That's because Fox News isn't simply offering a rightward take on the day's events, or innocently providing Republican-friendly commentary, of course. It's leading an exhausting, day-in, day-out attack campaign against Obama, Democrats and all their liberal allies. (Real or imagined.) Its relentless, paranoid crusade falls well outside the mainstream of American politics, which is why the Republican primary season, so proudly sponsored by Fox News, is shaping up to be such an embarrassment.
Make no mistake, kingmaker Ailes has made sure his channel's profoundly un-serious stamp permeates this year's GOP contest. For more and more spooked Republicans though, it's a stamp of failure and looming defeat.
For Ailes and company, that slash-and-burn formula works wonders in terms of super-serving its hardcore, hard-right audience of three million viewers. But in terms of supporting a serious, national campaign and a serious, national conversation? It's not working. At all.
As Fox News has moved in and essentially replaced the RNC as the driving electoral force in Republican politics today, and with Ailes ensconced in his kingmaker role, candidates have had to bow down to Fox in search of votes and the channel's coveted free airtime. That means campaigns have been forced to become part of the channel's culture of personal destruction, as well as its signature self-pity.
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Two years ago, despondent conservative and former Bush speechwriter David Frum, noting the sweeping power that Ailes was accumulating, observed that, "Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox."
They've all become Fox's bitches. And Roger Ailes couldn't be happier.
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i have never taken issue with fox being right wing. we are all biased, some to the left and some to the right. but when you look at the tea party extension of the right wing, and the relentless whining, cry-babying, complaining affect of the fox news broadcast, you should consider that fox doesnt care about a better american system but about simply creating a sense of insecurity and anarchy. at least obama proposed ideas. so have gingrich and romney. i am a democrat yet I think Ron Paul has great perspectives. Fox just whines and says no taxes, no government, no nothing. When you are pushing to great an absence of power, you open a society up to dangerous influences from other sources.
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