Right-Wingers Revolt Against Conservative Media

A story in POLITICO features Douthat and a bunch of young conservatives  scolding their elders for buying into the myths Fox perpetuates, and not finding other ways to reach the public:

And this, say next-generation Republicans, is where cocoonism has been detrimental to the cause.

The tension between the profit- and ratings-driven right — call them entertainment-based conservatives — and conservatives focused on ideas (the thinkers) and winning (the operatives) has never been more evident.

The latter group worries that too many on the right are credulous about the former.

“Dick Morris is a joke to every smart conservative in Washington and most every smart conservative under the age of 40 in America,” said Douthat. “The problem is that most of the people watching Dick Morris don’t know that.”

The egghead-hack coalition believes that the entertainment-based conservatives create an atmosphere that enables flawed down-ballot candidates, creates a cartoonish presidential primary and blocks needed policy reforms, and generally leave an odor on the party that turns off swing voters.

It even fosters an atmosphere in which there’s a disconnect with the ostensible party leaders.

Even big-ticket donors have bought into this disconnect, surrounding themselves with Fox news, talk radio and their "apocalyptic" vision. They entered the bubble wiilingly, right along with the party rank and file.

In the Washington Post, there's a profile of Beth Cox, a member of the GOP faithful who personally bought into the bubble created by the conservative media--now she is devastated by what she sees.

She turned on her computer and pulled up an electoral map that she had filled out a few days before the election. She had predicted the outcome twice — once coming up with a narrow Romney win and once more with a blowout.

Florida: red.

Colorado: red.

Virginia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin: all red.

Everything in her version of America had confirmed her predictions: the confident anchors on Fox News; the Republican pollsters so sure of their data; the two-hour line outside her voting precinct, where Romney supporters hugged and honked for her handmade signs during a celebration that lasted until the results started coming in after sundown. Romney’s thorough defeat had come more as a shock than as a disappointment, and now Cox stared at the actual results on her computer and tried to imagine what the majority of her country believed.

Cox recognized that much of the blame lay at her own party's feet:

She blamed some of the divisiveness on Republicans. The party had gotten “way too white,” she said, and she hoped it would never again run a presidential ticket without including a woman or a minority. The tea party was an extremist movement that needed to be “neutralized,” she said, and Romney’s campaign had suffered irreparable damage when high-profile Republicans spoke about “crazy immigration talk and legitimate rape.”

Still, she is one of many who now believes the country is headed to hell in a handbasket.

 

It's hard to imagine conservative media not taking the lucrative chance to capitalize on the fear and anger of people like Beth Cox. And if the party and media do change,  what will they replace the fearmongering with? Vague reassurances about "reaching out" are all we've got so far.