WHEN WILL THE MEDIA FINALLY ADMIT THAT AMERICA IS NOT A "CENTER-RIGHT COUNTRY"?

Conservatives continue to push a fable about America that the GOP has been nurturing since Ronald Reagan, but it´s actually just that, a "fairy tale".

…Ronald Reagan & the GOP began a myth that the conservatives are still trying to sell.

While watching the FOX Opinion Network, I heard a recent interview where a "talking head" did a fine job in trying to sell the idea that "the United States is a center-right nation". This individual stated that he had the latest polling information and that; "40% of the population was identifying themselves as Conservatives, 20% were calling themselves Liberals or Progressives and 40% were Independents."

Now I don´t know where in the "polling world" this individual was getting his numbers, but I do recall the conservative "trash-talker Rush Limbaugh" also saying similar things at about the same time that the liberal Democrat, Barack Obama, was being elected as president by a landslide mandate of 365 electoral votes to 173. And today, the fact that less than 20% of the voting American public will even admit to being a member of the Republican Party, I seriously doubt that today, the United States of America could be considered a "center-right nation".

The first area that people need to understand is that most legitimate political scientists dispute the reliability of voters' identification with any political ideology. And other polling results have found that a strong majority of Americans favor the more progressive positions on a number of national issues such as Social Security, Universal Health Care, Medicare and Unemployment Insurance. They also mostly agree with government items such as FDIC insurance and government regulation of the banks and Wall Street. This is particularly true today since the recent past negative financial and market events of late 2008.

But as recently as November 2008, the conservative New York Times columnist Bill Kristol wrote that "this was a good Democratic year, but it is still a center-right country", yet he did not present any evidence to support that statement. Also in November, in the Wall Street Journal, the "Bush´s Brain" political adviser, Karl Rove wrote: "It is a tribute to his skills that Mr. Obama, the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate, won in a country that remains center-right." Just where does this kind of thinking come from? That is, unless they just can´t admit the reality of the current situation…..?

The reality is, that the Republicans starting from back in the early Reagan years did a great job in demonizing the concepts and the label of both: "Liberals and Progressives".

This all began during a Democratic President Jimmy Carter´s down economy. The oil embargo had just been started by OPEC, and there were long-lines at the gas station pumps for every American. Americans in the Iranian Embassy were also being held as hostages by an enraged band of Shiite Muslim extremists. And it was at this time, just before the American presidential election that candidate Ronald Reagan declared that; "The nine most frightening words that an American can hear today is; 'I´m from the government, and I´m here to help'."

From then on, the American political world began to change. And let´s also not forget Reagan´s favorite comment: "Government is not a solution to our problem, government 'is' the problem." And all of that negative GOP dialog against the US government then continued for almost 30 years

What is truly most unfortunate is that neither side realized that the rise of Ronald Reagan and the conservatives was just a well-financed sham and it was actually a political anomaly. As an example, Reagan use to always repeat the story about the "Welfare Woman that drove a new Cadillac." To this day, there have been hundreds of investigations by honest investigative journalists with the task of finding an example of that "welfare Cadillac owner". No woman was ever identified as one of those "Cadillac driving welfare abusers". Today, most people from back then now believe that it was just a Reagan political "urban legend".

What´s also interesting is that the percentage of tax-payer money that was actually spent in this particular welfare category was virtually infinitesimal. But it sure was a good story for the conservatives to use in demonstrating how that due to past congressional Democrats, the "lazy, poor, slackers were being allowed to illegally take hard earned tax payer dollars and to spend them on an automobile that the honest working stiffs were unable to afford."

Starting with the Reagan era, and a number of years beyond, the concepts of the conservative Republicans with their positive examples of items such as Knute Gingrich´s "1990´s Contract with America" were then the "vogue place to be in politics". However, in looking back, we won´t dwell on the fact that in the long run, the GOP failed to fulfill most of the items that had been listed on Knute´s so called "Contract".

During that period, the Democrat´s "New Deal" and President Johnson´s "Great Society" were declared virtually "dead" more than once by the GOP. Many attempts were also made over the past 30 years to kill or at least maim programs such as; Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid and other areas that were initially developed under FDR, Truman or JFK and Lyndon Johnson. Fortunately, as strong as the GOP had become, they were still unable to undo the long-term efforts of previous progressive presidents and Congresses.

The Republicans were however, able to achieve many of their government deregulation efforts, and the Market Crash of 2008 and the latest home mortgage foreclosure debacles are the aftermath of those past conservative´s efforts to date, at least so far.

Even though Barack Obama promised change during his election campaign, he initially did run on a basic liberal platform. His focus was on comprehensive health care reform; investing in new energy and new Green jobs; in ending the Bush-era tax cuts for the very wealthy; and ending the war in Iraq. President Obama then proceeded to win with more votes than any other candidate in American history, and his victory capped off several years' worth of sweeping Democratic electoral wins.

