The Extremist Rhetoric is Self-Reinforcing

This aide and other Republicans describe a recurring chicken-and-egg question: Who came first to these hardline, no-compromise stands – conservative media or their audiences? Are media celebrities and outlets simply reflecting their audiences, or shaping the views of readers, listeners and viewers? “I think they just feed off each other” in “a pact from hell,” the Senate aide said. “In a way we’re our own worst enemies, not the Democrats. It’s the conservative media pushing us...

 Closed-Information Circle of Far-Right Media

In her coming history of conservative media, Hemmer writes, “In the 1950s, conservative media outlets were neither numerous nor powerful enough to create an entirely alternate media ecosystem” for like-minded Americans.[125] Sixty years later, apparently they are. And the Republican Party is grappling with the implications. In 2010, libertarian scholar Julian Sanchez at the Cato Institute provoked a lively debate among conservative intellectuals when he wrote that the expansion and succe...