Ethics

Fox News Didn’t Get The Memo On Moderation

Several elected Republicans pushed back today against Mitt Romney's argument that President Obama won by giving "gifts" to minorities, but Fox News apparently didn't get the memo and they're running wild with the Makers vs Takers meme.

Watch Varney and Kilmeade speak about giving "goodies" and "handouts" to people in exchange for votes.

Varney: Look over here. What position are we in in American today? I say we're just getting started. We're throwing the handouts out left right and center.

Kilmeade: Mitt Romney mentioned that yesterday. He says he couldn't win because all these other people are giving things away.

Varney: Buying votes with taxpayer money. Handouts all over the place.

[...]

Varney: The president thinks that if you tax the top 2 percent some more, you will pay for all the goodies, all the handouts that we've got going.

Kilmeade: There's not a single person who knows how to add that beleives it'll make any significant difference...

Does Brian Kilmeade know how to add?

ABC News acquired audio of the Romney conference call Stuart Varney and Brian Kilmeade are referring to wherein he derided the president for giving "gifts" to his base

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Claiming Democrats won by giving gifts, goodies, and handouts to voters who seemingly don't want to take responsibility for themselves is simply the "47 percent" by another name. And as per usual, the GOP seems to have decided it was their delivery that was flawed, not the message itself.

While they weren't talking about giving "goodies" and "handouts" to people today, Fox was discussing Latino voters by displaying images of illegal border crossings.

Chez said it best today when he described this as a business decision on Fox's part.

What’s interesting, though, is that for Ailes and Fox News, the decision to continue throwing gasoline on the fires of white fury is strictly a business one. There was, again, a lot of hemming and hawing last week about how conservative media did such a disservice to its audience by reinforcing the epistemic information bubble most of it lives in in the lead-up to the election. But there’s money in blowing that bubble up once again, this time potentially even bigger and stronger, and that’s got to be the primary consideration. Fox News has never been more powerful than when it’s been the blaring voice of opposition. The last four years have been a boon to it and I doubt the next four will be any different.

The problem for Republicans seeking reelection or higher office in the near future is that Fox News has a much larger audience and wields much greater power over the conversation than any single conservative politician. And if anyone on the right side of the aisle is going to issue a memo on how to cover a situation, it'll be Fox delivering the orders.

It only took one week for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to be demoted from future king of the GOP to someone you don't want to be caught associating with because he had the audacity to cooperate with the Obama administration following one of the worst disasters New Jersey has ever seen.

If Fox News continues to select candidates for the Republican party, the party will never change. There's too much money to be made in maintaining the status quo.