As Donald Trump Pushes Conspiracy Theories, Right-Wing Media Gets It's Wish

New York Times
May 25, 2016


WASHINGTON - Ever since talk radio, cable news and the Internet emerged in the 1990s as potent political forces on the right, Republicans have used those media to attack their opponents through a now-familiar two-step.

Political operatives would secretly place damaging information with friendly outlets like
The Drudge Report and Fox News and radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh -- and then they would work to get the same information absorbed into the mainstream media.

Candidates themselves would avoid being seen slinging mud, if possible, so as to avoid coming across as undignified or desperate.

Yet by personally breaching topics like Bill Clinton's marital indiscretions and the conspiracy theories surrounding the suicide of Vincent W. Foster Jr., a Clinton White House aide,
Donald J. Trump is again defying the norms of presidential politics and fashioning his own outrageous style -- one that has little use for a middleman, let alone usual ideas about dignity.

"They've reverse-engineered the way it has always worked because they now have a candidate willing to say it himself," said Danny Diaz, who was a top aide in Jeb Bush's presidential campaign, speaking with a measure of wonder about the spectacle of the party's presumptive nominee discussing Mr. Clinton's sexual escapades.

With Mr. Trump as the Republican standard-bearer, the line separating the conservative mischief makers and the party's more buttoned-up cadre of elected officials and aides has been obliterated
Fusing what had been two separate but symbolic forces, Mr. Trump has begun a real-life political science experiment.
What happens when a major party's nominee is more provocateur than politician?

That the Republican Party has embraced someone willing to traffic in the most inflamatory of accusations comes as wish fulfillment for an element of the right that is convinced that the party lost the past two elections because it's candidates were unwilling to attack President Obama forcefully enough.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/us/politics/donald-trump-presidential-race.html