Here are a couple of excerpts from J. Robert Smith’s American Thinker post from earlier this week titled, “Stop Dancing with the MSM.” He says what I’ve been saying for years:
DC’s GOP consultants will bay: “You can’t speak frankly. Independents are very sensitive, very, very volatile. The election hinges on them. Why, one wrong pronoun, one misplaced adjective… We have all this polling and focus group data that says so.”
Thing is, Republican consultants’ track records of success in recent years is a tad spotty. The consultants’ milquetoast approach, their walking-on-eggshells fear of alienating independents because a Republican presidential candidate dare speak to them as adults — voters who may just find straight talk welcome, raises the question: “How well did your approach work in ’08 and ’12, Presidents McCain and Romney, notwithstanding? Err, sorry.
Under the subtitle “End-run the MSM at every opportunity,” Smith writes (emphasis is mine):
High time that the MSM game plan is rethought in GOP campaign communications strategies. Time to sweep right and end-run the MSM. Remember, the goal for Republicans is to reach target voters in critical electoral states. The MSM isn’t exactly an enabler of that goal. The MSM’s aim is to impose screens that dilute, distort, or mute Republican messaging. The key for Republicans: go local, go grassroots.
Local means engaging media in communities in key states. Sure leftist taint may have reached newsrooms in Dayton or Cedar Rapids, but ego and ambition might override ideology. Plenty of local reporters — and producers and editors — would hanker to raise their profiles. If a local reporter slants his coverage, give him B-list treatment afterward. Reward reporters who shoot-straight.
Go grassroots. Nowadays, there’s no shortage of communications channels outside the national and local media. To effectively exploit the grassroots takes infrastructure, and that takes investments of time, money, and personnel. It’s a heavier lift. Republicans haven’t done grassroots very well in recent years. But the grassroots is integral to making an MSM end-run succeed.
Smith closes it out nicely:
The DC GOP consultant cabal will howl: “But you can’t do that! You just don’t get it. The MSM is too powerful and”…
And with thinking like that, there may not have been an American revolution in 1776.
Read J. Robert Smith’s entire article here.
Image credit: patdollard.com.
