The Good The Bad and The Ugly of Washington Politics. The John Boehner reelection Drama. Act 1: The Bad. In conservative politics today we have three roles played by numerous actors however not “in a desolate Western ghost town during the American Civil War” like the one Clint Eastwood played in, but in our spaghetti western it is played out on the east coast in an overpriced city called Washington DC. Who are some of our bad players? It is our conservative media like The Daily Caller, The Heritage Foundation / Daily Signal, talk radio pundits and parts of Fox News. Now I don’t want to overstate my argument because I follow and read what many of these organizations put out and more often than not I have found them to be informative. However it is also true that these organizations more and more are becoming a mouth piece for what I like to term the Angry Right. Freedom Works, Tea Party Patriots and the like along with the above media all seem to be converging on message. If you have been in Washington too long and we believe you are not conservative enough we will target you in the next election cycle and we will hit you consistently and repeatedly on social media and blogs until we get rid of you. This approach is bad on many levels because many times what is being disputed over is just tactics rather than principal. Case in point-the recent reelection of John Boehner as speaker. Alex Pappas of the Daily Caller put out an article on January 02 of this year titled, “Poll: 60 Percent Of GOP Voters Want John Boehner Replaced As Speaker” which quickly became a favorite of those wanting Boehner removed and the title was re-quoted often. If you read the article you will find that it is quite factual, however the language is deliberate, the narrative clear which was “oust Boehner” and if you dig into the poll you will find important information was left out. Sentences like this reveals the narrative, “But ousting Boehner is seen as a long shot endeavor: the GOP conference already agreed behind closed doors to support Boehner, there’s no clear alternative to challenge him and the public nature of the vote can intimidate those inclined to support someone else.” So the GOP (put in your own sinister voice here) behind closed doors. . .and to go against him in a public vote (which I think he means the one in January) would be intimidating and so forth. So here Alex tells us in deliberate language that Boehner’s reelection was a set up behind closed doors and it will take someone with some real fortitude to go against it. Hint, hint Congressman Jim Bridenstine. Putting aside the emotional language in this piece the truly sad part of this piece is that Alex failed to give the true context of the poll and rather focused on the one part of the poll that supported the narrative he wanted to push. The narrative that the majority of the GOP hates Boehner and wants him out. The true picture given by the poll is a bit more complicated than that. This poll asked some other questions about John Boehner which gives us a little more perspective into what people really think of this man. 43% viewed Boehner favorably vs 34% unfavorably. 11% never heard of him and 12% could not rate. So a majority actually liked him and 23% would not rate him or never heard of him. They were also asked the following questions. “I trust House Speaker John Boehner to fight for the issues that are important to most Republicans.” 52% agreed and only 37% disagreed and 10% did not know. Wow. Now this is a clear positive for this man. “House Speaker John Boehner has the best interests of the American public at heart, rather than special interests.” 44% agreed, 43% disagreed, 13% did not know. So here we have a wash with 13% not knowing. Obviously a polarization position and a polarizing response to the question. Lastly, “Speaker Boehner has been ineffective in opposing President Obama’s agenda.” Here is the worst showing for him. 64% agreed with this and 24% disagreed with 12% did not know. This here where Speaker Boehner needs to improve his standing with the American people. When you take all the questions in context the picture is a bit more complicated and it shows us a truer picture of reality. I am actually quite amazed that 52% of the people polled trusted Boehner to fight for the issues important to most in the GOP. Alex Pappas should have reported all the numbers and not cherry picked the one number that would feed the “vote Boehner out of office” mantra. The nature of his report is what makes conservative media bad. When conservative media reports only part of the facts and decides to leave out information that would actually argue against a popular narrative like voting Boehner out of his speakership, they do a huge disservice to their readers and followers. This is not the first time a speaker for the GOP was challenged, and spoken ill of in the media around reelection time and it will not be the last. And it was not for Boehner either. However after reading some media outlets like the Daily Signal you would think that Boehner was the worse. The Daily Signal actually reported that John Boehner was the most divisive speaker in the last 100 years(they obviously forgot about Newt Gingrich how he was fine $300k by all but a handful of representatives in congress and was later forced to resign) Now they did later change the title to say his “election” was the most divisive in the last 100 years (after receiving an email from me) but even that is disputable and the rest of the article was so shamelessly slanted against Boehner it was not worth reading. This is bad for the party because most of us do not have the time to dig into polls and will just take what is reported by these organizations at face value. We rely and trust these organizations to report the truth (of course from a conservative bent) and not to leave out pertinent information as in this case of the Boehner poll. It is not fair to the readers and to the conservative party to use us to further political goals they clearly have. They are slowly tearing the party apart and creating divisions that some day may become irreparable. It also makes it hard for leaders in the party who are working hard to bridge divides with moderates, independents and yes even liberals to move this country toward a smaller and freer place to live. The reality is conservatives in this nation are about 35% of the voters. We do need some help from moderates and independents to win elections. We do this with a unified party that stands on a unified and positive message of more freedom less government which is attractive to most. Conservatives agree more than disagree. Many of us want a smaller federal government with a much smaller national debt. How we achieve these goals is where the differences arise. Let us not kill each other trying to get reach those goals. If we do we automatically lose and I believe our country will lose. Dont be the hand/mouth that brings about that destruction. My next part will discuss the Ugly players of the party. Yes, I will name names. The poll: scribd/doc/251502982/National-Telephone-Survey-of-Republican-Voters
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 10:06:04 +0000
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