Palin and the End of an Era The former Alaska governor's split from Fox News highlights the fade of the Tea Party as well as her own diminishing role.
The news that Sarah Palin will no longer be a paid contributor to Fox News puts an exclamation point on the end of an era, or at least a chapter, in U.S. political history. She could land somewhere else, and she still has her Facebook friends, but it’s hard to imagine she’ll find a more visible or influential platform than Fox.
The former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential nominee has been fading from the scene for some time, as she inadvertently highlighted when she complained on Facebook during the Republican convention in August that the network had canceled her scheduled interviews that night.
Once the face of an energetic and politically potent Tea Party movement, Palin is leaving Fox at a time when polls show the Tea Party at an all-time low in both membership and favorability. Her departure also coincides with calls by some leading Republicans for their party to stop saying things that erode the GOP brand and turn off voters in droves. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said bluntly this week at a Republican National Committee meeting in Charlotte that the GOP needs to stop being “the stupid party,” and former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said he agreed.
Views of the Tea Party movement are at their lowest point ever, with voters for the first time evenly divided when asked to match the views of the average Tea Party member against those of the average member of Congress. Only eight percent (8%) now say they are members of the Tea Party, down from a high of 24% in April 2010 just after passage of the national health care law.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 30% of Likely U.S. Voters now have a favorable opinion of the Tea Party. Half (49%) of voters have an unfavorable view of the movement.
Did I mention that this is from Rasmussen?... (Of course, one could argue that Rasmussen was wrong about the November election too, and therefore this is suspect...) However, for those that think the right-leaning Rasmussen is the only poll they can believe, this is pretty damning...
Of course, Palin has been the voice and the face of "The Stupid Party" for a loooong time. But at some point I wonder if they'll ever get the message that the "party is over."
FauxNews called and they want their 15-minutes back.
From an OPINION PIECE:
"Republicans have a problem. For years they could shout down any attempt to point out the extent to which their policies favored the elite over the poor and the middle class; all they had to do was yell “Class warfare!” and Democrats scurried away. In the 2012 election, however, that didn’t work: the picture of the G.O.P. as the party of sneering plutocrats stuck.
As a result, prominent Republicans have begun acknowledging that their party needs to improve its image. But here’s the thing: Their proposals for a makeover all involve changing the sales pitch rather than the product. When it comes to substance, the G.O.P. is more committed than ever to policies that take from most Americans and give to a wealthy handful." -- Paul Krugman
...<snip>....
“We must not,” [Bobby Jindal] declared, “be the party that simply protects the well-off so they can keep their toys."
Meanwhile, back in Louisiana Mr. Jindal is pushing a plan to eliminate the state’s income tax, which falls most heavily on the affluent, and make up for the lost revenue by raising sales taxes, which fall much more heavily on the poor and the middle class. The result would be big gains for the top 1 percent, substantial losses for the bottom 60 percent. Similar plans are being pushed by a number of other Republican governors as well."
And now Fox just fired Dick Morris. Bad predictions? Will Karl Rove be next? A kinder gentler Fox? I read one opinion the Ailes wanted Paling to tone down her attacks on others.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
Fox News' credibility has fallen 9 percent in the past two years, according to new Public Policy Polling (PPP) results released on Wednesday.
The annual poll asks participants to rate their trust in multiple networks including Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, PBS, Comedy Central, ABC News, CBS News and NBC News. According to PPP's press release:
Just like its actual ratings, Fox News has hit a record low in the four years that we've been doing this poll. 41% of voters trust it to 46% who do not. To put those numbers into some perspective the first time we did this poll, in 2010, 49% of voters trusted it to 37% who did not.
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