Blitzkrieg Campaigning

I’m wondering if the problem with Fox News for the Republicans is that they rely on this network and its viewers so much that they fail to reach anyone outside the sphere of the nonsensical, which might include middle of the road voters. They can lie here and no one calls them on it but is that good for them in the long run? The big Ryan/Medicare problem is a case in point. Romney said something to the effect that they have Ryan in line now... about his plan to lay Medicare to waste. This being said the more powerful Fox News approach was just around the corner-- just make up a story. You see, Obama cut Medicare with his health care program. You remember that, right?  Yeah, that’s the ticket.

It’s a great Fox News type story but after the curtain is pulled aside does it do much for Romney? I’m not sure.

Obama made Medicare stronger not weaker, pushing the date out further that other action would be required, as I remember, and also giving additional benefits to seniors as well. Saying the opposite of what is true in a huge way is like a statue of liberty play in football.  It might be generously called misdirection but this misdirection depends on a propaganda technique called “The Big Lie” developed in WWII:

[The Big Lie is defined as the] use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."  - Wikipedia, from “The Big Lie”

In a way, this seems to be the overall format of Fox News itself.  The label “News” adds credibility to what we might otherwise expect to come across in a supermarket tabloid or dirty trick campaign literature. How could they distort the truth so consistantly? So surely they are speaking the truth. This “news” is of the veracity of what you might expect to hear in a robocall. This channel has always reminded me of the late night infomercial format but more particularly it reminds me of a radio commercial for a penis enlargement medication that stated “This has to be true, or we couldn’t say it on the radio.”

Romney’s “Big Lie” about Obama and Medicare follows this time honored formula. It plays to a Fox News audience and just might enlarge your willy-wacky as well if you believe it; seriously, anything is possible. Admittedly, a number of seniors may be in the Fox News audience, and their meanderings in life with word of mouth news, may well turn the tide somehow, maybe, I guess.  But I'm still not sure relying on the Fox News format will work.

Obama’s campaign strategy has been to very quickly respond to what it deems to be misrepresentations and lies. Perhaps Romney can lie quicker than can be corrected as seems to be the case lately. Perhaps there is a new twist on the Big Lie strategy, a modified Big Lie strategy, the RFBL, if you will: Rapid Fire Big Lies.