Everything we are used to seeing in what President Trump calls "Fake News" existed by 1972. The parallels are amazing – and are part of why I decided to spend so much time analyzing 1972 and 2020 as similar patterns of conflict.
The current New York Times overt shift from smearing President Trump with Russian collusion (which collapsed) to smearing President Trump with allegations of racism were all foreshadowed by the universal elite media hostility to President Nixon a half century ago. The lockstep hostility of the Times, The Washington Post, and the left-wing TV systems were simply proof that in President Trump they had encountered a leader bent on changing their world and confronting their values.
White combines his extraordinary analysis of the New York Times-Boston Globe-Washington Post system (and the three networks they shaped) with an explanation of the mutation from what he calls "the liberal idea" into "the liberal theology" – and the "movement" which grew out of it. (I will deal with the movement in my next column and its devastatingly destructive impact on cities in part four of this series.) This piece focuses on the adversarial news media and its impact on 1972 and on 2020.
The real opposition to Nixon was not the Democratic Party nor its nominee Senator George McGovern. In White's analysis, the real opposition to Nixon was the elite news media.
The elite news media hated Nixon more than any major politician before Trump. Despite the rise of talk radio, Twitter, Facebook, and cable news, nothing in White's core analysis has changed. He draws a sharp distinction between the lesser news media, many of which were for Nixon, and the elite media – which was monolithically, bitterly hostile to President Nixon.
White emphasizes that it was the culture of the New York literati which defined The New York Times and the three networks. It was a generational change from reporters of facts to advocates of ideology which compounded the bitterness and hostility.
Here is White's analysis:
It is vital to understand that the news media and its academic and Hollywood allies are the defenders and imposers of an alternative culture which hates conservatism and particularly hates effective conservatives.
The elite media had its final victory over President Nixon in the Watergate scandal, which drove him from office. The elite media tried this with President Trump in the "Russian collusion" lie and failed.
The Left wants to forget that when the American people weighed the values of President Nixon and the values of The New York Times, Nixon got 61 percent of the vote. The same would happen 12 years later when President Reagan won with 58 percent of the vote.
Do not be shocked if in the 2020 result, President Trump wins by a margin unimaginable today (no one in September 1971 or September 1983 would have predicted gigantic landslides against the Left).
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Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) is a former Georgia Congressman and Speaker of the U.S. House. He co-authored and was the chief architect of the "Contract with America" and a major leader in the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional elections. He is noted speaker and writer. This commentary was shared via Gingrich Productions.
Tags: Newt Gingrich, commentary, 2020 and 1972 Part Two, Power of the Media To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
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