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Blowback in the GOP war on teleprompters



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John Chait makes a good point:

And speaking of a failure to communicate, the Republican war on TelePrompTers has poetically backfired. It began as a quasi-racist meme among the fever swamps of the right, a way for right-wingers to express their belief that Obama is a brainless talking doll. By catering to it, Republicans backed themselves into a position where they can’t use TelePrompTers at all. The result is a series of rambling election night speeches that manage to be at once frightening and dull. The speeches, like the race, just go on and on and on.
While I agree with Kevin Drum's response that the Republican candidate's speeches suck because the candidates themselves are sucky, Chait is also right that the candidates are worse than they need to be.

As John showed in his earlier post, with pictures, every modern US President has used a teleprompter for speeches. When the words used by the President can mean the difference between war and peace, the idea of a President giving extemporaneous remarks makes them nervous as heck.


Even the GOP base knows this and so Santorum is probably not helping himself when he attacks Romney for using a teleprompter. What has the GOP base riled up is not the use of the teleprompter but the fact that Obama is easily the best orator to be elected President since JFK. Clinton and Reagan were equally effective communicators but their forte was conversational rather than inspirational.

Whenever the reactionary mind sees a fact it doesn't like, it finds an excuse to ignore it.


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