mike siegel and the dark art of target democracy

They're tap-dancing, these Republican surrogates on local talk radio. So what else is new, you say?

Mike Siegel, KTTH early morning (6-9a) talk jock would never cop to being a Republican or, for that matter, anybody's surrogate. He's a hard-edged, humorless bulldog, an attorney who (like Bill O'Reilly) claims he's a pragmatic, non-partisan truth seeker.

Siegel's ties with Bill O'Reilly goes back to the '90's when the Grand Bloviator was still anchoring the trashy syndicated TV tabloid, Inside Edition. He convinced O'Reilly there was a conspiracy of high-profile pedophiles whose tentacles (testicles?) extended from Seattle to Olympia. It was supposedly headed up by a high-ranking Seattle Police official and covered up by Mayor Norm Rice (who Siegel always passionately hated). O'Reilly came to town and tried to confront Hizzoner with a camera crew, but Rice ducked him, and the story went away. O'Reilly went home to NY presumably to pick on cripples, little old ladies and get active in the loofah culture.

Despite his non-partisan protestations, there's rarely an issue or a candidate Mike Siegel goes to bat for that's not conservative and/or Republican.

And going to bat is what the scrappy Siegel is all about.   

Word on the street is that his sad dayshare is a weak spot in the ratings dominance of new right-wing talk station, KTTH over arch rival KVI. Granted, he has a tough row to hoe against his former KVI colleague, the popular morning smarm-meister Kirby 'Curvy' Wilbur.

This morning, Siegel argued as he regularly (to his credit) does, with State Democratic Chair Paul Berendt--about voting 'reforms.' He's against (as Republicans traditionally are) Motor-Voter (the successful automatic voter registration of driver's licensees) voting by mail, and anything else that makes voting easier for the hoi polloi.

He preaches the hard-ass GOP line: show your ID to prove you're a human being, a non-felon, and a citizen. (Maybe in the shining futureworld of the Republutopian 'ownership society', we'll add Christian, heterosexual and credit cardholder to the list.) 

It's conventional wisdom that Democrats win in large voter turn-outs. In our state, the Democrats' get-out-the-vote efforts for Kerry helped win majorities in both houses of the Legislature for the first time in years.

It's been stunning since the election to hear Republican Guber-Unvote demonstrators whipped up by KVI and KTTH, chanting the small 'd' democratic mantra, "Count every vote!" They're recent converts--having become born-again populists after their losing candidate Dino Rossi could be spun as the victim of voting irregularities.

But here's the bind that ties for the R's :

Bush won because, in very targeted areas, (Ohio, Florida) he beat the D's in getting out the vote even in an election in which they surpassed themselves turning out their base. Karl Rove's strategy, as well we all know, called for ransacking the cow pastures for every stray evangelical that had ever bent a knee (and maybe a few more). For other reasons, irrelevant here, R's made inroads with Hispanics, blacks, and women--groups whose votes they've traditionally tried to suppress.

Getting out the vote, then--even for the GOP--is key. Do R's still want to hold down these minority voters now that they seem to have a chance winning them over? Are they so sure felons are really all Democrats? Is it possible that dead people might tend to vote Republican? These questions need to be carefully considered if R's are to be the organic majority they brag about becoming.

The Rovian art of target democracy must be learned by local GOP activists and ably practiced by GOP mouthpieces such as Siegel, Carlson, Wilbur, et al.

Watch Republicans strive to invoke fear and loathing against Latinos among white suburbanites, exurbians and ruralites while appealing at the same time to the conservative Catholicism of those same Latinos. They'll try to instill or buttress white middle-class fears of black people, their criminality and decadent hip-hop culture while simultaneously appealing to African-American Christian conservatism and cultural homophobia. They've got a job-o-work to do, but they've proven time and time again--they're up to it.

It's target democracy in action.

It's about get-out-the-vote. Stay tuned for morality, morality, morality; an up-tempo drumbeat of anti-immigration; more gratuitous framing of liberals as hippies, defrauders, criminals and traitors; and a ramping up of hard-line 'rules are rules' rhetoric from ruling class wannabes in a broadening political movement.

Comments

[Sandra]

Your blog is getting good, dude. Do you have to listen to talk radio all day to do this? or can you just make it up? For your sake, I hope its the latter. Keep it coming.
love, Sandy (of Sandy and Rick)

[tophat]

Michael -- all right on point. However what you worry about is stuff the righties don't; things like: consistency, single-standards, and, for many, if not most, of their media squawkers, allowing facts to trump opinion.

While, for points you raise, Rove can not embrace the un-re-wereallydidnotlose-vote hear in ecotopia that does not stop them from having multiple standards to draw on as situations call for.

I suspect most folks would consider Rush to be a pill-poppin law breaker, but that does not stop him from railing against dope-fiend criminals.

Any way, take a break from listening to the drivel. Dust off The Who and ...meet the new boss, just like the old boss ...and tell the people that 'we won't be fooled again' (ie as in the social security lock box contains WMD).