Does Fox Help or Hurt the GOP?

[phantom power]

The internet also enables a lot of group-think on steroids, but I think TV still adds that extra patina of legitimacy -- "Hey, it's on major network news, how wrong could it be?" One thing I think is interesting, is, Fox is a relatively new network. Didn't used to exist. It was created during the conservative ascendency, and created for this purpose.

I consider Fox News to be a neurotoxin. Watching the network actually damages your brain and makes it harder to think clearly. This is mainly because it is designed to trigger emotional responses and to force you to make logical connections that don't exist. It actively misinforms, but that's not what does the brain damage. The damage is done by essentially un-teaching you how to think. However, it may be going too far to say that Fox News is killing the Republican Party. In some ways, the network is necessary to make the modern GOP possible. What would the Tea Party eruption have been without Fox News? And the 2010 midterms were the best election cycle for the Republicans in history.

More than anything else, Fox News acts as a gathering place for people of like mind. And those people are older, whiter, and more exurban and rural than the population as a whole. Fox helps them feel solidarity and gives them the sense that they are part of a movement. It gives them sources of outrage to organize around. And it has more legitimacy than talk radio both because it is on television and because it is treated no differently than CBS or ABC or CNN.

Of course, there are downsides to Fox News for the Republican Party. But I think those downsides are longer term. The network contributes to the radicalization of the GOP and makes it harder for moderates to cross the aisle and work constructively with Democrats. The way the network uses images of minorities to strike fear into their white audience contributes to the alienation of people of color from the Republican Party. And, ultimately, there has to be a price to be paid for making a huge segment of the American population stupid and misinformed. It's a deal with the devil. You win an election today but you can't govern effectively and wind up losing elections tomorrow.

Yet, on the whole, I don't think the modern GOP could exist without Fox News. They couldn't mobilize the support they have without the network.

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/11/8/82342/4669

[Coyotl]

1. Fox requires a faith-based mindset in the first instance, predisposition of belief

You don't go there and stay there without being predisposed to accept lies and delusions as your reality.
So, they reinforce each others delusions this way. Not being reality-based is, of course, going to do harm eventually if not constantly.
Should we sell them a bridge, warn the dear lemmings about the sea in their path, or just ignore them

[Zambero]

2. Fox has kept them delusional and insulated from facts

However, there may be a crack in the armor. They wholeheartedly believed what Dick Morris was telling them. His front & center "analysis" of a certain Romney landslide will go down as one of the worst pundit predictions of all time. It may have even added an element of complacency, and a sense that Karl Rove's ad buys (albeit less effective ground game) had the situation well in hand. After a while, even the most hardened idealogue might begin to question what they hear. Fox's impact is largely preaching to their existing choir, and not from flipping non-conservatives. And again, even some conservatives might begin to question what they hear, knowing that the likes of Morris's predictions are pure fabrications to tell them what they WANTED to hear, and not based on confidential yet reliable poll data, as had been assured.

[tblue37]

6. Some Freepers actually began to complain abotu Dick Morris's wildly

inaccurate predictions and started calling for FOX to fire him for being so wrong all the time. As of now, they are blaming him (or other individual FOX mouths) rather than the network itself, but eventually some of them are bound to begin to connect the dots (since those dots are the size of beach balls!).

[tblue37]

3. FOX fans in my circle of acquaintances are always amazed when I point out that FOX

actually took a case all the way to the Florida Supreme Court to legitimate their "right" to LIE even tough they claim to be reporting the "news." (Unfortunately, they won that case.)

I always point out that they would not have gone to so much trouble and expense to ensure their right to lie their butts off if they didn't think that exercising that right was an important part of their business model.

I have actually caused some FOX fans to become suspicious of their favorite network by showing them that case! More of us in the "reality-based" community should be spreading the word about that case.

[Tennessee Gal]

10. Do you have links to that case? nt

[ProudProgressiveNow]

15. +1 nt

[Tutonic]

4. Helped em to a can of whoop ass

in this election. I kinda like the idea of separating the dummies from the grownups. Fox served a crucial role in driving the KKKlown Kar off the right wing cliff.

[AlinPA]

5. They need each other to exist.

[Skidmore]

7. Regardless of what it does to the GOP one way or the other, it has hurt

our nation greatly.

[phantom power]

8. I agree completely.

Furthermore, history shows that the bad guys don't always lose - every so often they take over. They're dangerous.

[gravity]

9. I disagree with Fox News being seen as legitimate

10 years ago, they were the ones who drove the media narrative on other networks, but they are now seen as being on the fringe no different than right wing radio.

The mainstream media doesn't take their news stories seriously anymore.

[CJCRANE]

11. FOX is necessary because today's GOP is built on messaging and PR

and not on any solid principles.

The three main influences of this FOX/GOP hybrid are IMO:

* Karl Rove (of course). His main ideas are (a) projecting your own weakness onto your enemy (b) attacking your enemy's strength and turning it into a weakness.

* Newt Gingrich. He came up with the idea of negative labeling, basically name-calling. Call your opponent losts of horrible names like traitor, unpatriotic etc.

*Philip Zelikow. He studied "public myths" and came up with the idea of "public presumptions": these are common ideas shared by a particular group which are not necessarily true.

[sufrommich]

12. I'm slowly becoming convinced that Fox and right wing radio are

doing serious damage to the republican party. They are beginning to be thought of as the party of dumb people.

[DetlefK]

13. Hurt. Romney fell for their "Obama-didn't-call-it-terror"-crap.

Reality is that part of imagination we all agree upon.
If you refuse to agree with others, you create your own reality, disconnected from those of others.
If there's a disconnect, you cannot speak or react properly towards them.
In the end, you are alone (and nobody will vote for you).

[Romulox]

14. Fox has *got* to embarrass any thinking person who considers himself a "conservative". nt