GOP Rebranding? Fox News Chief Roger Ailes Isn't Buying It

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As I asked two months ago, has the Fox phony Outrage Machine damaged the conservative movement? Is it standing in the way of Republican progress and electoral success?

I think the answer from the "Growth & Opportunity Report" is that yes, it clearly has. Fox's slash-and-burn, name-calling style is part of the GOP's larger messaging trouble and is a key reason the party is perceived as angry, intolerant, and out of touch. As conservative Erick Erickson  wrote this year, "Who the hell wants to listen to conservatives whining and moaning all the time about the outrage du jour?" (Ironically, Erickson joined Fox as a contributor less than two weeks after leveling that criticism.) 

The permanent state of victimhood that Fox markets on behalf of the GOP might keep a loyal audience of Obama haters happy on cable television. But all it's produced for the party is two landslide Obama victories.

Esquire's Ton Junod, who wrote a  lengthy profile of Ailes two years ago, recently  noted Ailes' political failings. "For all his instinctive showmanship, and for all his purported populist genius," wrote Junod, "Ailes saw Obama cobble together his new majority right under his nose, and knew neither what to call it or how to stop it."

Priebus and his colleagues at the RNC now think they know how to stop the Democratic majority, but Roger Ailes isn't interested.