Sheffield is right. You can´t get your message out if you have no means to transmit it. I don´t know how many times I´ve said this.

Exactamente!

#1..You hit the nail right on the head. Until the GOP plays the same game as the Dem´s and uses Alinsky´s rules against them we will be hosed..

Sheffield has defined the problem well, but, in practical terms, what is the solution?
Many on these threads castigate Repubs for not fighting back. My question is: How would you know whether they did or not?

Assuming that media and culture control the political environment makes for a nice article for us to read, it is not what made obama win the election.
He won this, and every election he ever won by implementing VOTER FRAUD.

Obama won re-election through a combination of fraud and an uninformed electorate. We will have to solve both of these problems to take our country back. Like it or not, the Republican party is our best vehicle to accomplish what needs to be done, but I haven´t seen any indication that they plan to address either issue.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you, Matthew Sheffield for expressing so eloquently much, and a great deal more, of what I’ve been pondering for years but have sorely lacked the ability to express it myself.

Same here #8. Simply being right isn´t enough. We thought the blog/talk show movement would counter the "old media". But it hasn´t, enough.

If I may make a second post, the problem with blogs and talk shows is that they preach to the converted. Rush Limbaugh may have a cast audience, but 99.9% of it agrees with him already.

Make that "vast," not "cast."

but....but.....I see John McCain and Lindsey Graham on the Sunday shows all the time!

Overhaul the conservative movement? Ah, to the center-right, where the smart conservatives live. I get it.

No thank you, Mr. Sheffield. Many of us are aware that the media are not irrelevant; they are in fact armed combatants. We need to engage them. Don´t give them soundbites to play with, twist and reinterpret. Go on their tv shows LIVE, and don´t pull punches. Don´t put up with biased debate techniques or biased moderators. Call them on it - then and there. Walk out if necessary. Unfortunately, this requires both a willingness to put oneself in harm´s way - to actually fight for something - and an understanding of what one is fighting for.

There are many other ways to get our message out - and don´t discount twitter, facebook and youtube - but they all require the willingness to pay a price, and we seem to have too few in the political arena who actually believe that anything is worth that extreme.

Or maybe it´s that they don´t really know anymore what they are fighting for. The ´conservative movement´, as represented by the Republican Party, is no longer clear on its message or what it stands for. If you can´t express who you are, it doesn´t matter if you can get the public to hear you or not.

I strongly agree this article and poster #1. Conservatives need to understand this reality and act accordingly. The first enemy every conservative faces is the ideological opposition of the liberal media complex. The mainstream press determines what stories are chosen and how they are reported, and its power to set the agenda and frame the debate in liberal terms cannot be overstated. As far as conservatism is concerned, the liberal media is the anti-message.

Conservatives must find ways to speak truth through that power. It follows that we need conservative candidates who have the courage of their convictions and the rhetorical skill to fight the media first and win. The liberal media will always hate conservatives, but it is possible to make them fear our candidates. Reporters hate looking stupid on YouTube.

Last year there were two Republican politicians who took the media on, head on, and won: Chris Christie and Newt Gingrich. Christie is not reliably conservative, and Gingrich had too much baggage. Whomever we choose next time must 1. Control our message (no more screw ups like Akin etc.), 2. Make guys like the Williams twins (Juan and Brian) afraid to ask stupid, dishonest questions.

Several posters have hit on what, in my opinion, is the main issue. The media is the enemy. They run or actually "are" the democrat party. The Republicans have to run against the media.

I can´t stand John McCain but for a while he ran against the media and was doing quite well. Suddenly he stopped running against the media and his campaign fell apart.

A good street fighter will whip a black belt every time because he cheats. The media are street fighters and the Pubs play by the rules. Until they get in the gutter, they will continue to lose.

FTA: most voters actually have no idea what the conservative position on taxes and the deficit is. By and large, they have no idea what the conservative arguments on any issue are thanks to the fact that 90+ percent of the American media elite are hard-left partisan Democrats. There can be no message without a medium. Conservative position papers are only slightly more relevant to the average American than that tree falling in the forest that no one ever hears.

