General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: This message was self-deleted by its author [View all]KY_EnviroGuy
(14,490 posts)there is a right-wing system of think tanks feeding their political network with talking point memos each day, and I specifically recall Heritage Foundation and AEI mentioned as having the boiler rooms doing that work. One of Bush's people admitted that they received the memos (I think by email) every day, and they were also sent to Repug CongressCritters and key editors at Faux News, Limbaugh, etc.
This allows their leadership and the right-wing machine to keep all the rubes (including the Repug press) singing off the same page, and that's why we hear the same arguments repeated over and over, almost verbatim. That seems to apply both to policy ideas and to attack strategies against Democrats.
They realized they would have to do that because after all the populist know-nothing Repugs that were elected during the Nixon and Reagan revolts, those guys would be saying off-the-cuff bullshit to the press and the party would look like a train wreck.
Not sure whose bright idea this was, but it must have came about via some summit meetings between some very powerful people, probably going back to the Nixon years and the thinking of Lee Atwater. In reality, it has become the glue that holds the "vast right-wing conspiracy" together mentioned in the 90s by Bill Clinton.