Lack of Journalists May Harm GOP Campaign Strength
As a political scientist, I think Obama would have been stopped if the information about Rev. Wright had come out two or three weeks earlier.
I think it is an interesting research question to ask why didn’t Republican staff get and use this information in a timely fashion? As I understand it, Rev. Wright’s racist anti-American comments were not hard to find. They were being sold on a CD in his church’s bookstore.
My theory is that Republicans do not have enough journalists on their side.
Republicans, who value business success, have a culture which does not encourage young people to become journalists. Republican political culture, after all, does not encourage politics as a career either.
Democrat party culture, in contrast, values young people who become low paid, hungry stalkers, scouring public records and websites to find damaging information about various Republican party candidates.
Republicans are at a great disadvantage because they do not have teams of reporters following up on tips. Remember the case of Dan Rather.
One of his producers, Mary Mapes, thought she had documents damaging to President Bush’s campaign.
So she leaked this information to Joe Lockhart, a senior official in the John Kerry campaign. Mapes even offered to put her source, Bill Burkett, in touch with Lockhart.
Normally, we think of our biased media as simply twisting the story about Republican ideas and policies. We usually do not take into account the enormous resource these reporters provide to Democrat party campaigns…especially in terms of opposition research.
Even now, I think it is surprising that Sen. John Edwards managed to endorse Barack Obama before the news of his affair reached the general public. He was cheating on a wife with cancer who was covering up for him.
If we are going to have a balanced two-party system, Republicans will need to invest extra resources in maintaining its own eyes and ears.
I would like to see Republicans invest additional resources in efforts to make sure that who ever first discovers the bad news about the next Obama administration scandal knows who to call to get this information to the party officials, candidates, and appropriate news sources.
Until then, Republicans will face disadvantages caused – in part – by the pro-entrepreneurial values they hold dear.
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How right you are ~ only on FOX was this man’s name mentioned. Where do we get these real ethical Americans who will stand tall and report te truth? Keep sharing the facts with our citizens ~ maybe there is hope ~ I believe we can still keep this nation “the land of the free and the home of the brave!”
This is a brief piece that makes sense. Have you ever heard Rush Limbaugh telling the story of his giving a speech at a journalism school, and the first question he asks is “how many of you are studying journalism because you want to change the world?”. Most of the hands go up. He then tells them to go into public policy and not journalism because journalism is not about changing the world, it’s about looking at facts, and presenting something to readers who have not seen those facts.
Conservatives have forever been victims of thinking “the media will give us a fair shot if we explain ourselves well enough”. That’s nonsense. There are organizations like ISI and Young America’s Foundation that work to get and keep young people writing. We need to make sure that those organizations are making sure those students don’t just learn how to write, to go into communications or sales, but that they actually go on to write. Websites like this are a great outlet for any young, budding writer to get their feet wet.
The overall premise of this piece is right on, we need to fight fire with fire. We need an entire movement to move together, not a selected few leaders trying to anoint themselves as the Tea Party favorite, but an entire movement. Think of it as war, you need both air and ground cover to dominate.