McCain mobilizes, and cows, his ‘base’
"Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half." — Gore Vidal
"The (Bush) aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the
reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe
that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible
reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment
principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the
world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and
when we act, we create our own reality.’ " — Ron Suskind
"This election is not about issues. This election is
about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates." — Rick Davis, McCain campaign manager
Unfortunately Vidal is probably wrong, considering that most Americans get their tiny bits of information from television. Davis may well be right, despite the critical issues facing the country, and that his campaign is running to continue the very Bush-Cheney "faith-based" policies that created the disaster of the past eight years.
This is the background you need to understand the successful McCain effort to cow the corporate media into submission in the final weeks before the election. Remember that McCain called the big-time media "his base" and there’s been a long love-fest between them. But the old fighter jock will now slap around and intimidate his love — and many Americans will approve. It will be the Rovian tactic that puts the race within stealing distance, if not produce an outright McCain victory.
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