Via Sullivan, an interesting comment from Brit Hume in an L.A. Times piece about the Obama-Fox war:
“We may be No. 1, but there is sort of an insurgent quality to Fox News. And that’s kind of our attitude: ‘Hoist a Jolly Roger, pull out our daggers and look for more throats to slit.’
The question, of course, being - during the Bush years, was the network so eager to slit the throats of Republican government officials?
As if.
As the LAT notes - and as we noted in the weekend’s print edition - Fox ratings are surging. Of course they are - conservatives are coming home. The LAT makes it sound as if the Obama move was one of desperation, oh my gosh, how do we try to derail this gathering force that is Fox News Nation? Almost as if it were an afterthought.
It’s not an afterthought at all. Indeed, I’d wager that going after Fox was on the Obama agenda from day one.
In football, it’s called running at your opponent’s strength. Your opponent has an all-pro middle linebacker; you can run away from him… or right at him. Consistently. Get him back on his heels; certainly the opposing team wasn’t expecting this, and if you can rock him, have a little success, it throws the opposition into disarray. They have to change their game plan. And you, then, can control the game.
Republicans have done this for years. John Kerry’s military service was supposed to be a boon. The GOP turned it into a liability.
Now it’s Obama’s turn.
I love the fact that, this past weekend, we ran Krauthammer’s column across from mine on this issue. Charles Krauthammer writes for the Washington Post; his is some of the most valuable editorial real estate in the country. And on this occasion, at least - he had to use it to come to Fox News’s defense.
That’s one fewer column from Krauthammer on why we need to stay in Afghanistan, one fewer piece against the health care plan.
In other words, by attacking Fox News, Obama has forced conservatives to come rallying to Fox’s side - and shift their focus from tthe issues that actually matter.
For as conservatives vent their OUTRAGE!!! - it looks as if the Obama health care proposal is actually going to have a public option, or at least a public option opt-out. The thing conservatives detest most is on the cusp of happening.
This is - at least in part - is because conservatives have had to deploy their rhetorical resources elsewhere, to defend the alpine redoubt of Fox News.
The war on Fox News has totally taken the wind out of the teabaggers sails. All summer long they played offense - now they’re forced to play defense. Obama knows they will; these are people who feel a personal affinity for Fox News. It’s the only news channel that tells the truth! Many would literally fall on a grenade for Fox.
The Obama strategy is to keep them occupied by tossing rhetorical grenades.
Best of all - from the Obama standpoint - is that the network itself now spends considerable time on the “story” of its oppression, which necessarily diminishes its focus elsewhere. Not as if they’re not covering health care reform, or whatever - but as with Krauthammer, every minute Glenn Beck spends talking about the “controversy” is a minute he can’t spend trying to derail health care reform.
And the best part of this strategy is - it’s guaranteed to work. Conservatives can’t let attacks on Fox News go unanswered! Because Fox News is the movement, as we have so often said. It must be defended at all costs - and there is a cost.
All of it absolutely serves to increase Fox’s ratings.
It also increases the chances that health care reform, and other key Obama initiatives, get passed. And Obama will trade the former for the latter.
