Pissed Donor Inadvertently Reveals Beltway Papers Run Planted Stories for 5 Grand

[Rose Siding]

“They ran a 20th century campaign in the 21st century,” said one Romney bundler, frustrated that the campaign made assumptions about the youth vote and voter intensity that didn’t pan out. “The anger is that they were entrusted to do certain things. It’s not like they were paid a $5,000 retainer to get a few dozen articles in an inside-the-Beltway paper. This is the major leagues.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83549.html#ixzz2BeiIqprV

Sounds pretty standard, doesn't it? Minor league, even, the guy says.

So, get an operative on retainer for $5K, who then somehow convinces a paper to run a favored piece, maybe send some talkers out on cable to advance the theme and you're half way to designing reality.

That was working really well for wealthy conservatives over the last decade or so. We watched it again and again. I just never realized how cheaply it could be done. At any rate, that whole racket may have ended. No wonder they're furious!

Here, Tomasky's theory offers one explanation:

...But then at some point, the majority of Americans stopped buying conservative bullshit. It must have been after Iraq. And Katrina. But now, conservatives can't make surrealities come true just by saying so.

The catch is that big chunks of the media haven't caught up with the public. So, even though conservatives complain that reporters are liberal, and even though many may in fact be, most reporters also just kind of assume that conservatives, who come from the heartland and the South and speaking in American accents and tend to have gone to more proletarian kinds of universities, must surely have a firmer grasp of the American pulse.

They most certainly do not. But reporters assume they do, and they buy conservatives' spin. And so up to Election Day, many mainstream reporters bought the idea that the race was tight as a tick. But it never was. Never. It was pretty close for about 12 days, from Oct. 3 to Oct. 15 or so. Then it wasn't again.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/07/a-theory-about-conservative-crapola.html

[RobertEarl]

1. How to make payments on the bribes

All they had to do was buy advertisements and the bribe money is washed clean.

[LiberalFighter]

2. Too many in the media are easily led by their nose.

They don't have the intelligence to pick through the noise and retrieve the real data.