The Republican Noise Machine

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How the Republican Right hijacked politics in the U.S.

New book by David Brock titled, 'The Republican Noise Machine,' claims conservatives are setting the political agenda by dominating the media.

Updated: 10:45 p.m. ET May 17, 2004

With the presidential election less than six months away, there's been no shortage of books coming out recently which offer a decidedly partisan take on the issues of the day. The latest entry in this growing category is "The Republican Noise Machine." Written by David Brock, who describes himself as a former right-wing journalist, the book examines why, in his opinion, conservatives have succeeded in setting the political agenda by dominating the media. Brock discusses the book on “Today.”

Here’s an excerpt:
The Republican Noise Machine
Since defecting from the Republican Party in the latter half of the 1990s and publishing a confessional memoir in 2002, I’ve discussed my right-wing past with politicians, political activists and strategists, academic scholars, student groups, fellow writers, and hundreds of readers of my book Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative. I’m rarely asked anymore why I changed, or about the baroque intricacies of the anti-Clinton movement, which I once participated in and then renounced and exposed. After a presidential election decided by the Supreme Court, the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, and the war with Iraq, politics has moved to a different place.

Nowadays, when I talk about Blinded by the Right, people want to know not how I was blinded by the Right, but how so much of the country seems to be in that position. For the first time since 1929, the Republican Party controls all three branches of government. Fewer people identify with the Democratic Party today than at any time since the New Deal. Conservatism seems the prevailing political and intellectual current, while liberalism seems a fringe dispensation of a few aging professors and Hollywood celebrities. People ask me, a former insider, how the Republican Right has won political and ideological power with such seeming ease and why Democrats, despite winning the most votes in the last three presidential elections, seem to be caught in a downward spiral, still able to win at the ballot box but steadily losing the battle for hearts and minds.

While it is not the only answer, my answer is: It’s the media, stupid.

Read the rest of the excerpt here http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5000518/