New Left Media Covers A Romney Event In Ohio.

Sure, this is a few weeks late, but it's still good stuff. And yes, I'm still somewhat confused about why these New Left Media guys don't have a real media job by now. Chase Whiteside's ability to put his interview subjects at ease, then get them to talk unfiltered without really imposing his viewpoint (except when it's necessary, and hardly in an insulting manner when he does) is downright masterful.



Sure, there's some level of manipulation going on here, as the interviewer clearly chooses to air people who look clueless rather than informed. To Whiteside's credit, he does provide outtake footage, so there's that.

This video does give you a level of insight that you simply can't get anywhere else, certainly not via the mainstream media. So props to Chase Whiteside.

Double props to Whiteside, who is in fact gay, for not smacking some of these fools. Now that's what I call constraint.

How It Feels To Lose, GOP-Style : Take Two.

While my emotions election night were more of relief than excitement, reality is, every coin has two sides. Take a look at this site players rewards card here, and you'll totally get what I'm saying. There are winners in every election, and there are losers.

These are their stories.

She arrived early to take apart the campaign office piece by piece, just as she felt so many other things about her life were being dismantled. Beth Cox wore a Mitt Romney T-shirt, a cross around her neck and fresh eyeliner, even though she had been crying on and off and knew her makeup was likely to run. A day after the election, she tuned the radio to Glenn Beck and began pulling posters and American flags off the wall.

Her calendar read “Victory Day!!” and she had planned to celebrate in the office by hosting a dance party and selling Romney souvenirs. But instead she was packing those souvenirs into boxes, which would be donated to a charity that sent clothes to South America. Instead a moving company was en route to close down the office in the next 48 hours, and her friends were calling every few minutes to see how she was doing.

Here in the heart of Red America, Cox and many others spent last week grieving not only for themselves and their candidate but also for a country they now believe has gone wildly off track. The days after Barack Obama’s reelection gave birth to a saying in Central Tennessee: Once was a slip, but twice is a sign.

But now Cox was wondering: Was it?

She had devoted her life to causes she believed were at the heart of her faith and at the core of her Republican Party. She counseled young married families at church, spoke about right to life in area schools and became a stay-at-home mom with two daughters.

Now, in a single election night, parts of her country had legalized marijuana, approved gay marriage and resoundingly reelected a president who she worried would “accelerate our decline.”

“What country would want more years of this?” asked the newly elected alderman.

Cox shrugged back at them. “I don’t know anymore,” she said. “What the heck happened to the country? Who are we becoming?”

Everything in her version of America had confirmed her predictions: the confident anchors on Fox News; the Republican pollsters so sure of their data; the two-hour line outside her voting precinct, where Romney supporters hugged and honked for her handmade signs during a celebration that lasted until the results started coming in after sundown. Romney’s thorough defeat had come more as a shock than as a disappointment, and now Cox stared at the actual results on her computer and tried to imagine what the majority of her country believed.

“Virginia went blue? Really?” she said. “Southern-values Virginia?”

“And Colorado? Who the heck is living in Colorado? Do they want drugs, dependency, indulgence? Don’t they remember what this country is about?”

It was a country that she had thought she knew. As a kid, she had seen it from the back of a station wagon, traveling to 40 states in a blur of peanut butter crackers and Holiday Inns with a mother who taught U.S. history.

I'm sure lots of Conservatives won't bother reading this fairly riveting story, and that's really a shame. It's a well written and symapthetic piece about a Romney supporter who'd (perhaps naively) anticipated a win on election night, only to see the man she'd devoted months supporting get ethered.

In a classic example of "burying the lede", however, the Post story sorta glosses over an aspect of last week's election I'd love to see explored more: how Conservative media completely missed the boat by claiming the polls were rigged and that Romney's shot at winning was much better than it actually was. As much as Conservative media loves complaining about mainstream media bias (ad nauseum might I add), they did a grave disservice to their viewers/listeners/readers in the runup to the election. Seriously.

Focusing so pointlessly on a story like the Benghazi raid, making Solyndra a scandal of epic proportions, and completely ignoring Romney's gaffe's (ie: 47%) Conservative media generally painted a rosier picture of Romney's chances than people like Mrs. Cox really deserved. Maybe it was denial, maybe it was homerism, maybe it was simple entertainment disguised as news, but what it wasn't was good journalism. Complain all you want about outlets like The Post and CNN, but they at least painted a more complete picture of the race as a whole, rather than focusing on relatively minor issues (ie: Obama's "revenge" comment) and total non-issues (Trump's Obama challenge, Derek Bell, "The Obama Lost Tapes").

Call me silly, but if I'm about to get my ass kicked, I'd prolly rather know in advance than gettin' stole by some fool out of left field.

We sorta feel you pain, Mrs. Cox. Sorta.

Now, that “What the heck happened to the country? Who are we becoming?” comment on the other hand...

Question: Did the Conservative media do their readers/listeners/viewers a disservice?!?

How It Feels To Lose, GOP-Style.

I enjoy reading about politricks. It's almost like some strange form of Intellectual pRon™ for me. And one thing I've really enjoyed reading this past week is election post-mortems from the GOP braintrust.

After getting your clock cleaned epically for the 2nd time in 2 elections, you'd think these guys would be seriously re-examining their overall tone and policies, and trying to figure out how to retool reserve their fortunes in rapidly changing America. But nah, not the GOP. Instead of doing some serious soul searching, they're poking in all the wrong directions looking for blame. If I were to explore my Super Bowl gambling options, I'd wager that these folks emerge from their ongoing "exit polls and focus groups" none the wiser.

Nobody's broken down the party's complete and utter lack of post-drubbing self-awareness better than the Washington Post's Dana Milbank.

And now begins the quadrennial exercise of coming to terms with the loss of a presidency.

Denial. “I think this is premature,” Karl Rove protested on Fox News election night, after the cable network, along with other news outlets, correctly projected that President Obama had won Ohio — and therefore the presidency. “We’ve got to be careful about calling things.”

The weather. “Hurricane Sandy saved Barack Obama’s presidency,” Haley Barbour, the Mississippi governor and former Republican Party chairman, informed NBC’s Matt Lauer.

The governor of New Jersey. “A lot of people feel like Christie hurt, that we definitely lost four or five points between the storm and Chris Christie giving Obama a chance to be bigger than life,” one of Romney’s biggest fundraisers told The Post’s Philip Rucker.

Senate candidates in Missouri and Indiana. “Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock and Chris Christie undermined the Republican message,” a Romney adviser told National Review.

The Republican Party’s moderation. “We need a third party to save this country,” Herman Cain said in a radio appearance.

Failing to talk about foreign policy and Obamacare. “Those are major issues and Romney rarely mentioned them in the final days,” a Romney adviser said to National Review.

Failing to talk about abortion. “Mitt Romney … never highlighted this vulnerability,” complained Marjorie Dannenfelser of the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List.

Milbank's excellent piece goes through the littany of excuses, none of which seem to mention the party's continual insults, slights, marginalization, and alienation of blacks, hispanics, women, and young voters.

You can't insult people to the core, then magically expect them to vote for you.

That dog don't hunt.

Question: Will the GOP figure this out, or are they on the fast track to becoming a regional minority party at best?