Exactly true as far as it goes. How do reach a public that does not care about politics, is uninformed, and does not understand that pop culture information is NOT reliable? The public tunes out meaningful messages, even if delivered through pop culture. They want saccharin sweet "good" messages that tell them that the goobermint is going to take care of their education, housing, car, health, retirement ... pretty much their whole life. Rational people KNOW this is impossible. But the public now expects it because the progressives and media say they can deliver it. No progressive state has ever succeeded in doing so but it sounds real nice, now doesn´t it.

So Conservatives may need to build a media network to deliver the message but what message will they deliver to the knuckleheads that reelected BO? Responsibility? Less government? These people don´t want that and can´t envision being self reliant. They think the world is rigged against them and that they can only succeed when someone like BO hands things to them. The Conservative message is an anathema to them.

So good luck with a bigger, better PA system. Your intended audience has earplugs.

All along since JFK I thought all the media was owned by th democrats ,which isn´t?

Well, one solution is buy up controlling interest in the stock of the media company, clean out the board, then the executives, and fire every ´journalist´ who doesn´t whole-heartedly get on-board with telling all the facts and scrutinizing the LPs with a 24/7 microscope. Sort-of reality TV in the LP gutter, the LIVs would be fascinated in spite of themselves.

Actually, it´s more than the media. Conservatives have retreated from every critical area - media, education, law schools, and the bureaucratic pipeline that extends from public administration schools to the millions of regulatory posts across the country. The left has created a system where their world view is broadcast by the media, taught in the schools, and put into practice. Until conservatives take a stand in these other areas as well, nothing will change. Just stop by and see what new regulations are being piled on in builders in your local community. I guarantee they are being written by leftists.

What brought it home to me with a sledge hammer was the way the Glenn Beck rally in Washington was treated. IT WAS HUGE! But even on FOX it was not nearly as visual as it should have been, and it was almost ignored on the alphabets. And it was grossly under-estimated in its size. Therefore, it was nothing to the majority of America.

Compare the saturation mostly positive coverage of a few Code Pink nuts. Or Occupy Wall Street.

If you can´t communicate and get attention, you fail.

It is the media, Stupid!

But it is also: young people are so self-absorbed and don´t know or care a damn bit about the heritage of the great ideas of the Founders about the proper role of government.

The few who care are far outnumbered by wanting to know more about Kim Kardashian´s b*stard child pregnancy while she is STILL married to the basketball player.

The media is not radically left-wing. They are, at root, lazy and stupid. Find a general media story about a subject in which you´re an expert, and you´ll notice painful errors that wouldn´t have happened if the reporter had the tiniest bit of tenacity or curiosity. I´m not talking about deep field trivia, I mean just asking a simple follow-up!

The Left is also lazy and stupid. That is why they are natural allies with the media.

If the Republicans were to become more stupid and lazy than the Democrats, they would find the media on their side.

Lee Atwater understood how to play the media, but then supposedly had some kind of ´misgivings´ about being as manipulative as any media outlet in our lifetime. At any rate he knew which buttons to push and pushed some. The only other Republican to have a clue about how to handle a neocommunist press, was Reagan. He understood performance, delivery, the audience, critics and politics. Most of that knowledge was gained from a lifetime of real world maneuvering in the sleesyist, sickest, town in the world, next to DC, Hollywood.

So why not get a good comedy show about how stupid the left´s ideas are?
Humor is the best weapon - we need someone who can do a series on how stupid they are. Sort of a reverse ´All in the Family´?

If conservatives don´t control TV outlets the result will be the same.

Like any third-world country, the people love to have a demon, and the Republican Party is it. Generations have been raised on media snark, and "wittily" trashing the current demon is the accepted method of gaining status and bonding with one´s peers. Since much of the voting populace is ignorant, snark is going to be the only way to reach them. Conservatives must snark back, and make fun of the opposition, but that would take a few outlets not controlled by the opposition. Right now it´s easier for an on-the-make Republican to gain attention and support by trashing Republicans than to make sense.

When you are afraid to lose (as are most pubbies on the taxpayer teat) you will kiss the media´s fannys.
If I were running for national office, I would school myself at the knees of Drs. Thomas Sowell & Walter E. Williams.