swallow but it's awfully hard to digest.
But it works. Not unlike the way Starbucks has embedded their lattes into hotels, shopping malls and airports, McPublican's has clandestinely opened up shop in the lobby of every single media outlet that will have them. In other words, all of them.
And it's a pretty simple business plan -- just keep throwing tainted red meat to the masses and it's not long before everyday folks, people who believe they're getting news instead of noise, start believing they're being fed something that's good for them.
And McPublican's has a hell of a crew manning the counter. The likes of Limbaugh, Hannity and Beck, assisted by folks like Morris, Krauthammer and Kristol, don their little paper hats and serve up their talking points with a smile. Or a sneer. Whatever sells. They disguise their opinions as facts and then they pat each other on the back all the way to the bank while cloaked in the faux respectability they've invented.
Here are a few of the recent menu items that they've successfully been able to sell to an information-hungry public.
- From their Sunday Morning breakfast menu: Liz Cheney was recently on TV saying that "it's absolutely clear the American people don't support the (health care) bill." And to prove this "absolute," she cited Scott Brown's win in Massachusetts. That's right. She used an election in one state, where the Republican triumphed by a little over a hundred thousand votes, as "proof" that the rest of us -- over 300 million of us -- are staunchly against the health care bill. Some are, of course. But that "Americans are overwhelmingly against it" is a description that's actually gotten a foothold. The Right seems to think that if they say it often enough, that makes it true. And, unfortunately, their ruse is working. Because as is often the case with gassy entrees, they keep repeating.
- From the kid's menu: The Right has been able to convince a large portion of the public that Sarah Palin isn't an opportunistic lowbrow. They quote her posts on Facebook as policy statements and imply that she writes them herself. Now, I'll admit, I don't know for sure that she doesn't, but has anyone else noticed that she's so much more articulate on Facebook than she is in person? Yet a lot of people think she's a contender to be the most powerful person in the world. Maybe she'd scrap the Oval Office and just govern from her Twitter account. You know, until she got bored and quit.
- From the heart smart healthy choice menu: They've successfully made it okay that Republican senators can say the healt care bill was too long to read but that Obama's eleven-page summary of it was too short to consider. The politics of "No" is, for some, becoming an acceptable political tactic.
- And here's a "Not So Happy Meal": By sheer repetition, they're trying to convince people that the Cheney/Bush administration should not be held accountable for anything that occurred during their eight years in office. When Obama rightfully mentions certain problems that were on his desk when he took office, he's accused of "Bush bashing." Adopting their line of thinking, one wonders when the "Clinton bashing" will end. Of course, that will never happen. I found a perfect example of this tactic a few weeks ago on CNN. John King was interviewing Dick Cheney's acolyte, Mary Matalin, and her husband, the beleaguered James Carville. Matalin served up the following: "We (the Bush Administration) inherited a recession from President Clinton and we inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation's history." Did John King jump out of his seat and say, "Wait just a minute. Are you saying that the Bush Administration inherited 9/11?" Nope. Did her husband utter even one word of rebuttal? Not even one.
- From McPublican's "make your own sundae" bar: They've got a lot of folks believing that cold winter weather is proof that there's no such thing as global warming. They count on their minions not doing any research. If they did, they'd find out that 2010 is shaping up to be the warmest Winter on record. And they'd learn that it's the warmer ocean temperatures that create more water vapor which, in cold weather, becomes... snow. So good for the Right -- they've succeeded in making Al Gore the butt of their jokes. But mark my words -- when Gore's predictions come true many years from now, it'll be Obama's fault.
- As a service to their blind customers: They've been successful in floating out the most preposterous of theories -- that Obama is somehow cheating when he uses a teleprompter. I've had some friends on the Right try to use that argument with me. I'm far from brilliant, but even I know how to use Google to find pictures of every president since the invention of the teleprompter using one.
And they're working on a lovely new entrée -- that using the reconciliation process to pass health care legislation will destroy our entire legislative process. This is being hawked by, among others, John McCain, Lamar Alexander and Orrin Hatch -- all of whom have used reconciliation many times before and touted it as a perfectly acceptable and fair process... but only when it furthered their own agendas.
So since the folks at McPublican's are so skilled at cooking up propaganda by merely repeating lies over and over and over, isn't it time the Democrats started calling them out? Instead of sitting back and watching people line up for the same dishonest servings again and again, wouldn't it be smart to at least build another establishment on the other side of the street? Nothing fancy. Just someplace that serves up a reasonable alternative to their lies. Something simple. Like the truth... over and over again.
Because, speaking for all Americans, we deserve a break today.