This past weekend Steve Benen, who blogs for the Washington Monthly, offered a rundown of conservative Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs.
Benen wants to give credit where due and decided it was due in Johnson’s derision of a few documented cases of conservative dementia. It is worth noting, as Benen does, that Johnson has been getting some heat from conservatives for turning away from the sort of thing that is becoming right wing orthodoxy. He approves of Johnson’s call to reject extremism, and hopes others follow Johnson’s sensible lead. He quotes Johnson:
This turn toward the extreme right on the part of Fox News is troubling, and will achieve nothing in the long run except further marginalization of the GOP — unless people start behaving like adults instead of angry kids throwing tantrums and ranting about conspiracies and revolution.
Benen is an unfailingly thoughtful writer, and Johnson does deserve credit for courage in the face of withering unreasoning from fellow conservatives. But the analysis offered by both is misguided.
The Republican Party is not in a downward spiral because of evil or stupid leaders. There are some demonstrably undesirable characters, to be sure. Some can be shown to possess less than stellar intellect. But those things are effects, not causes.
The GOP is the victim of a sociological phenomenon. Today’s technology was not around during those times when Democrats went around the bend. In those days, reality had a way of imposing itself. The loss of an election or two had an astonishingly sobering effect. Re-examination of ideas was the inevitable outcome of electoral waterboarding. This is not happening today.
Technology offers a wider spread of choice than ever before. Conservatives are clustering around those outlets that tell them what they want to hear. The country is really with them. “They don’t surround us, advises Glenn Beck. “We surround them.” If it wasn’t Beck it would be someone else.
The drumbeat is endless. Conservatism has not failed, true believers are told. It cannot fail. It can only be failed. The party drifts rightward, and loses moderates. This causes a further rightward drift, and the loss of more moderates. The cycle is hard to stop.
The drumbeat fuels the cycle, but it is not the cause. It is sought out by those who are addicted to the comfortable message. The comfort sought by the base is at the base of the problem.
The message is the massage.