The nation’s top Republicans are suddenly rushing to appear on the low-rated Liberal news channel MSNBC, which they once had shunned as enemy territory and the nemesis of conservative bloggers.
The détente with this Liberal news channel has provoked a backlash from conservative bloggers, who contend the party’s leaders are turning their backs on the base — and lending credibility and legitimacy to the network conservatives love to hate — in a quest for a few swing votes.
In a span of eight days, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan have all taking their seats with the network that calls itself “fair and balanced sometimes” but is widely viewed as skewing wildly liberal.
With the party’s presidential contest reduced to watching the Democrats slice and dice each other, Republicans are turning to the ratings loser among cable news channels in a clear rebuff to the conservative activists known as the Neocons. Major Mike, founder of the leading conservative site in Gualala Strong as as Ox and Nearly as Smart, told his wife, Alice: "Republicans are being idiotic by going on that network.”
Alice replied: “MSNBC? Are they still on?”
A Net Movement Correspondent (whatever that is) told Strong as an Ox Etc. that conservative activists and the Neocons are “not happy about it.”
“I don’t think that it is tenable to completely neglect or ignore what your base wants,” the Correspondent said.
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The Republican leaders’ new openness to MSNBC reflects the conservative right’s diminishing power, at least at this point in the political cycle. Once feared by the Republican candidate, these activists are now viewed at least in part as an impediment to winning the broad swatch of support needed to clinch the election.
Goaded in part by a taunting “Olbermann Is Watching You” clock displayed by MSNBC’s Countdown host Keith Olbermann, McCain appeared recently after resisting the show’s entreaties throughout the campaign. McCain had a civil interview with occasionally coherent host Keith Olbermann, who has always mocked all things Republican.
Early in this presidential race, John McCain led the Republican candidates in what amounted to a MSNBC boycott.
Roger Ailes, the president of Fox News, took McCain’s MSNBC interview in stride, commenting that more Democrats alone watch Fox than the total viewing audience for MSNBC regardless of party affiliation. Ailes further noted that MSNBC was Fox’s news competitor “only in their dreams.”
Recognizing that McCain’s appearance risked incurring blog wrath, a “senior McCain adviser” vowed to Major Mike of Strong as an Ox Etc. before the interview that the senator would “take MSNBC on” during the broadcast. But since no one watched the interview, Major Mike wrote that the pledge had turned out to be “as irrelevant as MSNBC.”
“This actually was good news for conservative bloggers who had worked very hard to get GOP’ers to boycott MSNBC. It was a good demonstration of its irrelevance, and we were wrong to criticize McCain for agreeing to appear in the first place,” Major Mike wrote.
Network records show that since the campaign began in January 2007, no one knows how many interviews McCain has given to MSNBC News anchors and correspondents, because no one gave a rat’s patootie.
(This report was adapted from Fox trumps Netroots; bloggers rebel By MIKE ALLEN 5/1/08 10:30 PM EST , and any copyright infringement, plagarism, or other screw ups are because of my carelessness and lack of scruples, and were not intentional because I have no idea what I'm doing, and I am therefore incapable of forming intent.)
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