Surely Brooks can't have had a religious epiphany of some sort and decided to start telling The Truth? That would require he have an ethical framework in the first place.

I think what's happening is that Republicans are freaking out because they just got smashed in this election and fear (with good reason) that much worse is coming, and they are in crisis mode, debating what they should do.

Brooks and the other neocons are petrified that Republicans will blame them and their wars (as they should) and toss neocosnervatism aside. So they're trying now to argue that the real problem with Republicans is that they are too attached to limited government principles of the past, and that people ("normal nonideological people") want more neoconservatism, MORE militatrism and protection from the Bad Bad Arabs and Muslims.

It's an attempt to shift the blame for the collapse of the Republican Party away from where it belongs (allowing itself to be transformed into a vessel for neoconservatism radicalism) to the opposite (a failure to follow neoconservatism enough). THey're petrified that the country will wake up and realize that they are the authors of most of our woes.

The sad fact is that the right-wing agenda is very easy to tailor to the short attention spans of reasonable, busy people who aren't paying that much attention.

People have accepted this defeatist frame for a long time now - "Hey, the rigth-wing methods of persuasion are better because they are simpler and appeal to pepole with short attention spans, so they will win."

That has been the somewhat self-pitying refrain of Bush critics for a long time now. But what amazes me is that it continues still -- not merely after the last election, but also in light of ample amounts of polling data demonstrating that people are abandoning The Republican Party and the "conservative" movement which props is up in droves.

They are losing the public debate. Their simplistic slogans and debating methods are failing. Yet people who are accustomed for so long to insisting that Americans are stupid and therefore vulnerable to such tactics continue to insist that They Will Win, even when they aren't.

I'm not addressing this specific exchange with Harris. I wasn't writing this with the intention of winning some public debate, but with the intention of trying to communicate with someone on a playing field and with terms that I thought might be heard (my broader observations about the exchange is in the post below). So who "won" or "lost" this exchange wasn't really the point to me. I didn't see it in those terms. When I was writing my reply to him, I really had no intention of publishing it.

So I'm not objecting to your specific assessment of this exchange, but to the broader point that I hear continuously that simple-minded and deceitful claims are so powerful because Americans don't pay attention. It's a bit patronizing of a view, and I think, empirically false now.

I think I need to make myself more clear. I am in no way suggesting that anyone "throw in the towel" (least of all you).

I didn't think you were suggesting that. I know from your past comments that "throwing in the towel" is the opposite of what you believe.

I just react strongly when people claim that the misleading though simplistic themes of the Right will prevail because they are simplistic and easier to sell. I just don't think that's true, and worse, I think it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

While there is a lot of blame on the media for the last six years in allowing the Bush-led Right to spew propaganda unchallenged, I think the real blame lies with Democrats and other Bush critics who simply failed to figure out how to defeat it -- in large part becasue their consultants told them not to try because the simplistic themes of the Right were invulnerable. Even Democrats who vigorously opposed the Bush agenda listened to those claims, grew afraid of trying to challenge them (on the ground that they would lose), and allowed it all to take root without any meaningful challenge.

Glenn, your media analysis is very valuable, but you tend to not to recognize that reporters are not independent actors, but employees of large commercial enterprises. The issue is not so much the individual ethics of reporters or journalistic culture, but the practices and policies of the companies they work for.

I agre that that's a factor, and said so. But it clearly isn't the only thing needed to explain everything.

For one thing, not everyone who works for a company is a whore for the company willing to sacrifice their integrity to please their bosses. Some people who work at large corporations -- including media corporations -- retain their integrity and fight agianst currents they disagree with. Many don't (which is why the dynamic you describe is relevant), but many do (which is why your theory doesn't explain Everything).

Dana Priest is a very valued reporter at the Washington Post. Jim Risen and Eric Lichtblau won Pulitzer Prizes, and sure enhanced their standing at the NYT, as a result of uncovering and exposing illegal eavesdropping. There are anti-administration leaks and anti-administration stories all the time in major newspapers.

Yes, you are right that the corporate culture breeds some of these attributes. But clearly there are people within it who nonetheless produce good reporting. And -- as the Lewinsky scandal showed -- scandal sells newspapers and produces ratings, so there is a corresponding economic/corporate incentive to actually do real investigative journalism (there's a countervailing incentive not to).

I just don't think it can be reduced to "Media = corporations = dictatorship suppressing dissent."