Last week I mentioned the need for Republicans to take responsibility for a biased press and build a communications strategy that accounts for this fact in American political life. Like many opinion pieces it was long on complaints and short on solutions (hey it’s easier to break stuff than to build things.) So with that I’d like to offer a few strategic suggestions on ways the Republicans can overcome the media:
1. Preemptively defend yourself and your positions from the attacks you know will be leveled at you. There is something of a strategic debate about this one not unlike whether or not to foul in closing minutes of a basketball game if you have the lead. The thinking there is not to give the last shot to your opponent. Much the same way preemptively defending yourself and your ideas before they’re attacked keeps the ball in your court.
2. Credibility is all important. You must always promote and defend yours while simultaneously attacking your opponents. In this day and age for many voters opinion trumps facts. That is, if they believe something is true there is no fact you can present to get them to change their minds. Blame it on the public education system’s failure to teach critical thinking skills if it makes you feel better but the important fact is they still have votes that count.
These voters regardless of their political leanings value their gut and what informs their gut is the credibility of the message. If you can undermine the credibility of what your opponent says about you you’ve gone a long way to killing his or her message.
Which brings us back to the first point: If you warn the electorate what they’re likely to hear come from your opponent and his or her supporters you’ve seriously undermined that message’s credibility.
Now for some media specific stuff:
3. Run against the press. If the press is going to actively politic and campaign for Democrats then they’re fair game.. Messages need to be developed along the lines of “We’re not going to have the press tell us who to vote for,” and “The press isn’t telling the truth about me or my opponent.” Cite examples aplenty. It probably won’t get you any more air time but the Republican base is literally starving to hear its candidates attack the press.
4. Ok, the press is biased and short of having several Republican billionaires buy up some network TV companies, that isn’t going to change anytime soon. The sad truth is the Republican/conservative message gets practically zero air time on major network TV. Some maintain their influence is diminishing but a recent WPA poll shows that isn’t the case.
Lesson: Talk radio can help but it can’t save Republicans. The fight for ideas has to be waged on the most important medium there is: TV. David Horowitz is fond of saying, “if it doesn’t happen on television, it never happened.”
Solution: a never ending television ad campaign. Republicans must fund fact based political and policy ads that counter whatever conventional wisdom the national press happens to be selling on a daily basis. These need to be produced fast, clean, accurate and preferably funny and they need to go up on network television within 24 to 36 hours of whatever press bias surfaces.
For example: when the financial crisis hit this past August/September the conventional wisdom that was spread was it was Bush’s fault due to deregulation and other supposedly misguided policies. The truth was the financial crisis was brought about by home lending policies signed into law in the late 90’s by President Clinton and championed by Democrat leaders such as Barney Frank. The Bush administration is on record in countless hearings testifying that these policies were potentially disastrous. The facts where there but there was no way to communicate them to people in the one medium they were getting the information and the only medium that counts, TV.
There is literally no end to what such ads could be used to respond to: why gas was high until recently (not so much because of greedy oil companies but due to high demand, refineries at peak capacity and tons of market speculation) or the fact that most of the political goals set for the Iraqi government have been met (a truth that is constantly lied about by Democrats and the press.)
Of course such a plan would cost tens of millions dollars to do year round. So if you’re a Republican billionaire (or even a fair minded billionaire Democrat who hates what has happened to our country’s press) remember you got the idea from me and such an ad campaign needs a strategic/creative director.
