Even if you’re not much of a political junkie, that time of year when candidates start declaring their presidential intentions sort of gets your motor running much like a slow but steady IV of caffeine.
But if you’re a Republican, the excitement also comes with an undercurrent of dread, because we know the inevitable “most dangerous Republican ever” smears are coming, just as we saw with John McCain, Mitt Romney, Donald Trump, and now Ron DeSantis (just to name a few).
Over the last six months, the Republican field has widened, with Trump, DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson, Tim Scott, Vivek Ramaswamy, and now apparently Mike Pence all throwing their respective hats into the ring in a bid to challenge Joe Biden, with Chris Christie giving strong hints that he’ll be next.
Throughout the GOP presidential primary campaign season, we’re going to see a lot of jockeying for position because that’s what presidential candidates do. There will be heckuva a lot of spin, a lot of infighting and craziness, a major stretching of the truth in some instances, a lot of finger pointing, “epic” memes from the various campaign teams, and a whole lot of “Imma trueeeeeeeee conservative” rhetoric coming from all of them.
But while all that’s going on, something very important to keep in mind is that the mainstream media are going to be doing their thing as well, which means manufacturing horse races, declaring candidacies over, taking candidates out of context, whipping up the intraparty drama, and fomenting a sense of inevitability that most likely won’t match up with reality.
It is that last point I want to focus on the most because in my opinion, that is perhaps the most insidious of them all.
Remember the four years of “walls are closing in” stories we got from the MSM about Donald Trump? I mean there was a steady drumbeat pretty much every day that he was a goner, that he was going to be hauled away in handcuffs or removed from office some other way over alleged “collusion with Russia” and all the other nonsense – but it never happened.
They created a sense of inevitability around all of it, and there were certain “Republicans” who at a certain point started to believe the hype. In my view, it was a coordinated attempt at undermining his presidency, which the media did with a certain degree of success.
Fast forward to 2023, and they are up to their old tricks again. The same media who told us after Biden was sworn in that Trump was “finished” politically-speaking thanks to two impeachments are now, in a bizarre twist, seemingly cheering on his presidential candidacy, and they’re doing it by way not only giving him gobs of airtime but also in trying to create a sense of inevitability around the man who is widely viewed to be Trump’s chief competitor – DeSantis.
For the past month or so, they’ve proclaimed DeSantis’ candidacy over before it even got started good, before the first primary debate has even been held and all that. And in the aftermath of the tech glitches that happened during DeSantis’ announcement Wednesday night, The Usual Suspects were dooming and glooming, telling us that Twitter servers crashing early on during the Twitter Spaces event was a big signal that DeSantis just wasn’t very good at this and should just hang it up. Here are some examples:
Politico Playbook: “Why DeSantis’ disastrous launch matters”:
Politico: “DeSantis’ launch marred by horrendous tech failures”:
I get it – having major technical problems as you’re trying to launch your campaign is not the way anybody wants to get things kicked off. And understandably, your competitors are going to make hay out of it. It’s all part of the process. If something goes wrong, your opponents pounce and seize, as the MSM would say.
But the fact of the matter is that, ideally, the MSM are not supposed to be an “opponent” in any political race, and they most certainly should not be picking sides. Further, not even a month from now, Joe Sixpack working overtime at the hardware store and Susie Everywoman is not going to give a rat’s patootie about DeSantis’ launch woes, much in the same way few people outside of partisan actors on the left and in the press gave a rip about Trump holding a glass of water with two hands or walking down a ramp slowly one time.
They’re going to be thinking about the kitchen table issues that matter to most Americans, and are going to be wondering how the candidates plan on addressing those issues.
The hyperventilating from the press (and some on the right) over what happened Wednesday night is just nuts, but it’s par for the course for “Smart Set” types who reside in a bubble, who can’t look behind what the Very Online Left and Right and “political consultants” have to say on any given issue.
The moral of the story here is to not get caught up in the sense of inevitability stunts the media tries to pull. Conservatives know not to fall for the media’s tactics, but at the same time it’s easy to believe that something is bound to happen so we should just surrender to it.
“The walls are closing in!” “He’s finished.” Do not listen to these people.
As I’ve said before, regardless of where one stands now on the Trump/DeSantis debate, my advice to Republican voters and independent voters who tend to vote for Republicans is to simply ignore the mainstream press and talking heads to the extent they can and make judgments about ALL candidates based on not just listening to them but researching their records and seeing what their accomplishments are. Because there are few things the media loves more than trying to manipulate people ahead of elections.
After all they’ve done to earn voter distrust over the years, no one should give them the satisfaction of complying. Not today, not tomorrow, no ever.