“I cancelled my subscription to the Washington Post, thank you.”
The RPV Advance was hampered by the snow, to be sure. Yet in the opinion of one attendee, this afforded a much more intimate and familiar setting — one where Republicans seem to have settled on the determination that the opposition is no longer the Democratic Party, but the mainstream media itself.
Of course, this morning we all woke up to exactly what we predicted would be here — light snow and clear roads. It was absolutely beautiful for a 2017 RPV Advance that has proven by most every account to be a smaller, more intimate, and entirely enjoyable event for the 400 attendees present.
Sean Spicer’s surprise visit to the Advance was a big hit, to be sure. Last minute cancellations ensured an abundance of food, so well fed activists are happy activists indeed.
Which really does have to be the story of the 2017 RPV Advance to date — everyone is positively ebullient for a party that lost all three statewide races and 15 seats in the House of Delegates. One might think this would invite a mood of introspection and defeat…
…that assumption would be entirely incorrect.
Virginia Republicans have the sense of being on the attack, thus living up to the reputation of this being a true advance and not a retreat.
Most notable in the mood for going on the offensive? Saturday’s Congressional Luncheon with five members of the delegation — Goodlatte, Wittman, Griffith, Brat and Garrett — and their dual message for a receptive activist base: Republicans are getting things done, and the media is clearly picking a side.
Republicans are tired of the bias, and they are no longer going to take it lying down.
Goodlatte kicked off the ball with comments regarding how much the House of Representatives was passing onto the U.S. Senate — who sat on some things, but acted on a solid amount of legislation. Wittman reinforced the absolute need to commit to fully funding the military at every practical level. Griffith echoed these sentiments as well… but with each successive speaker, the critique of the failure of the press to comment directly on Republican accomplishments became more and more apparent.
Enter Dave Brat.
Brat mentioned the Richmond Times-Dispatch by name as a critic, and when the line worked with the crowd, Brat simply kept hammering as the press corps clicked away at their keyboards. The hammers didn’t stop when the microphone was handed to Tom Garrett, who continued to demonstrate in five separate points where Republicans were being failed by the mainstream media and the absolute need of Republicans to push back against the narrative being set by the media writ large.
A momentary pause. Ed Gillespie — the Republican gubernatorial candidate who endured a near-hostile relationship with the Washington Post in particular and the print media in general — made a surprise visit to the RPV Advance (at least, to the rest of us watching) and thanked the attendees at the luncheon for their help, support, and despite having gained the second most votes for any gubernatorial candidate in the history of Virginia politics, was defeated by the person who gained the most number of votes in a gubernatorial election — Ralph Northam.
One gets the sense that a message was being delivered, aimed directly at the handful of mainstream print media in attendance — Republicans are tired of the bias, and they are no longer going to take it lying down.
The Republican faithful did not mince words, either during or after the five congressionals made their thoughts known. The effect was virtually electric, and illustrated why Virginia Republicans were giving off a different mood than abject defeat. Not retrospection, but clear-sighted awareness of the battlefield as it is.
Gillespie’s interaction with Washington Post reporter Laura Vozzella as he was leaving the luncheon said it all. Vozzella attempted to get a question in edgewise as Gillespie left the event and received a curt reply with a broad smile: “I cancelled my subscription with the Washington Post. Thank you.”
Gillespie moved beyond the scrum.
Whether the Washington Post and the Richmond Times-Dispatch care or understand this dynamic is ultimately irrelevant.
There’s an old saying that you only know what you know. Give a boy a hammer and the world becomes a nail. The fable about the frog and the scorpion. The press is perhaps oblivious to the idea that they are reporting on the news that matters to them. Or that they are carrying the water of the political left, if for no other reason than their own worldview so neatly coincides with the worldview of a particular political camp.
Republicans, on the other hand, are keenly aware of the bias that exists in so many of our institutions: education, courts, business, colleges and universities, even the military.
The mainstream media is no exception to this bias, especially when those doing the reporting and editing politically lean in one direction more often than not. When the media is not aware of this bias — or when they choose to ignore it — it creates a certain sense among those who disagree or raise eyebrows that the disagreement is more than just a one-off thing… but a clash of perspectives irreconcilable to either facts or alternatives points of view.
One might argue that, perhaps, the pretense of an objective media should be discarded. Fair enough — but then the eroding of faith in institutions continues at pace.
One might argue that, perhaps, the Republicans are simply flat out irrational, wrong, and demanding a narrative that simply does not exist in the public mind. Fair enough — but this entails a certain failure to appreciate a perspective in which, yes, people are entitled to determine their own values — not have them imposed upon them by the institutions that hypothetically exist to serve the public…
Whether the Washington Post and the Richmond Times-Dispatch care or understand this dynamic is ultimately irrelevant. The media monopoly broken by the Trump 2016 campaign is a crack in a dam of information that shows every sign of exploding in true form.
If legacy media outlets will not present all perspectives fairly, then expect opinion media to proliferate at the expense of our institutions. Despite the drubbing of 2017, the pretense of objective media is dead, dead, dead — as Republicans have finally had enough.
