Fox News is a Tragedy--for Republicans
At first glance Fox News must seem to be a blessing for Republicans. It is certainly a blessing for the Murdoch family, the controlling stockholder in the company. It makes a billion dollars a year in profit because it has found a niche: politically and culturally conservative viewers. It is the highest rated cable news network in an arena that includes CNN, MSNBC, HCN and various other specialty stations. In a fractured market with multiple players it has the biggest share. It isn't a majority but it is a big plurality.
The programming is a constant infomercial for Republicans. Oddly enough, that is what made it a disaster. This is not just my opinion. It is the opinion of senior Republican political strategists who have experienced first hand Fox mischief in their party.
I am in Cambridge, Massachusetts attending events at the JFK School of Government, particularly events on this election and I am particularly seeking out events featuring spokespeople for Republicans. I have been hearing and speaking with the Chief of Staff of the RNC, plus two different Fellows at the JFK school, one the former chief strategist for the Jeb Bush campaign, another a spokesperson and manager for Carly Fiorina. The small group discussions shared the observation that Fox News is a continuing disaster for the Republican Party.
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| Typical day's events at the JFK school |
What could be better is the thing that Fox discounts and resents; political diversity and openness to new things. Fox's audience now has an average age of 69. It's relentless focus on its own narrative silos their audience and keeps it watching, which is good for Fox but it narrows the Republicans who parade to the network for face time. It has created a uniformity of acceptable opinion and such a narrow orthodoxy that Republican candidates painted themselves into an ideological corner.
The fact that it was a big corner--a large enough plurality to be very attractive to a media company in a fractured cable news audience--meant it was a tempting approach. The net result was that Republican candidates were drawn into the trap of being voices for a primary election plurality but a general election loss.
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| Trump on Fox. |
The 2016 election is complicated by a multitude of specific factors: the Democrats have been in the White House for 8 years and the pendulum historically swings back; Hillary Clinton has personal complications making her a highly qualified but unattractive candidate with a history of conflicts well documented by Bernie Sanders and her Republican detractors; Trump had extraordinary ability to command media attention but with comments that are controversial; incomes are rising unequally in the aftermath of the Financial Crisis of 2008. But the role of Fox News and AM talk radio strongly shaped the Republican primary election and caused the Republican Party to nominate the one Republican who Hillary Clinton could defeat. It was a good year to be a Republican but Trump has unique vulnerabilities as a general election candidate. His success fit the Republican plurality niche, not the general election reality.
The consensus of the opinions close to Republican campaigns that I hear at the JFK School is that the election is settled. Trump will lose. The betting markets agree but I think that events could easily put Trump back on top: some sort of legal problem for Hillary, or a health event. It is probably too late for Trump to re-define his temperament, but his base supporters do not demand it. Even Evangelical Christian ministers have gone public in the days after the "pussy-gate" video and reaffirmed support for Trump saying that his words and attitudes should not dissuade Christian voters. Trump is not Hillary and that is enough.
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| The Fox look |
Trump could win this. His margin of loss in battleground states is zero to 2% in Ohio, Nevada, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, and a swing back there would make him president. This is not insurmountable, but at this moment it is apparently a loss of those states. In the primary election Trump's weaknesses as a general election candidate were masked by the Fox News formula which concentrated on white identity patriotism to maintain their audience. Trump was a perfect match for Fox. Fox's formula for attracting and keeping a resentful traditional white audience, eager to hear angry words of outrage over social change fits the voter demographic that elected Ronald Reagan in 1980: whiter, more Christian, more generally religious, fewer Hispanic and Asian voters, blacks less inclined to vote. It fits the current electorate less well.
In the podcasts associated with this blog we discuss the econometric based polls that would have predicted a Republican victory in 2016, but that economic modeling does not account for the specifics of a campaign run by real people in a specific media environment. The Fox News niche is large and Trump's economic populism is popular, but the Fox News culture wars push away voters that might naturally fall into a Republican majority: educated women, Hispanics, Asians, religious blacks.
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| Is Hillary really ahead? This poll shows a virtual tie. |
The establishment Republicans in the Reagan-Bush-McCain-Romney-Ryan mold try to push out beyond the Fox audience but the die had been cast and Trump is Trump. Trump's words and policy speak to the base but not beyond it, so the Republican Civil War is underway.
One frame for understanding this Civll War is to see it as Populist Republican versus Reagan Republican. But another is to view it as Fox Republican versus a Fox-Plus Republican. The Reagan coalition whose successors are McCain-Bush-Romney-Ryan attempt to be more inclusive, to include women, Hispanics, blacks. The pure Fox coalition doesn't quite make a majority in 2016 unless Trump can motivate more frustrated and resentful whites. His poll results in Ohio showed that it was possible, but the "pussy-gate" video may have put the majority out of reach.
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Wait. There is even more! That's right, there is also a podcast. Thad Guyer and I hash out the meaning of the current polls. We disagree on what data is real and relevant. We discuss the videotape and the debate and Bill Clinton and whether or not Trump can stick to issues that have popular appeal with, maybe, enough voters to get him elected.
Click Here: Disaster for Trump? Maybe not. Hear us out
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