Potential Media Backfire
3 December 2007On the Radio Factor today Bill O’Reilly floated an interesting theory. He believes that the liberal media want Hillary Clinton to face the weakest possible opponent. According to O’Reilly’s theory, Mike Huckabee is the candidate to fill that need so the media is subtly helping Huckabee in hopes that he will win the Republican nomination, thereby making a Hillary victory in ’08 a virtual certainty.
It’s an interesting theory and who knows, he may be right about the media. They’re certainly liberal and it’s been obvious that they are helping Hillary at every opportunity. If they believed that Huckabee would be easier to beat that other Republican candidates it would make sense for them to work to help him out. But the deeper question is whether such a strategy would actually ensure a Hillary victory.
O’Reilly is of the opinion that it would. He believes that Huckabee simply cannot win a national campaign because the doesn’t have the money or the name recognition. Indeed, he gave 5:1 odds that asking random people on the street who Mike Huckabee is would result in an “I don’t know” response. But it seems to me that such a strategy would work against itself.
In order for the media to assist Huckabee or any other candidate that must, of necessity, raise the name recognition of that candidate. Indeed, anything done now to help a candidate in the primary will ultimately be a help in the general election. But there is a deeper reason why such a strategy appears to me to be doomed to backfire.
I’ve made this point before. When solid conservative candidates run on solid conservative platforms, they typically win. Conservatism is a winning ideology and it’s a winning strategy. Huckabee, so far as I’ve been able to determine, is the real deal. Yes, he’s been attacked on various fronts for not being a real conservative but his responses have been reasoned and reasonable as well as convincing. The man comes across as genuine and he is unflappable.
I hope O’reilly is correct in his assessment of the media’s actions. Nothing would please me more than to have the liberal media sink themselves and their own agenda by helping to elect Mike Huckabee.
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December 4th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
[...] Is the media undermining the Republican Party by facilitating Mike Huckabee’s campaign under the assumption he would be most easily beaten by Hilary Clinton? [...]