Has right wing media pushed conservatives further right

[ChapelHillSooner]

I was thinking about this. I think some of the things that are presented to people on right wing media would have been unthinkable when Fox News started in the 1990s.

I am not sure if that is just a Trump effect or if Fox and others have simply pulled its watchers further and further right as time has gone by.

My questions are:

Is my premise sound? If so, is it a Trump effect or is it a slow nudging to the right from the media, or something else.

And, by the way, if you think my premise is wrong I would love to hear it.

 

[ChapelHillSooner]

Goodness gracious. Just saw I asked if right wing media pushed conservatives further left. Can’t imagine what people thought reading the title….

Also I am not ashamed to admit that I don’t know if that should be further or farther and I will never understand which to use. I am an OU (and GMU) grad not a UNC grad. Cut me some slack.

 

[BlooVooDoo]

I’m confused by an apparent conflict in your thread title and the content of your post.

 

[BlooVooDoo]

Goodness gracious. Just saw I asked if right wing media pushed conservatives further left. Can’t imagine what people thought reading the title….

What I thought is OK has a better shroom industry than I was aware of.

 

[Bobfripp]

Does the Pope shit in the woods?

I might be wrong, but the right-wing media, starting with wonderful folks like Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh back in the 1990's, played a big part in all of this.

 

[ChapelHillSooner]

What I thought is OK has a better shroom industry than I was aware of.

I live in NC but I can say that Oklahoma has more marijuana dispensaries than any state including California. It is insane. Sometime a strip mall will have two of them. When Oklahoma passed medical marijuana they put no restrictions on the dispensaries and it created a somewhat ridiculous situation.

 

[DiehardHeelFan]

Good read by Heather Cox Richardson.

November 8, 2024

Social media has been flooded today with stories of Trump voters who are shocked to learn that tariffs will raise consumer prices as reporters are covering that information.

heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

 

[finesse]

I was thinking about this. I think some of the things that are presented to people on right wing media would have been unthinkable when Fox News started in the 1990s.

I am not sure if that is just a Trump effect or if Fox and others have simply pulled its watchers further and further right as time has gone by.

My questions are:

Is my premise sound? If so, is it a Trump effect or is it a slow nudging to the right from the media, or something else.

And, by the way, if you think my premise is wrong I would love to hear it.

I think they've just allowed people a safe place to express what's been festering in some of them since the 60s.It's not like this is an old struggle. Conservatives want to recapture the past and liberals want to explore the future. In a sane society, we'd have mutual respect for the stability the conservatives bring and the pushing of the limits by the liberals. Without that stability, movements tend overrun their makers. Eugenics and Prohibition are two notable example in our country. So were the French Revolution and the October Revolution in others. All addressed real problems and all lost almost any value that they had when there wasn't a cultural counterweight. Like bad peaces, runaway ideas start the next cultural war.

I don't know where we're going or if democracy as we know it will survive. It bothers me that the party in power is committed to respect fewer and fewer differences and to increase the difficulty for citizens by every standard of law to vote. Their hypocrisy about being the party of individual rights is repulsive, not because of that stance, but because they demand what they think is right is THE standard for all.

In a dream world, I'd love a DNA test for all so people would realize how few and how unlikely we are, by the standards of 1950, to be pure anything which might blunt the edge of white nationalism and for the removal of all laws based on a spiritual or philosophical wrong. If all that gets hurt is somebody's feelings, piss off and go away.

 

[Batt Boy]

Has left wing media pushed the left further left?

I keep bees. A few months ago, NPR ran a story on colony collapse, pesticides, climate change - all very good guests and information. Of course near the end, they had to run a few minutes on racism in beekeeping.

Our media have failed us on both sides and many levels.

 

[chrissteel]

Seems to me Trump has pushed the gop left. He is more a populist than anything else. He would love to forget about the abortion question, protect us industries, tariffs, ignore deficits, etc. If anything Trump has pushed conservative media left just a little. Conservatives are the one that feel left out. They just have no where to go

 

[HeelYeah2012]

Seems to me Trump has pushed the gop left. He is more a populist than anything else. He would love to forget about the abortion question, protect us industries, tariffs, ignore deficits, etc. If anything Trump has pushed conservative media left just a little. Conservatives are the one that feel left out. They just have no where to go

Was just about to say the same. Trump is way more of a populist than a far right conservative. Look no further than the working class coalition he has built based on that populist messaging.

 

[heelinhell]

If you want insight into why we are where we are today, read the "The Selling of the President 1968 "

Arguably, Roger Ailes is the individual most responsible for where we find ourselves today...

 

[Paine]

Was just about to say the same. Trump is way more of a populist than a far right conservative. Look no further than the working class coalition he has built based on that populist messaging.

Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive.

Trump’s populism is a far-right populism. It’s about othering groups of people to tell a story about the problems of America.

The working class voting for Trump is a direct by-product of a decaying neoliberal world order that the Democrats continue to embrace rather than reject. This gives oxygen to the far-right to appeal with populist messages when the left part isn’t engaging in it at all.

 

[Paine]

I was thinking about this. I think some of the things that are presented to people on right wing media would have been unthinkable when Fox News started in the 1990s.

I am not sure if that is just a Trump effect or if Fox and others have simply pulled its watchers further and further right as time has gone by.

My questions are:

Is my premise sound? If so, is it a Trump effect or is it a slow nudging to the right from the media, or something else.

