Maybe we should just call this 'The Fox Election'

-- by Dave

Everyone keeps saying the coming election is a referendum on President Obama. I beg to differ. I'm beginning to believe that it's actually a referendum on Fox News.

Because, well, let's be honest: The Republican Party would be dead in the water right now were it not for Fox and its ceaseless efforts -- primarily through lying and propagandizing 24/7/365 -- at reviving the conservative movement brand.

Voters aren't voting for Republicans or a GOP agenda. They're voting for the Fox agenda.

I was thinking about this while watching our fearless fearmonger in chief Glenn Beck waxing apocalyptic yesterday on his Fox show -- which, as Media Matters points out, Beck is using as his own Get Out The Vote operation. Beck's show was full of warnings about the dire threat posed to the Republic by progressives, and how this election will reverse that course and refudiate progressivism.

But the best part was the little promo that ran near the end of the show, with the following script:

Narrator: On November 2, 2010, you have a choice. You can stand up for freedom and liberty. Or sit back and let the American Dream become a nightmare.

It's way too late for politics. Instead, vote as if your way of life depends on it. Because it does.

Vote for government by the people, of the people, and for the people. Vote Democrat, Republican, or Independent. But whatever you do, vote for Honor. Restoration. The Constitution. Vote for America.

This is just about the endpoint of the campaign that Fox has been waging for the past two years -- beginning the day after Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008. Think about it:

-- The engine of their comeback, the Tea Parties, is almost wholly a Fox concoction. Without Fox's endless promotions of the various Tea Party events -- and Tea Party figures, including its corporate overseers like Dick Armey -- the "movement" would have been nothing, a brief blip on the screen.

-- Congressional Republicans managed to maintain their discipline in uniformly voting "No" on every Obama proposal that came down the pike because Fox was there as a threat to anyone who strayed. And Fox's ceaseless propaganda against every Obama proposal certainly gave PR sustenance to anyone who stayed within the fold.

-- Every Republican candidate on the planet -- with the exception of the truly execrable Dan Maes in Colorado -- has gotten lots of free airtime on Fox to promote their campaign. Their opponents -- not at all. And what's been interesting is how these candidates have been able to use Fox to get airtime while refusing to speak to their local reporters at all.

-- The entire narrative of this coming election has been dictated by Fox. Is it any wonder that the conventional wisdom now perfectly reflects what Fox has been dictating?

Maybe it's just me, but I'm not quite there yet. I'm especially not ready to hand over governance of the country to a propaganda news network.

But it's obvious that we don't really have a Republican Party anymore. It's now a wholly owned subsidiary of Fox News. And that's who this election is really about.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]