However, almost within hours of Obama's victory, portions of the political press corps still insisted that America remained firmly planted on the "center-right" of the political spectrum. NBC's Tom Brokaw announced less than one day after Obama claimed victory; "This country, even with the election of Barack Obama last night, remains a very centered country, or maybe even center-right in a lot of places,". Brokaw later added, "We still remain a centered country or a center-right country when you look at the geographic distribution."

Even the Newsweek editor Jon Meacham insisted that to govern successfully, Obama had to become a "center-right leader in order to match America's instinctively conservative streak". And The Washington Post's David Broder warned that too many victorious Liberal Democrats in Congress had "ideas of their own about what should be done in energy, health care and education". Of course, Mr. Broder totally ignored the fact that most surveys and polls had indicated most Americans favored many of those progressive Democratic ideas.

From the main-stream press' perspective, these broad Democratic wins did not signify a "sea change in American politics", which was exactly how the media had treated the big Republican wins for Reagan in 1980 and the Republican Congress change in 1994. Instead, according to the press and the media, the Democratic wins last year unfolded "in spite of voters' natural conservative leanings".

Of course, the conservatives were eager to downplay their losses, so they pushed the "center-right claim" in the wake of their stinging defeats. Even Karl Rove, still working for the Bush White House, appeared on Fox the day after Obama's win and stated: "Barack Obama understands this is a center-right country."

It is highly misleading for the news media to support that right-wing political spin, since it is totally not factually sound. However, months into Obama's first term, the "center-right claim" still enjoyed widespread media acceptance.

As expected, most of the "spin" came from the Fox Opinion Channel." Last February, the Fox anchor, Chris Wallace stated; "You could make the argument that this is still a center-right country". And this statement was made just minutes after he displayed an on-air graphic that showed widespread Republican losses in the recent elections.

Newsweek´s Jon Meacham again repeated that; "We remain a center-right nation in many ways, particularly culturally, and with our instincts," Chris Matthews at MSNBC even stated in April: "I've noted that we're right of center except when we're in a crisis, when we're left of center." Last May, Matthews stated: "The true north is somewhere right of center, not left of center."

The members of the GOP have done a good job of learning how to deal with long-range strategic planning. With that in mind, today they continue to imply that Democrats are electorally successful only if they're able to camouflage whatever liberal impulses they might have. Even the key commentator´s such as CBS´ Bob Schieffer had stated after the 2006 Democratic wins; "These Democrats that were elected last night are conservative Democrats". This was an incorrect statement. A Media Matters survey back then of the 30 newly elected House Democrats who took Republican seats in 2006 found that they advocated liberal positions, such as raising the minimum wage, changing the course in Iraq, funding embryonic stem-cell research, and opposing any effort to privatize Social Security. Not exactly a "center-right" agenda.

For the main-stream press, Democratic victories are explained away by the GOP stating that their candidates have moved more to the right, while Republican victories are confirmed as being a true expression of America's conservative pulse. Even after the Democratic landslide victory last November, following a campaign in which Republicans branded Obama as "the most liberal" member of the U.S. Senate", and even after Democrats took control of both house of Congress and won governorships and state legislatures nationwide, the news media continued to propagate the falsehood that America is a "fundamentally conservative country".

Oh, and the truth be told, Barack Obama was "not" the most liberal member of the Senate. That honor belongs to Senator Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, who is a self proclaimed "Social Democrat".

So, what is it going to take for getting this straight with America´s national media?

According to Gallup polling, Obama's approval ratings for this first 100 days in office were higher than those of any president since Ronald Reagan and higher than seven of the last eight presidents at their 100-day mark. It doesn't seem very likely that an entrenched center-right nation would reward a "liberal president" with a such a historically high job-approval rating. However, I suspect a centrist or center-left nation would.

A Pew Research Center poll showed that voters in 2008 identified Barack Obama as "liberal" and roughly as far to the left as Senator John McCain was to the right. But by overwhelming numbers, voters selected the liberal candidate over the conservative one. Not exactly the actions of a "center-right country".

There would be nothing more problematic in journalists' relying on this notion of "center-right" if the actual evidence continues to show the opposite. The truth is that in most policy areas, it is progressive ideas that enjoy majority support. Currently, Democrats control not only the White House and both houses of Congress, but a majority of governorships and state legislatures. This concept of a "center-right America" has now become particularly hard concept for the GOP and the media to sustain.

On issue after issue, and also with growing percentages over time, nominal independents or moderates increasingly mirror the opinions of nominal Democrats or liberals. The majority of America today is absolutely "center-left". What the right and center-right are refusing to admit is that it is "they are the ones that have now become isolated", it is no longer the "left" anymore.

Copyright G.Ater 2009

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