Going back to the idea of having shock jocks and other friendly outlets host the
Republican debates, it’s instructive to see what Mr. Limbaugh has to say about it.
“Put together your own debates with your own moderators, whoever you want, and focus on real Republican issues in these debates rather than whether they’re going to do a Hillary Clinton miniseries or not,” Limbaugh said on his show last week. “In this current modern age, there’s no reason anymore to treat these mainstream media people as mainstream objective and non-aligned reporters.”
Without offering evidence, he speculated that ABC’s George Stephanopoulos coordinated with the Obama campaign to ask Romney about contraception during a primary debate so they could create “the war on women” narrative.
“Wherever you go outside of Fox, you are going up against the Democrat Party with people disguised as journalists,” said Limbaugh. “Why do it?”
Why is it that whenever the Republicans appear anywhere other than on hate radio or Fox News they feel like they’re not getting a fair shake?
It’s because anything outside of The Bubble feels unfamiliar and unsafe. People don’t nod in agreement when you say crazy, unsubstantiated things. They don’t swallow misleading or inaccurate statistics. They push back against demonstrable lies. They have a different, more accurate version of history. Sometimes, this makes you look dishonest, or even stupid.
Who wants to look dishonest and stupid? Who wants to feel dishonest and stupid?
Everything inside The Bubble is protected, padded, safe, and soft. Unlike Democrats, Republican lawmakers don’t have to worry about some Rachel Maddow figure querying them about drone strikes, the NSA, the treatment of Bradley Manning, or the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Adversarial journalism is almost non-existent inside the Bubble, except to enforce adherence to Borg orthodoxy.
Once you step outside of The Bubble, you are going up against the uninitiated. These are people who haven’t marinated their brains in Glenn Beck’s conspiracy theories or the sly lies of Charles Krauthammer. They don’t understand what you’re talking about or why you could possibly think what you’re saying is true. Once you go outside of Fox, as Rush says, you are going up against the enemy. They are Democrats disguised as journalists because they don’t accept your version of reality.
Even though he doesn’t know it and he phrases it differently, Jim Bopp agrees with me:
“There are practical, feasible ways for the RNC to control the debate schedule,” said Jim Bopp of Indiana, a former chair of the party’s committee on debates and now special counsel to the RNC. “The debates should be viewed as a job interview, not an opportunity to score political points. The problem is that liberals in the media simply have a different agenda than the Republican Party does in terms of selecting its nominee. They’re not sympathetic to the candidates.”
The problem is that the journalists are not sympathetic to the candidates, but why is that? Is it because all their questions are answered with rote talking points that are somewhere between unresponsive and downright dishonest?
It’s because of that, and because those outside of The Bubble can never understand what goes on within it.
Until more voters have marinated their brains in The Bubble than have not, this strategy will remain a loser.