It’s no secret to media observers that Fox News plays a very important part in the grander conservative political agenda. For a long time, conservatives that were a part of or influenced by that political machine denied its role, but it seems that the fact that Fox News has so much power in the GOP cannot be ignored.
Especially since Fox News is killing the Republican party.
Late last month, a former Reagan staffer even admitted such to CNN.
“I think many conservatives live in a bubble where they watch only Fox News on television, they listen only to conservative talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, many of the same people. When they go on to the Internet, they look at only conservative websites like National Review, Newsmax, World Net Daily, and so they are completely in a universe in which they are hearing the same exact ideas, the same arguments, the same limited amount of data repeated over and over and over again, and that’s brainwashing.”
– Bruce Bartlett
Right-wing pundits were immediate in their contradiction of Bartlett’s point. In a piece attempting to respond to the accusations that Fox News influences politics, Jack Shafer wrote for Politico:
But Fox in its current incarnation is neither a help nor a hindrance. Fox News – and its Svengali Roger Ailes – aren’t the Republican kingmakers they’re made out to be. I explored this point last month, noting that the network is better at employing presidential candidates than electing them.
But the fact of the matter is that Fox News is more a weapon of culture than it is in electing officials in a quid pro quo fashion.
By operating a media outlet that stakes its claims on often baseless rumor and character attacks, Fox regularly ignores contradictory evidence and context that would undermine its predetermined conservative narrative.
“There’s a reason that Fox contributor Newt Gingrich once told conservative activists that Fox News helped make Republican Scott Brown’s senate ‘insurgency possible’ in 2010,” Eric Boehlert wrote.
What is really happening is that conservatives are having buyers remorse. They see that their gamble of encouraging conservatives to retreat into their most base principles has only served to ostracize them from the public at large and now it is likely to start costing them votes.
Fox News, as the mouthpiece of a conservative culture, served to insulate Republicans from countering viewpoints that could have encouraged the Republican base to more moderate positions. That refusal to adapt and progress is what now spells death for the GOP.
