ADVICE FROM THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA?

The mainstream media is subtly or not so subtly giving President Barack Obama advice following the Republican Party’s massive 60 seat gain in the House of Representatives. When CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asks, Will Obama follow Clinton's 1994 playbook? He’s giving unsolicited advice to the administration. It’s no secret that the media actively cheerleads for President Obama. Now in the aftermath of Obama’s election disaster, he desperately needs help.  

WOLF BLITZER:  So the issue for Obama is what he does next. Does he follow Clinton's playbook and move toward the center -- what was called "triangulation"? Will Obama separate himself from the liberal base of the Democratic Party -- as Clinton did?

It’s no secret the mainstream media loved William Jefferson Clinton, from the moment the smooth southerner emerged on the national scene the media has been pushing him, protecting him and propagandizing for him.  Now with the Obama Administration on the ropes, the media elites would love for Obama to take a page out of Bill Clinton’s book. He was re-elected after all.  After the 1994 midterm elections that elevated Newt Gingrich to Speaker of the House, the media helped push the Clinton narrative that the Congressional Republicans were too extreme.  Media elites like Joe Conason are recounting tails of Bill Clinton fighting the good fight against Republican obstruction.     

JOE CONASON: Yet the most important political events in the first year following the ’94 midterm were not compromises over policy, but confrontations that swiftly became disruptive, angry, polarizing -- and that Clinton won. When the Gingrich Republicans twice shut down the government at the end of 1995 in order to win their way on the budget, the president faced them down and portrayed them as right-wing extremists whose ideology portended chaos. He kept that message alive not only as he confronted the Republicans in Washington, but in a series of stealthy political commercials heralding his reelection bid that started airing in the summer of 1995, nearly a year and a half before the 1996 election.

The mainstream media’s mission is to turn 2011 into 1995, all over again.  Next year will be filled with stories of Republican obstruction and evil proposed conservative budget cuts that will undoubtedly hurt government employees, poor children and senior citizens. Those horror stories will leave the middle of the field open for President Obama to seem reasonable as he defends those government employees, poor children and senior citizens. Then in 2012, he cruises to re-election. There will be a major difference between 2011 and 1995, back then we didn’t have a conservative media, we didn’t have Fox News (which started in October 1996), we didn’t have amazing conservative bloggers online. This time the media elites won’t control the narrative.