Republicans wonder whether they go on TV enough

For inclusion in the Big List of Republican Soul-Searching Moments: the post-election thought by some conservatives that perhaps their party is too reliant on Fox News and should seek to broaden the list of folks they're willing to talk to:

To some Republican strategists and communications operatives, Boehner's insular media strategy in recent weeks ' a smattering of press conferences on Capitol Hill, and a sit-down with Chris Wallace at Fox News Sunday ' is emblematic of what one called the GOP's "choir-preaching problem."

"He should have blitzed all five Sunday shows, and then done the Today show the next morning. Are you telling me he can't handle Matt Lauer?" asked veteran conservative media strategist Keith Appell, adding, "He could have maximized his narrative and really driven home the points that resonate with the broader public."

"This is always a problem for our party," complained another Republican strategist, citing several candidates he's worked with over the years. "You get hundreds of [media] invitations, and you go with the one you're most comfortable with. ... We need to be more aggressive."

Implicit in this is the premise that Republicans just do not appear on television enough, which given the average constituency of any Sunday talk show, any network, any week you care to name, is a damn interesting little theory. Is the Republican voice being drowned out? Are we not being properly exposed to what the Republican, conservative establishment in Washington thinks about things? It is true that for every George Will, or John McCain, or Erick Lowest Common Denominator Erickson that graces the news networks with incessant, brow-furrowing authoritativeness, there are still some people on the airwaves that are not George Will, John McCain, or Erick No-Seriously-CNN-Was-Kidding-With-This-One-Right Erickson, but the list of people that are not George Will or John McCain or that other guy is getting vanishingly small; I'm not sure that the Republican problem is that the American public just has not been sufficiently exposed to Republican chatterboxes. It seems a poor diagnosis.

A rather more plausible theory would be that Republicans are spoiled by their Fox News "interviews," and so their rhetorical muscles have atrophied to the point of silliness. The same politician can go on Fox News and make whatever batshit proclamations he or she wants to, or go on any other network and take the slightest risk that the interviewer will dare a follow-up question that might not take Republican assertions as simple gospel truths, and that would be the worstest thing ever. Many in the Republican crackpot (i.e. tea party) brigades tend to avoid straying from the Fox tent, it is true, but that probably is good news for the Republicans, not bad. Their "serious" thinkers, the McCains and Boehners, make the wider network rounds, but when a Republican wants to say something egregiously stupid, Fox provides a much safer location for that.

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