How Fox News Spins a Gaffe

A surprising number of conservatives (I use the term lightly; the values these people hold their pet hero Reagan would have found disgraceful), like Ann Coulter, Hannity, and Limbaugh think that Romney's 47 percent gaffe wasn't a gaffe at all. In fact, they seem thrilled that their nominee is thinking the same way. Dave Weigel gives a summary of what the radically conservative pundits make of the whole thing:

“Any Republican running for president has to acknowledge we’re not going to get that 47 percent of the electorate,” said Ann Coulter, who’s promoting a new book this month. “We could probably tell 40 states it’s very expensive, you don’t really need to vote. We just need to have 10 states vote. They’re the only one who we’re not sure about.”

On his Tuesday night show—the first to mention the tape—Sean Hannity credited Romney with “one of his sharpest critiques yet of President Obama and the entitlement society that he enables” and insisted that “conservatives and fiscally conscious Americans are applauding Governor Romney's statements.” On his radio show, Rush Limbaugh called the video “a golden opportunity,” because “work is how you become independent,” and voters needed someone to tell them.

The big idea, on the right, is that as the ratio of “takers” to “makers” increases, America risks hitting a “tipping point” after which the takers will overwhelm the system. In 2009 and 2010, Tea Partiers bought bumper stickers and signs that read “Redistribute My Work Ethic, Not My Wealth,” and “Keep Working: Millions on Welfare Depend on You!” When conservatives tell Romney to come out and say this, they’re revealing what Julian Sanchez has called “epistemic closure.” They know this is true. Their trusted media sources tell them that it’s true.

The widespread conservative fiction that society can be split into two — the producers and the slobs — is a product of this political media establishment. The Coulter/Limbaugh/Fox triumvirate exists not to provide valid criticism or praise where it's due but to consistently reinforce old prejudices and new myths in favour of a pre-defined worldview. For them, as Obama himself so elegantly put it in his summary of the RNC this year, the message is simple: everything is bad and it's Obama's fault. (Oh, yes, and Romney is the only man who can fix it.) That's the only distorted view of the world worth projecting, they seem to think. Fact can wait; they've got a candidate to get elected.

But when I say that this is a 'conservative' view, I'm really quite wrong. I honestly can't believe that ordinary Republicans think this way. Or at least I hope not.