They will claim victory, too

by folkbum

Steve Benen--though by no means is he the only one--is befuddled by the right's insistence against all evidence to the contrary the Democrats are bringing back the Fairness Doctrine any second now:

ctually, that's not even close to true. Obama opposes the idea, Pelosi hasn't "openly stated" anything about pursuing this, and Reid's office told Salon that the Senate Majority Leader "is not contemplating anything like that." The "groundswell for reinstatement" exists only in the overactive imaginations of paranoid right-wing activists.

And yet, here we are. The [Media Research Center] is not only railing against a policy proposal that doesn't exist, it's created an organization committed to fighting a policy proposal that doesn't exist. To help in the endeavor against the imaginary foe, the MRC has roped in Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, Concerned Women for America, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, among others, to help.

Later, when the Democrats (who never promised to bring back the Fairness Doctrine and, in all earnestness, insisted they would not do such a thing) don't pass the Fairness Doctrine, this coalition will declare victory and insist they prevented the thing (which was never going to happen in the first place). In the meantime, the MRC has collected the names and email addresses of thousands of people that, during the next fund drive, they will hit up for dough, citing as proof of the organization's effectiveness the death of the Fairness Doctrine. Beautiful con, really.