Who's to blame for Republican Party's election setbacks in Oregon? It was the durn liberal media, of course.
Anyway, that's the analysis of Ted Piccolo, a Republican activist and PR consultant who blogs under the handle of "I Am Coyote."
In a post on Sunday, Piccolo runs down a list of other factors - the toxic record of George W. Bush, lack of campaign cash, failure to register new Republican voters. He rejects the conventional right-wing wisdom that Republicans lost by "not being conservative enough," except in the case of Bend's Chuck Burley, who lost his Oregon House seat to Democrat Judy Stiegler.
Despite raising half a million dollars, Piccolo writes, Burley "lost a relatively safe Republican seat. So there indeed WERE times that being too liberal hurt the Republicans even when the liberal Republican had a ton of dough."
And then Piccolo/Coyote comes back to that familiar right-wing nemesis, the media:
Blaming the media "is easy to say and seems to always be a normal whipping boy to conservatives. However, it is true. Just compare the stories that Republicans get to the stories that the Democrats get. Steve Law [of the Gresham Outlook] and Dave Hogan [of The Oregonian] are two of the most leftists reporters on the planet and they cover POLITICS? Oh man ...
Piccolo's fix for the Republicans' media relations problem? Stop talking to the media. Or some parts of it, anyway.
"If one thing should be made clear in this last election cycle it is that, for the most part, the press is not fair, let alone friendly to Republicans," he writes. "They are fair and friendly to Democrats. And knowing that they (the Republicans) should start icing out a few members of the press.
"I know that is tough to do. I know most politicians LOVE to get those calls from reporters. It makes them feel so special and important. Well ... It takes discipline.
"I am going to make one public suggestion in the post. That is that the Republicans all round the state decide not to answer any more phone calls from Dave Hogan and Steve Law."
Yep, if your story isn't getting told by the press, the solution is to not talk to the press. With brilliant PR advice like that, how can the Republicans miss?
