The GOP on Civil Rights
Here are the Democratic candidates at the NAACP presidential forum to discuss civil rights. All of the candidates showed up:
Ricardo Thomas / The Detroit News
And here’s the Republican turnout, just a few hours before:
Carlos Osorio / AP
Notice anything different? Yep, that’s right–Tom Tancredo was the only GOP candidate to appear. He made the best of it, throwing out quips such as, “Do you think we should wait a few minutes to see if these other guys show up?” and “This is my kind of debate. … Do I know something they don’t know?”
The Republicans don’t even have the ability to say it was an unfriendly forum, after conservatives continuously slammed Democrats for not allowing Fox News, a propaganda arm of the Republican Party, to frame, host, moderate, and deliver a debate for them. You can’t have it both ways; either candidates are “afraid” of a forum for not showing up, or they aren’t. And the NAACP is less of a threat to Republicans than Fox is to Democrats; the NAACP is issue-oriented, and would lean to the right if the GOP addressed their concerns better. Fox, on the other hand, is unabashedly anti-left for the sake of being pro-right. And it’s not as if the GOP doesn’t want to attract voters from the minority community, either, nor has the NAACP shown open hostility to visiting conservatives before. Take this 2004 function when GOP head Ken Mehlman spoke to the NAACP; they were not antagonistic, there were no protesters. Hell, the NAACP sees the Democrats as taking them for granted, and would welcome Republicans to the table if for no other reason than to light a fire under the Democrats. The GOP candidates faced a far friendlier challenge with the GOP than the Democrats did with Fox.
Not that the right-wing press hasn’t taken the opportunity to be hypocritical here; take this NewsBusters article, which slams a CNN commentator for saying that the GOP is “scared of black folks”–despite the right wing massively playing up the story that “Democrats are afraid of journalists” because they didn’t agree to the Fox debate.
And this is not the first time their hypocrisy has been shown up, either; Republicans got all antsy when one debate, hosted by MSNBC, with mostly right-leaning journalists, included Keith Olbermann on the commentator front, even though he didn’t even get close to the candidates.
So, is the media playing up this story? The image of Tancredo standing there among nine other empty lecterns is a money shot, to be sure. But instead, the media is apparently all gaga over David Beckham showing up in the U.S., so the story conveniently slides into obscurity.
Even I have to disagree with you on this one. There’s a world of difference between a news organization and a political organization. Of course I agree with everything you say about Fox. But I don’t see avoiding Fox being a good thing in the long run. It could be a slippery slope in which all candidates and parties end up having their go-to news sources. I’d be fine if the Democrats decided to not show up for a debate before the NRA. But I wouldn’t want to see anyone, Republicans or Democrats, end up making appearences only before journalists they approve of. So no, I don’t agree there is hypocracy here.
I agree with you, except on one point: Fox is not a “news organization.” If the DNC were to suddenly claim to be a “news organization” and then offer the GOP to host their debates, giving them the chance to frame and commentate on the candidates before millions of Americans in the most critical and disadvantageous manner possible, should the GOP candidates agree because the DNC happened to call itself a “news organization”?
If the Dems were turning down, say, MSNBC, because they didn’t give as favorable coverage as, say, ABC, then I would agree with you. But Fox? Please. They are NOT a “news organization,” they are a propaganda firm, nothing more, not one iota.
Fox disqualified themselves a hundred times over with their overt politicalization. They are not even a special interest group–they are a means to further the political goals of the Republican Party in general, and the political leanings of Murdoch and Ailes specifically–not that there is much difference there.