"We all know the problem. It’s Rush Limbaugh and his imitators and Roger Ailes and his network. They drive this hatred daily, and they intentionally misinform and lie; you think it’s an accident that polls always find Fox viewers the least connected to empirical reality? Pushing this fury and constructing this alternate reality is great for business. But it’s horrible for America. And the “serious” conservative pundits by and large try to pretend it doesn’t exist, or it’s not that bad, or MSNBC does the same thing in reverse. Well, it does exist, it is that bad, and no, MSNBC does not do the same thing in reverse. MSNBC has an agenda, but it doesn’t craft its messages in such a way as to make its viewers hate half the country." (our emphasis)When you have a base that has been on the receiving end of lies, distortions and hate for, in some cases, half a century, it's hard to turn things around in one or two election cycles. There would have to be a concerted, sustained effort by those in the party who are truly alarmed at the extremism to introduce their base to reality. Disconnecting those people from their cherished prejudices and insane conspiracy theories means undoing the conscious efforts of the right-wing activists who captured the party apparatus decades ago in order to build just such an angry, driven political base. Will they "unplug" hate radio and the Fox "News" machine? We don't think that's likely in the forseeable future, if ever.
BONUS: Stephen Colbert skewers just the kind of nonsense Tomasky's talking about (for which we awarded Ben "Dover" Shapiro* of Breitbart.com "Wanker of the Week").
* That never gets old.
