Some are calling an Obama Regime’s deceptive tactic known as “stray voltage” a way to “troll the GOP,” but when a president and his underlings habitually put out fraudulent information, just so they can get some free publicity – hasn’t the entire country been trolled?
At National Journal, Major Garrett explained how the President purposefully engages in disinformation in order to create controversy.
Of the pay-gap rap, Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post found parts “revolting.” Marcus was closer than she knew. Not with the adjective but the root noun.
The White House saw the contentious wrangling over the dimensions of the gender pay gap nationally–even the gnawing over male/female pay disparities at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave–as a gift. A gift the White House wrapped for itself.
Allow me to explain. The questioning of Obama’s use of a Census Bureau statistic that the median wages of working women in America are 77 percent of median wages earned by men lasted almost all week. The story revved into mini-overdrive when the White House defensively swatted away criticism that salaries on Obama’s watch–for which the American Enterprise Institute used the same median wages metric applied by the Census Bureau–showed that women in the president’s employ earned 88 cents for every dollar earned by men.All to the delight of a White House desperate to inject the issue into the political bloodstream and amplify otherwise doomed Senate Democratic efforts to make it easier for women to sue and win damages for workplace pay differences. The controversy that played out on front pages, social media, TV, and radio did just that.
This is the White House theory of “Stray Voltage.” It is the brainchild of former White House Senior Adviser David Plouffe, whose methods loom large long after his departure. The theory goes like this: Controversy sparks attention, attention provokes conversation, and conversation embeds previously unknown or marginalized ideas in the public consciousness. This happens, Plouffe theorizes, even when–and sometimes especially when–the White House appears defensive, besieged, or off-guard. I first discovered and wrote about this in July of 2012.A top White House adviser told me last week’s pay gap dust up was a “perfect” example of stray voltage. This time it was premeditated.
“Under this approach, a president wants the fact-checkers to call him out (again and again) because that hubbub keeps the issue in the news, which is good for promoting the issue to the public. It is the political equivalent of there is no such thing as bad publicity.”
Dickerson calls Obama’s tactic “a new, higher order of deception: creating the controversy for the purposes of milking it.”
Ace of Spades is fond of pointing how out certain left-wing websites delight in posting grabby, salacious headlines strictly for the increase in traffic they garner. It works every time.
But now we have a president who is engaging in the same ridiculous behavior and we’re supposed to believe it’s just a slightly shady political tactic?
Someone explain to me how this sort of manipulation of facts and people’s emotions only hurts the GOP. This isn’t “politics as usual.” It’s Banana Republic stuff.
Not that it hasn’t come without a price. A recent Fox News poll shows that 60% of the American people believe Obama lies to the country on important matters some or most of the time. Up to 10% of those people are apparently comfortable with that, since the president has a disapproval rating of only 50% – 53%. “Yes, Obama lies on a regular basis – how else are we to win with our toxic agenda?” say 7% – 10% of Obama’s base.
Dickerson explains how the disinformation is used by Democrats in an election year as a weapon against Republicans who have the facts on their side.
Facts, schmacts. As long as people are talking about an issue where my party has an advantage with voters, it’s good. ..Democrats have several reasons to keep stories about equal-pay equity in the news. It excites their voters, attracts female voters, and crowds out whatever the Republicans wanted to talk about (these days, Obamacare). It also sets a trap. The more Republicans have to talk about politically unfavorable issues, the greater chance they’ll slip up and say something dumb like candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock did that can be exploited more broadly.”
Bill Murphy at the NRSC says Democrats have a huge credibility problem and it’s only getting worse.
“Now you know why candidates like Mark Pryor, Gary Peters, Mark Udall and Mark Begich are following the President’s lead. They’re lying about the facts to create coverage about anything but the issues that voters care most about.”
Murphy argues that “lying and trolling isn’t going to help,” but that remains to be seen.
Lying has always worked for them, before.