Hooooo-boy…

So DemocracyCorps, the firm run by James Carville, among others, and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research has just completed a study titled “The Very Seperate World of Cosnervative Republicans: Why Republican Leaders will have Trouble Speaking to the Rest of America.” It shows, among other things, that the Republican base’s dislike of Obama dwarfs the left’s hatred of Bush, and that the GOP base believes “Obama is ruthlessly advancing a ‘secret agenda’ to bankrupt the United States and dramatically expand government control to an extent nothing short of socialism.”

Where might they get these views? How about - Fox News?

A central part of the collective identity built by conservative Republicans in the current political environment is their belief that they possess knowledge and insight that the majority of Americans – whether too lazy or too misguided to find it for themselves – do not possess. A combination of conservative media outlets are the means by which they have gained this knowledge, led by FOX News (“the truth tellers“), and to a lesser degree conservative talk radio. Their antipathy and distrust toward the mainstream media could not be stronger, and they fiercely defend FOX as the only truly objective news outlet.

Media, mainstream media is basically in the back pocket of the Democrats… There’s only one FOX … There’s only one FOX.

It has been publicized on FOX News and the mainstream media is not reporting on such vital issues that people should know about and that is why people that don’t follow…

I have to confess when I’m in an establishment and they have, I feel a little differently if they have CNN on the TV up in the corner or if they have FOX News. I think people think FOX News is right wing when actually everything is so left it appears that FOX News is right wing. When FOX is actually, if you take out their commentators, they are very middle of the road. CNN, I just can’t even watch it.

They ask the questions that the other news medias won’t… And that’s what makes them seem a little bit to the right.

Several of the women particularly talked about becoming a sort of truth police, spending a great deal of their personal time and energy watching FOX to get the real stories, then turning to CNN, MSNBC, and the networks to document their failure to cover the “real truth.”

Whew.

As stated before - I know some of these folks. I’m related to some of these folks, and they absolutely do believe this; every single other source of information is hopelessly biased except Fox! And Fox isn’t really even that conservative, it’s just normal - just like them! It’s just that the world is against them!

I’ve said it before - Fox is not a news channel, it is a way of life. Fox isn’t the voice of the movement; it IS the movement.

Also, get a load of this:

The eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency created a great deal of dissonance for these voters. Overall, they are embarrassed by his presidency. They are most likely to cite the prescription drug benefit and his failure to rein in spending or the size of government, although his public speaking and blunders also play a role in their overall disappointment. Nonetheless, they will passionately defend him on a personal level and praise him for his conviction and devotion to doing what he felt was best for the country.

The Glenn Beck crowd is the George W. Bush crowd.

“Dissonance” - yeah, that’s one word for it.

Then this:

Asked what their party needs to reinvigorate itself and close the gap between its leaders and its rank and file, these conservative Republicans are almost unanimous in their solution – new leadership. And although they expressed some hope for a variety of names (Gingrich, Romney, Huckabee, Jindal), there was only one figure who truly excited them and created real passion – Sarah Palin.

And check out the huge gulf between conservatives and independents:

They view FOX News as another media outlet, decidedly conservative in its point of view but no more or less biased than any other media outlet; their assumption is that every outlet has a bias that reflects the interests of its own bottom line. FOX is no different, and certainly not a source of special insight and information that cannot be gained elsewhere. They generally laugh at conservative commentators such as Limbaugh (‘overbearing,’ ‘egotistical,’ ‘idiot’) and Beck (one man called him a ‘crybaby’). When it comes to Sarah Palin, there was almost universal agreement that she could never be elected president, with most citing her inexperience and baggage as obstacles too great to overcome. But even more important to them, most felt she was ultimately driven by greed and ambition more than anything else and would rather use her newfound fame to enrich herself than improve the country.

A Palin presidential campaign - and as of right now, it’s impossible to see how she’s not the GOP nominee in 2012; she must be - is the beginning of the reign of Fox News conservatism - or its cataclysmic end.