Wednesday, December 17, 2008

The Scareness Doctrine

Via Steve Benen, I'm kind of excited to see Anna Eshoo bring up reinstating the Fairness Doctrine. Not because I actually want it to pass, but because I want that to be the primary focus of furious right-wing mobilization while we pass the stuff I actually care about.

In general, I don't think there's a limited supply of right-wing (or left-wing) attention to issues, such that distracting it with one issue leaves less for other things. There's always some danger that introducing a new issue will mobilize a new set of political opponents, who then join an opposing coalition and over time absorb that coalition's views on all sorts of other issues. But I don't know who will get mobilized by this Fairness Doctrine stuff other than people who were into politics in the first place. And every Kristol or Krauthammer column that's devoted to the Fairness Doctrine isn't devoted to global warming denialism or distorting Democratic health care proposals.

1 comment:

Justin said...

We can do even better right? We could make a deal where we give up supporting the oh-so-scary fairness doctrine in exchange for the Republicans giving up on opposing our health care plans. This would thrill pundits, who would be excited about the bipartisanship.