Another Fox News moment

The Carpetbagger Report has a very interesting article about Fox News getting caught in a lie and refusing to correct it when called on it. The article pretty much speaks for itself, and I have nothing really to add to it. But one commenter poses a valid question that I think I can answer.

...What's the agenda here? I don't get it. How does this influence things one way or another if the report is untrue? Who benefits from these particular rumors made up whole cloth?

The "Secret Muslim" rumor has an obvious target and an obvious set of beneficiaries - this one not so much. Who benefits?

The Republican base has been very dissatisfied of late. The small government advocates are feeling betrayed, the religious evangelicals are feeling betrayed, and however much Fox News wants to paint Bush as the Second Coming of Ronald Reagan, even the base has woken up to the fact that he's actively driving the nation into ruin. Most of the Republican candidates are proposing to take Bush's policies and step them up to the next level. They are not feeling motivated to vote.

Enter Hillary Clinton, wife of the vilified former President Clinton, who promises to bring back everything they were taught to hate about the Clinton years. She's just a woman, they figure. No real threat. Enter Begala, another associate of Bill Clinton during the Dark Times. Fox makes it sound like Clinton is trying to get the band back together, and that might actually make Hillary a genuine threat. That could actually motivate the otherwise disenfranchised Republican base to get out and vote again.

With Karl Rove in "retirement," it's likely that the Republican candidates are going to need all the help they can get in bringing their base to the voting booth. People are waking up to the lies of the conservative movement, but they're not yet willing to accept a more liberal stance. Cartoonist Wiley tells it like it is in this animated short film.