Three reasons Republicans did so well: #1 they lied

[JDDavis]

#1 Republicans lied about the "failed leadership of President Obama". Tell a lie enough times and the people begin to believe it, as Joseph Goebbles said

#2 Fox News was a 24/7/365 campaign channel, where Republicans were free to lie over and over again and never be challenged. Fox also played huge compliments to folks like Rick Scott of FL and called Charlie Crist a "turncoat". See example below



#3 All other news channels copied the secret to Fox News' ratings "success", in an effort to gain and retain viewership, by doing the same thing as Fox. Sunday talk shows always had a John McCain, a Mitch McConnell, or some other idiot Republican booked, and often had no Democratic counterpart appearing. CNN fails to challenge any Republican, (following the Fox News formula for a hopeful ratings rise).


Then, there's Ebola, (this year's "October surprise", used so craftily by Republicans to convince all fools who never pay attention to politics 99% of the year, that Obama is from Africa and brought the disease with him to kill all by next year if we don't vote for a Republican).

Add a little thing like ISIS, a few more troops sent to Afghanistan or somewhere. Then there's the "dark" people disrespecting the white police and protesting when one of them is shot dead in cold blood. Little stuff like that made people think, again, it's all Obama's fault and their world would be so much better if some hog farmer becomes a senator from Iowa.

Then, again, there's Fox News, basically saying stupid stuff like this over and over, unchallenged, day after day, since January 20, 2009.

Finally, the last straw, this Ebola thing, it got people scared

“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”
― Joseph Goebbels

[procon]

1. Another appropriate quote from Goebbels: "The Big Lie"

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth"


Those guys really understood their propaganda.

[Frustratedlady]

2. This is exactly how they have succeeded since they took over the media.

How many times have you seen the "talking points" of the day played back on The Ed Show and Rachel Maddow's show to hammer it into the heads of the RW who can't figure out on their own that they are being brain-washed?

It is no different than a cult. The sheeple now follow them without question. It's easy sledding from here on out.

[Arthur_Frain]

3. Yes, but you're discounting voter intelligence

Or more to the point the lack there of. Yes, faux propaganda will get the disinformation out there, but it takes a lazy, stupid, general populace to vote against there interests this routinely, this badly.

The fact that the republicans are resurgent here in 2014 after all they've fucked up makes my case for me.

[JDDavis]

4. I'd put it this way:

The majority of voters yesterday in several states turned out to be the scared voters, the religious right, the lifelong racists, the paranoid tax evaders, and the genuinely stupid and/or uninformed.

They all believed Reason #1 above: Republicans lied, and the media repeated those lies endlessly.

[Arthur_Frain]

5. Yes, concisely summed up there.

[flamingdem]

6. They bamboozled their audience

and many of them have no other news source.

That is an issue that somehow has to be addressed.

How is it allowed to have a propaganda channel dominating so many areas of the country?

[JDDavis]

9. I agree with you, that is the issue that has to be addressed

The most effective propaganda machine ever to exist on planet Earth is something that MUST be tamed.

Since 2000, or even earlier, (I can remember how Fox News dealt with Clinton and Monica, incessantly for hours per day in the 1990's, even AFTER the impeachment went down).

Then Gore got gored by them, then Kerry's "Swiftboat controversy", then Obama went to a "madrassa", and on and on and on. Fox News is the history of American histrionics and paranoia propagation since 1992. It now, and in 2010, came home to roost, in the off-year elections. Remember in 2012 when Karl Rove went off the charts with his on-screen lunacy on election night when Ohio pr VA was declared for Obama?

Fox News: not news, just really far right, (think Glenn Beck or Stuart Varney) Republican propaganda machine, but as sly as a fox, going after any Democrat as the prey, and trying to PRETEND they are a "news channel".

We need some court challenges to them, some actual slander or libel suits, (which is it- slander or libel or both?). And we need some decency in journalistic integrity, (not on Fox News, but somewhere other than MSNBC, with their own agenda). CNN has failed us. Al Jazeera will NEVER be a trusted household word, and CBS, ABC, NBC, all seeking another 30 minutes of our time a day to do expose's, or sensationalist reporting, all to get us to watch them for another five minutes and get scared or angered or both. E.G. the treatment of a relatively rare disease on this planet, affecting less than 0.0002% of the people on this planet...(and infecting, all tolled, a total of six people breathing air in the USA out of 310,000,000).

(In a continent of africa, about 1-2% of the entire land mass of the continent has people who are infected with this disease, and in that area, about 3-4 countries, in total, in the last few years, about 20,000 people, in total, out of worldwide population of around 7 billion, have ever been infected, and several thousand died, but not all of those 20,000). So few people get infected and die of this disease that most major research and drug companies have not been spending money on research and vaccinations, up until the last month, when many of those very same companies see a way of "cashing-in" with a vaccine that they can sell in the USA, where, in the history of humankind, only one patient, arriving from one of the infected countries, and misdiagnosed in Texas, died. Two other Right now, in the USA, there is one patient, one, (1), out of about 310,000,000 people, infected and under treatment.

Can you name the disease and tell me how many hours of USA TV major channel "news" broadcasting was generated from this rather rare (horrible and sometimes deadly, but very very rare) disease, just in October 2014 alone? Can anyone tell me how this disease manages to infect other people? Of course you can, but that is your "opinion" as our newest Senator from Iowa will tell us, and she won an election by scaring the balls off the Republican and independent hogs in Iowa by telling Iowa that President Obama was too much of a dictator, and also said Obama "ignored" and "didn't care" about Americans threatened by this disease, ...(Obama is from African heritage, you know, where the disease comes from).

So lets see what we have here, an American public scared literally to death of another Democrat in a Senate seat representing Iowa, electing a worse kind of word salad serving woman than Sarah Palin ever was, who won her campaign claiming Obama is "dictatorial" and, at the same time "not caring or doing enough".

[flamingdem]

10. I wonder if journalists and their organizations spoke out

- real ones - if that would sway some part of the public. They have weight, I think.

[JDDavis]

11. Yes, I like that idea

I would actually LOVE to see a few journalists stand up and actually report facts, not just report on fears.

I would actually LOVE someone from Fox News to "defect" and simply tell the truth about the Fox News agenda-driven propaganda machine.

[tony1959]

7. NO!

The Republicans won because lazy people did not get out to vote period!

[somebody-else]

8. don't forget

Don't forget that the American public is misinformed, under informed, and too many just don't care.