And, by the way, if you think my premise is wrong I would love to hear it.

There are a lot of factors that have made people more open to the right-wing. I think the conservative media ecosystem at large contributed to it, but it is a symptom of the wider issues in our society rather than a cause.

 

[HeelInTheOzarks]

People are not more right wing on most issues. They have just been taught to hate liberals. They don’t hate most liberal POLICY. Gay marriage, marijuana, minimum wage, abortion rights etc continue to succeed everywhere, but liberal politicians take a beating. I think that’s an important distinction. People are ok with a lot of ideas Rush Limbaugh etc would hate. But they do carry his legacy of despising the leaders who would advance them in government.

 

[DiehardHeelFan]

Good read by Heather Cox Richardson.

November 8, 2024

Social media has been flooded today with stories of Trump voters who are shocked to learn that tariffs will raise consumer prices as reporters are covering that information.

heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

When people were presented with 2 economic plans but weren’t told which plan was for which candidate, the majority chose the one from Harris Plus some of the FO from FAFO is slowly starting to happen.

 

[breepf]

People are not more right wing on most issues. They have just been taught to hate liberals. They don’t hate most liberal POLICY. Gay marriage, marijuana, minimum wage, abortion rights etc continue to succeed everywhere, but liberal politicians take a beating. I think that’s an important distinction. People are ok with a lot of ideas Rush Limbaugh etc would hate. But they do carry his legacy of despising the leaders who would advance them in government.

I heard a podcaster make a similar point in a discussion of the Vance-Walz debate. A nervous Walz wasn't as sharp as the human-sized turd he was debating. Nevertheless, post-debate polling showed his likability numbers going up. Why? The podcaster speculated that it was because non-college voters don't have the same fetish for "professional" self-presentation that college graduates have--they wouldn't have been put off by any stumbling and bumbling.

In short, non-college voters, this guy suggested, were put off by the pedantic culture of college-educated professionalism, which basically defines Democratic leadership. It's the same reason why superrific can make interesting points and still be insufferable.

 

[Paine]

When people were presented with 2 economic plans but weren’t told which plan was for which candidate, the majority chose the one from Harris Plus some of the FO from FAFO is slowly starting to happen.

Almost like the Democratic Party needs to fire any consultant who pushed this notion that we need to appeal to Republicans. This is a messaging and authenticity issue. Time and time again.

I don’t agree with all of her politics, but we need more pols like Marie Glusenkamp-Perez. People who can win in red districts not by going hard right, but by appealing to working people in their districts with a bread and butter economic message. People who actually believe in something and are concerned about the well-being of their districts.

Stop relentlessly focus group and poll testing every message. Run on what you believe.

This is how Democrats have to rebuild their brand. As a pugilistic party of the working class over the corporate elite.

 

[CFordUNC]

Almost like the Democratic Party needs to fire my staffer or consultant who pushed this notion that we need to appeal to Republicans. This is a messaging and authenticity issue. Time and time again.

I don’t agree with all of her politics, but we need more pols like Marie Glusenkamp-Perez. People who can win in red districts not by going hard right, but by appealing to working people in their districts with a bread and butter economic message. People who actually believe in something and are concerned about the well-being of their districts.

This is how Democrats have to rebuild their brand. As a pugilistic party of the working class over the corporate elite.

Man, I have to say- and I know that this is with the benefit of hindsight- but I think you were exactly right all along, and folks like me who thought that it was great campaign strategy to try to court disaffected Republicans, were flat out wrong. In hindsight, it was a terrible campaign strategy. I am beyond certain that there are scores of Republicans out there whom the Harris campaign thought they could count on, who ultimately did not pull the lever for Harris and instead did so for Trump. I definitely believed that it was sound strategy, but it’s because I myself am a disaffected Republican, so I was looking at it through the lenses of what kind of messaging was most effective for *me* personally instead of what kind of messaging was most effective for the Democratic base. The Democrats should never, ever, ever make that mistake again.

 

[Paine]

Man, I have to say- and I know that this is with the benefit of hindsight- but I think you were exactly right all along, and folks like me who thought that it was great campaign strategy to try to court disaffected Republicans, were flat out wrong. In hindsight, it was a terrible campaign strategy. I am beyond certain that there are scores of Republicans out there whom the Harris campaign thought they could count on, who ultimately did not pull the lever for Harris and instead did so for Trump. I definitely believed that it was sound strategy, but it’s because I myself am a disaffected Republican, so I was looking at it through the lenses of what kind of messaging was most effective for *me* personally instead of what kind of messaging was most effective for the Democratic base. The Democrats should never, ever, ever make that mistake again.

I honestly also thought it would work during the last week or so. I was convinced by the Selzer poll, the strength of Harris’ ground game, etc.

In hindsight, this was the same losing strategy that HRC tried in 2016. Going forward, I’m going to trust my gut instincts. I think the upcoming crop of Democrats has instincts that lean closer to mine than to the Obama/Clinton wing that has relentlessly pushed this notion that we must pivot to the center in every election.

I am glad that we have former Republicans in our party, don’t get me wrong. But they shouldn’t be driving the strategy. The consultant class in Washington has become full of disaffected conservatives. Combine that with the traditional consultant class of neoliberal Democrats, and it’s easy to piece together where this strategy came from and why it was so blinkered.

If Never Trump Republicans could swing an election, they wouldn’t have had to leave the Republican Party to begin with.