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Conservatives Should Be Angry About the GOP Filter Bubble

That “MSM” is a widely-known and oft-used acronym is proof enough that the conservative media’s long painting of mainstream media as liberal has been a success.

That “MSM” is a widely-known and oft-used acronym is proof enough that the conservative media’s long painting of mainstream media as liberal has been a success. An entire industry has built success out of trying to counteract the alleged bias of media, and that undeniably shaped how the election played out. But it also got absurd: As the Nate Silvers led the way on an increasingly data-driven race, pundits like Dick Morris continued to spin their own, counterfactual narratives. Considering how Obama glided to victory last night, it’s probably time that folks on the right ask why Breitbart, the Dally Caller, Drudge Report, and even Fox News was so invested in a self-spun storyline that ultimately missed the mark by a wide margin.

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Is this a case of a swathe of the media driven by the hope of creating self-fulfilling prophecies, or is it something more endemic? Either way, it’s a serious filter bubble, as Conor Friedersdorf discusses in a great piece at The Atlantic:

It is easy to close oneself off inside a conservative echo chamber. And right-leaning outlets like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh’s show are far more intellectually closed than CNN or public radio. If you’re a rank-and-file conservative, you’re probably ready to acknowledge that ideologically friendly media didn’t accurately inform you about Election 2012. Some pundits engaged in wishful thing; others feigned confidence in hopes that it would be a self-fulfilling prophecy; still others decided it was smart to keep telling right-leaning audiences what they wanted to hear. But guess what? You haven’t just been misinformed about the horse race. Since the very beginning of the election cycle, conservative media has been failing you. With a few exceptions, they haven’t tried to rigorously tell you the truth, or even to bring you intellectually honest opinion. What they’ve done instead helps to explain why the right failed to triumph in a very winnable election.

Now, it’d be easy to write off this type of commentary as more pandering from the liberal elite, but that’s hardly the case, and it’s really worth the read. We are all better off if we’re given better political coverage, because it helps us pick better candidates. And left or right, better candidates are what we need.

If there’s one philosophical takeaway from the election, it’s that the crowing about the conservative punditocracy’s obsession with its own reality was justified. Romney may have gotten as far as he did as a candidate because of how well insulated he was within his media base, but that ultimately masked the fact that he wasn’t a viable candidate.

This was absolutely an election the GOP could have won. But by keeping conservatives trapped in ghost-chasing fantasyland, especially during the absurdly bitter Republican primaries, the GOP ended up with a candidate that made for a great blank canvas for conservative pundits to paint in their own image, but that ultimately lacked enough substance to resonate with voters outside of the base.

Follow Derek Mead on Twitter: @derektmead.