How FOX News Is Destroying the GOP

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For now, it's easy to blame Romney. That's what losing parties often do after an election, they pile-on the vanquished candidate. The part that would take some guts and fortitude would be calling out the right-wing media that are generating the type of hate rhetoric that Romney embraced and  routinely used during the campaign.  

Republicans won't because they're intimidated by the right-wing media's power. That's why New Jersey Governor Chris Christie  quickly got on the phone with Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch after Murdoch tweeted that Christie, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy and his bipartisan appearances with Obama, needed to re-endorse Romney or "take the blame" for the president's re-election.  

Murdoch: Jump! Republicans: How high?

That unhealthy relationship is the reason why, when it comes to the simple question of whether America is divided between " makers and takers," and if the 62 million Americans who voted for Obama represent a decaying nation of moochers in search of handouts, there's a wide gulf within the conservative movement. The right-wing media consider the claim to be a central tenet, while Republican leaders think saying it out loud is completely batty and a prescription for an electoral losing streak.

So yes, those are conspicuous handcuffs the GOP is wearing: Fox News has hijacked the party's communications apparatus and is pushing the type of paranoid,  blame-the-voter rhetoric that loses elections, and the type of rhetoric Romney's now being blamed for. But the GOP can't turn it off. In fact, most Republicans can't even work up enough courage to ask Fox News to turn down the volume.

Unwilling to acknowledge the GOP's future poses a long-term media problem ( the topic is not to be discussed), Republicans pretend they have a short-term Romney one.