Ron Fournier: The Triumphant Return of the America's Sad Clown of Centrism

Admit it, you thought Ron Fournier was gone forever.

He who was once Matthew Dowd's False Equivalence spirit animal.

He whose only job during the 2016 election was squatting on cable teevee panels and croaking out phrases like "It's Both Sides" and "The K'rupt Duopoly" in the face of  every act of Republican depravity.  Gone back to Detroit to write about local politics, because the administration of President Stupid had so completely vaporized Mr. Fournier's career as America's Sad Clown of Centrism.

Or so you would think.

But you would be wrong.

Because as long as Both Siderism remains the corporate media's indestructible business model -- as long as there is an ocean of stupid, desperate money sloshing around inside the Beltway to bankroll anyone who will spin Prince Prospero's courtiers the Both Siderist fairy tales they desperately wish to believe -- toxic parasites like Mr. Fournier will always rise from the wreckage that they create, dust themselves off...

...and go right back to their default setting, unperturbed.

And thus it was in yesterday's Washington Post, where Mr. Fournier first-ever bylined column in that publication --

Nov. 6 could be independents’ day

Ron Fournier, a former reporter, editor and publisher, is president of Truscott Rossman, a Michigan public relations firm. Unite America is a client.

For years as a political reporter in Washington, I wrote about the public’s disgust with the U.S. political system and predicted the rise of a third party and outsider presidential candidates. I railed against the Republican-Democratic duopoly and chased the mythical “white knight” who would put country over party — and then put the two major parties out of business.

I was hunting a unicorn when I should have been herding reindeer.

While a viable third party is as elusive as a horned horse, there exists a rare-but-real creature in American politics that can systematically dismantle the status quo: the independent. Untethered to the two major parties, growing in sums and significance, independent candidates and officeholders are the reindeer of American politics...

But, eventually and incrementally, this may be the path to radically re-center American politics.

If these creatures can be corralled into controlling coalitions in legislatures across the country, including the U.S. Senate, they could find a powerful leverage point to break the partisan fever....

-- was an 800 word advertorial for one of the clients for whom his PR firm flaks:

“The question of whether independent candidates can win elections will inevitably turn to whether independent leaders can make a difference once in office,” reads a new report by the Unite America Institute, which is affiliated with the Unite America movement that aims to level the playing field for independent candidates. I am a spokesman for the group.

Having left Washington for my hometown of Detroit two years ago, I have been drawn back into politics by the pragmatic elegance of Unite America’s mission...

This was the signal to his fellow WaPo haver-of-stupid-opinions, Joe Scarborough, that Mr. Fournier was ready to resume his duties as a America's Sad Clown of Centrism.  

And so, this morning... (from Susie Madrak at Crooks & Liars):

Lobbyist Ron Fournier Says More Independent Voters Will Solve Everything

The infamous Ron "Both Sides" Fournier has structured his pet fetish into a superPAC called Unite America, and he was out selling it on Morning Joe today, pointing out there are more independents than either Democrats or Republicans.

Susan Page said there's "some concern on the part of some Democrats that the rise of talking about third party and independent candidacies in this midterm election could help Republicans because it could be a place for Republicans who are Republican-leaning voters who are unhappy with the Trump era, give them a place to land without voting for Democrats. Do you think there is a partisan impact? I realize there's not a partisan intent by the movement, but is there a possibility of a partisan impact from it?"

"Definitely. You and I have been covering this long enough to know, Republicans say don't vote for independents, you might help the other guy and Democrats say, don't vote for independents because you might help the other guy. 40% of Americans don't like either party, who are forced to vote for one party if they vote at all," Fournier said. 

And thus it came to pass that, after the eight years of out-and-proud, fangs-bared racism, slander and sedition the Republican party displayed during the Obama Administration, and a year and a half of clear and irrefutable proof that Donald Trump and the Republican party are an existential threat to democracy, Both Siderist schlock peddler Ron Fornier has landed --

Why are there so few independents elected when there are so many independent voters? The single greatest barrier to change is the question of viability. People don’t want to waste their vote. With an angry electorate and more-competitive independent candidates, that may soon change.

-- precisely where Both Siderist schlock peddler David Fucking Brooks landed nearly a decade ago --

What Independents Want

By DAVID BROOKS

Liberals and conservatives each have their own intellectual food chains. They have their own think tanks to provide arguments, politicians and pundits to amplify them, and news media outlets to deliver streams of prejudice-affirming stories.

Independents, who are the largest group in the electorate, don’t have any of this. They don’t have institutional affiliations. They don’t look to certain activist lobbies for guidance. There aren’t many commentators who come from an independent perspective...

-- after eight years of Republican catastrophe, corruption and dereliction had nearly wrecked the country and sent professional Beltway frauds like Mr. Brooks flailing around desperately for some excuse not to blame Republicans for the atrocities of the Republican party.

In a real and tragic sense, this was the corporate media's own Lynndie England/Abu Ghraib moment:  the moment of fatal institutional cowardice when powerful and unaccountable people reached a collectively decision behind closed doors that no one of any importance to the media's business model -- not the Republican party base, not the GOP leadership, not Fox News, not Hate Radio and certainly not themselves -- would ever be held accountable for the multiple, catastrophic failures that during the Bush Administration.

This was the moment when Conservatism's long war against the "Liberal" media achieved final victory.  The moment when the corporate media gave up on journalism altogether and surrendered unconditionally to the Right by making the cult of Both Siderism the Beltway's official state religion.

From this moment on, the GOP had the media's guarantee that no matter what whopping great lies they told or what acts of barbarity they might commit right out in the open, the responsibility for those lies and that barbarity would be routinely deflected onto Both Sides or All Sides or All Americans...and thus harmlessly diffused.

From this moment on, the rise of a Republican monster like Donald Trump became inevitable.

Behold, a Tip Jar!