The MoDo Affect

Maureen Dowd showed her bad self in an opinion piece in March 20’s NYTimes.  She seemed soft on Trump.  If every talking heads are against something, MoDo is for it and vice versa.  Of course, if like me, you follow MoDo, this should have been anticipated, but I did not see it coming.

I hope to offer my spin on the Trump Phenomenon after this Tuesday’s primaries, but MoDo’s piece got me typing.  She seems to cover a lot politicos denouncing and criticizing what they see as his behavior, even Elizabeth Warren in a news bit in the Washington Times (of all places – but that’s a sign of the times) although it was quoting from her appearance on MSNBC – so the world has not gone completely wacko – yet.

Of course she also mentions Mitt, Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan, but it is Trump’s comebacks that seem of more interest to her.  She even sites his criticism of Fox’s Megyn Kelly, whom MoDo says she respects.

Her closing comment is what really caught my eye.  She quotes Joe Scarborough’s line “…that just as F.D.R. was the master of radio and J.F.K. of television, D.J.T. is the titan of Twitter.”  Now ain’t that a kick in the head, but once again, it’s a sign of times.

However, missed in the above attribution to mastery of mass media is Roger Ailes' strategy for the comeback of Nixon, his helping Reagan get elected, and let us not forget the rating dynamo Fox News. 

Back to Trump.  His campaign has shot down the catchphrase that has been banging around the internet: Fox News used to work for the Republican Party, now the Republican Party works for Fox News.  That has gone extinct unless the media master Ailes can reconstitute it, which might just happen if the Republican controllers can win back the party.

Trump has been using the mass media whether it is what he said or tweeted like his own tool of political advertisement.  And like a lot of really effective advertisement, what is delivered is not always what advertised.  The politicos and a lot of news pundits compare him to the world’s worst, Hitler, Mussolini, Idi Amin, or George Wallace.  Perhaps they are right, but given their track record for predicting the future, I doubt it.

The future President – no matter who he or she is – will have to deal with our current right wingnut House of Representatives, and to a slightly lesser extent, our living in fear of the Tea Party Senate.  That is going to be the big story in 2017.

Hitler had a whole gang of well organized groups, including the army, to back him up.  That describes Cruz more so than Trump.  The Teabagger Congress is already there to do his hidden agenda, and like the infamous Nazi, it is what you don’t see coming that gets you the worse.  Trump has an unorganized crowd of voters so far.  What good is that against the Tea Party Congress.

The Tea Party is America’s ISIS.  If you don’t agree with their view, they cut your political throat.