Collusion by L. Brent Bozell III

Author:L. Brent Bozell, III
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062274748
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-06-03T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

The Convention Curse

Intolerant, fundamentalist racist conservatives versus inspirational centrists.

The national party conventions used to be an enormous four-day roadblock across prime-time television, a major undertaking for network news operations, with squads of reporters spreading across the convention floors. Over the last twenty-five years, the parties have been losing their grip. Increasingly, pompous anchors have openly complained of being manipulated—the most famous being ABC’s Ted Koppel leaving the 1996 Republican convention in San Diego halfway through, huffily declaring, “This convention is more of an infomercial than a news event.”1

The more that party organizers have made conventions staged and milquetoast affairs, the more audience interest has waned. The networks went from granting the parties three hours of prime time, then two, and then one. By 2012, the networks granted only an hour for the nomination on the last hour on Tuesday, Wednesday, and the big acceptance speech on Thursday night.2 Before the prospect of Hurricane Isaac ruined the GOP’s plans for a Monday night starring the nominee’s wife, Ann Romney, the networks all plotted to skip over her speech for reruns of Castle, Grimm, and Hawaii Five-O.3

There’s an upside—the decline of air time left a lot less room for Republican-bashing. To put that one in its proper perspective, we counted 125 questions on the networks in four nights about Dan Quayle’s draft status or possible adultery at the 1988 RNC convention.4 But the network tactics and dirty tricks have stayed remarkably consistent.

In every Republican convention we’ve been studying at the Media Research Center since 1988, no matter whether the candidate was a Reagan conservative or a McCain moderate, the anchors and pundits have scorned the Republicans as ultraconservative, too exclusionary and hostile to women and minorities, too mired in scandal, and too negative in their attacks on Democrats. In short, they were painted as an all-around turn-off to independent voters.5

By contrast, at every Democratic confab we’ve taped and studied, whether the candidate was liberal like Michael Dukakis or more moderate in tone like Bill Clinton, the networks painted the Democrats as almost disturbingly centrist, free of ethical problems, and stuffed full of “inspirational” addresses as speakers slashed the Republicans as—well, ultraconservative and hostile to women and minorities.6 Their tone was promotional, aiming to help the Democrats build a “bounce” in the polls, and it was usually successful.

The same tactics emerged in 2012. New York Times political writer Adam Nagourney performed the quadrennial newspaper ritual with a spin line that media liberals have been using since liberalism consolidated its grip on the Democrats: “Some leaders expressed worry that the turn to contentious social issues in the days leading up to the Republican National Convention, where the party platform is likely to embrace a tough anti-abortion stance and strict curbs on immigration, could undercut the party’s need to broaden its appeal. Many of them said they feared it was hastening a march to becoming a smaller, older, whiter and more male party.”7

This was also the Times spin going into the 2010 midterms. The Tea Party was going to shrink the GOP and make it older, whiter, and more male.

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