first off, the attempt from conservatives here to equate demonstration slogans to the type of ideological warfare being waged by the right is simply ridiculous.
it follows from a wholly disengenuous misinterpretation of the central question at hand here--which is whether there is or is not a conservative media apparatus that operates de facto to centralize the right's talking points. which there clearly is--building this apparatus has been one of the major achievements of the american right over the past 20 years. it is far more important an achievement than the persuading of any number of individuals of any number of conservative ideological propositions.
this apparatus predates (and to a degree is a condition of possibility of) the bush administration--as much as i loathe karl rove, you cannot blame him for this--you cannot blame the white house press office for it--this institution building has been a central focus of conservative politics for many years now, and it turns out that they were, in the main, correct in their assumptions that what is required is repetition and pervasiveness (as opposed to content).
at this point, that there is something on the order of this apparatus is not in question--i can see why individual conservatives might be made a bit uncomfortable by the fact of the matter (kind of hard to be talking about individual freedoms blah blah in a context shaped entirely by a political machine) but this changes nothing.
curiously, alansmithee above trots out the black helicopters thing--which is a far right hallicunation, dear to the milita movement of the middle 1990s, and which functioned as an index of the paranoia of elements of the far right via-a-vis the united nations and gun control. much of the active conspiracy theory business is conservative as well--i think these two bits show the extent to which alan's (and other conservatives here) are engaging in a bit of projection in place of analysis. which is yet another fine fine conservative ideological pattern. it is funny to read through these wholly symptomatic posts accusing the opposition of paranoia, posts that read like historical catalogues of rightwing paranoia attributed wholesale to others.
it is also interesting to note the absolute refusal of reflxivity in these posts--the inability to think about whether there might not in fact be something to the claim that right ideology is tightly controlled. this refusal to think critically seems to me of a piece with the main problems that conservative politics poses for meaningful debate in general-the right simply refuses to engage in such difficult pass-times as thought in ways that depart from the assumption that their politics represent a type of "amurican common sense"--which is of course one of the central claims of right media, repeated day in day out--that they, and only they, articulate what "real americans" think in a "common sense" kinda way.
for background, look here:
http://www.commonwealinstitute.org/ncrp.callahan.1.htm
which provides basic information available in more detail from a wide range of print sources.
this is nothing new.
heritage foundation
american enterprise institute
cato
brookings
hoover
all of these not only develop policy proposals--they also work to recode their proposals to talking points, to get spokemodels who rehearse these talking points onto television news outlets (the right dominates commentary--look at any study of this--they are not hard to find if you look--and the right dominates commentary because they understand the importance of short, snappy statements)
there is the extensive network of explicitly conservative sonic wallpaper, which you can listen to 24/7 it seems on radio outlets around the country.
there is fox news. there is a conservative print media. there is the significant penetration of mainstream news, particularly mainstream telvision news, by conservative pundits--but most importantly there has been a shoft right in the ideological climate in general, which is a direct result of the operation of this apparatus.
some of the earlier neocons came to this position from the left. some of these folks were better readers of gramsci than were those who remained on the left. they understood the importance of what gramsci called "war of position" and that this war of position was about gaining hegemony, which he defined as a type of cultural domination, the ability to set the frame of reference within which debate unfolds. gramsci was right--the american conservative culture war, waged over the past 20 years, proves it.