2016 Postmortem

DonViejo

(60,536 posts) Wed Jul 20, 2016, 09:13 PM Jul 2016

Roger Ailes built the Republican party – now both are crumbling in plain sight - by Richard Wolffe

Just two days into the Republican national convention, it’s already been an ugly week for American conservatives as they watch their party torn apart

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We are witnessing the Great Unravelling of the Republican party. Its ideological intellectuals openly disdain and plot against the party’s nominee. Its elected officials are too busy to show up to their own party’s convention.

And now the conservative echo chamber itself is collapsing across the mainstream media it surely dominates.

The rapid demise of Roger Ailes at Fox News Channel is as seismic an event as Trump’s nomination. For Ailes ruled over a conservative media and political empire that stretched far beyond cable television.

Nixon’s former image-maker could make or break presidential campaigns, elected officials, TV anchors, talk radio and the pundit class. When Candidate Obama tried personally to woo Murdoch and Ailes in 2008, he found Murdoch far more reasonable than Ailes, who was convinced the young senator represented a mortal threat to the republic.

Ailes could single-handedly turn the Washington conversation from one concocted conspiracy to another: from the New Black Panther Party and death panels to Benghazi, destroying careers, the possibility of political compromise, and the mainstream Republican party along the way. He left other news organizations in his wake, struggling to copy his commercial success with artificial news and freak show formats.

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/20/roger-ailes-republican-party-convention-crisis?CMP=edit_2221