In going over the Republican party debates over the end of last year and the beginning of 2016, prior to the inevitable Donald Trump win, all of the candidates found some way to give America the worst marks it’s ever had under the leadership of our nation’s first black president.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qRrAkIXYn8
The video with Maddow is related in that it points to one consistent fact: the Koch brothers’ involvement, constantly spending on political ads around the clock, to try to change voter’s minds for elections long before they take place, with information that is debunked through previous statements in the media, which happens a lot.
In those mentioned debates and in many of those ads, America is weak, the economy is destroyed, there are no jobs, and for the most part, America is ruined. They say this in order to put the message out that only they can rebuild it.
43% of voters nationally think unemployment has *increased* during Obama admin, 49% correctly say it decreased: https://t.co/nXVtkZEJad
— PublicPolicyPolling (@ppppolls) May 11, 2016
In conservative circles, the message has remained the same, and according to a new poll by Public Policy Polling (PPP), among Republican party voters, the Republican message that America is in the can has been effective.
“President Obama’s approval rating stands at 49/48, the first time we’ve had him with a positive approval spread in a considerable amount of time. There continues to be a lot of misinformation about what has happened during Obama’s time in office. 43% of voters think the unemployment rate has increased while Obama has been President, to only 49% who correctly recognize that it has decreased. And 32% of voters think the stock market has gone down during the Obama administration, to only 52% who correctly recognize that is has gone up. In both cases Democrats and independents are correct in their understand of how things have changed since Obama became president, but Republicans claim by a 64/27 spread that unemployment has increased and by a 57/27 spread that the stock market has gone down.”
The report over the national poll continues to shows some hard numbers in what is perhaps a fruitless effort in a climate of right-wing cynicism, which is ongoing, never-ending, to show just how off the rails the Republican base is.
In relation to the headline-making political issues, one can view these polls as not only a guideline for the results of the fight between conservatives and progressives, but for the fighting we’ve been reading, hearing, and seeing so much of within the Republican party itself, because the report also shows that Conservative-Republican voters largely view House Speaker Paul Ryan unfavorably and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is even worst at 11 percent approval.
The PPP poll is especially more relevant now during an election year and the last year of the Obama administration.
And we can largely hold conservative media to blame, as according to a Pew research study back in 2014 on political polarization and media habits , 47 percent of consistent conservatives clustered around Fox News as their only source.
The same polling source also published a report in the same year about the polarization in the American public, which the initial polling above confirms is still the case today, especially when the percentage of misinformed Republican supporters only rely on Fox News.
One only has to look at the Hillary Clinton e-mail “scandal” The Inquisitr reported on recently — which conservative media likes to recycle — where they only have to mention it once to start a feeding frenzy, where Republican voters are hoping for an indictment.
For instance, during one airing of NBC’s weekend news roundup program Meet The Press , conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt was the only one on the whole panel to ask Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chair of the DNC, about the indictment of Clinton’s aides.
“Chairwoman, let me bring up something that did not come up in the more cowbell debate from Thursday night. And that is if after Lewandowski was charged, many Democrats and many Republicans said of Donald Trump’s campaign manager that he should be fired, and he wasn’t. If any of Secretary Clinton’s aides are indicted in the F.B.I. server investigation, should they also be fired? Should the same standard apply?”
Schultz’s response to this was that she was not going near the question, to which Hewitt adjusted to focus the question on whether aides should be fired as some Democrats felt that Trump’s campaign manager should be fired in comparison, while still adding value to the subject of Clinton’s email server.
The Benghazi topic also has its own department.
Breitbart News and NewsMax are one of the leading internet sources that also play a part in the process. But the lines between media sources and what Republican party leaders do in real life are also blurred.
For instance, in the issues about voter IDs and the latest controversial transgender bathroom bill — as covered by The Inquisitr — Republicans misdirect their base from the issue by saying that they are targeting voter fraud and predators, while they’re also claiming that both are rampant problems, despite the lack of evidence that they are.
In relation to the bathroom bill, when the federal government sent letters to the states this week — a reminder of civil rights laws against transgender discrimination — the collective Republican led state governments united under the claim that it was government overreach, and even went as far as destroying the letters in public.
The rank-and-file trickle down of the misinformation machine , as explained in an article by The Washington Post , breaks down the process by pointing out how the leadership at the bottom fall-in-line around certain ideas, in order to form unity around it and take the message to their base, where it is passed on.
The death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Scalia is a perfect example of this, where within at least minutes to hours, a united Republican Party voiced opposition to a Obama pick for replacement, before he would even announce that he would do it and they presented an idea that had never existed before, where a sitting president should no longer be involved in selecting another Justice during his last year and rather, wait until after the election of a new President.
In the video with Senator Al Franken above, when he points out that every Supreme Court Justices has had hearings for the past 100 years, Republican Senator Hatch says it didn’t happen with Bork during the Reagan administration, that he did not get a hearing.
Franken takes this and says he got a hearing, but Hatch quickly denies that he said John Bork did not get a hearing, only minutes after he said that he had when he’s called out on it and then says that he meant to say something else, a common tactic when a Republican leader is cornered.
In any case, where no one is there to hold them accountable, they can rely on the loss of footage, the forgetfulness of people or just a matter of time to deny they every said it at all.
But there is no doubt that the process is deliberate and that the Republican party has decided to go the distance in sabotaging whatever process they can, even if it means to create their own bubble, where an ecosystem of misinformation can thrive.
[Image by Kathy Willens / AP Photo]