GOP Belatedly Realizes Its Embrace Of Propaganda And Conspiracy Results In Bizarre And Unpopular Candidates

Frustrated by factual reality, science, and an independent press, the GOP and its wealthy backers have spent the better part of forty years building an alternative reality propaganda machine across AM radio, local broadcasting (with the help of Sinclair Broadcasting), fake pink slime" local newspapers, cable news (OANN, Newsmax, Fox), and now the Internet.

While this propaganda machine has adequately insulated the modern Trump and Desantis GOP from the pesky menace of factual reality, there have been some downsides. The GOP's belief that it no longer has to participate in public debates, for example, has resulted in a crop of insular, unpopular, and strange candidates who don't have broader appeal - because they're not participating in factual reality.

Amusingly, at least some Republican advisors appear to have realized this, and are urging the party to spend more time participating in real debates hosted by actual journalists. Or, at least, having debates where actual journalists are in attendance for some window dressing:

A Republican familiar with the conversations said the RNC is considering pairing mainstream outlets with conservative outlets as co-moderators, a regular feature of 2016 debates as well, to address member concerns about bias. The RNC's proposal request includes a section for networks to fill out that dives into whether they'd be open to partnerships.

But part of the goal, the person said, would be to ensure candidates don't get softball questions that aren't of substance" and that they are forced to talk about policy and give answers." The RNC meeting notably comes after a midterms in which a number of candidates popular in conservative media circles struggled to connect with independent voters in the general election.

Semafor, like most mainstream U.S. political outlets, can't candidly acknowledge that Republicans built a hugely influential and successful propaganda machine, lest it upset sources, advertisers, or event sponsors. So their story kind of amusingly tap dances around the fact that a lot of the party's problems in the midterms stemmed from out of touch delusion built on the back of a massively successful party propaganda machine.

It's not clear that the party of Trump and Desantis, whose entire political careers involve agitating and dividing Americans using a rotating platter of unhinged conspiracy, bigotry, and outrage over everything from more energy efficient game consoles to inclusive candy branding, will ever actually listen to the handful of advisors warning about the impact of this isolation. In part because outrage and division is genuinely the only semi-meaningful policies they have.

GOP propaganda exploits a parade of U.S. policy failures across media (consolidation, death of local news), education (poor to no media savviness training), journalism (failure to develop independent funding models for an independent press), and the Internet (centralized social media platforms susceptible to the whims of unhinged billionaires).

But at some point, you'd imagine that the discourse and culture will develop policy fixes for some of these issues, and an immune response to candidates whose entire platform relies on unhinged conspiracies, bottomless outrage over minutiae, and vicious bigotry.

The GOP is hopeful that gerrymandering and propaganda will shield it from both factual and electoral reality for decades to come. And so far, that's proven to be a solid bet, keeping a party with few substantive policies neck and neck in major races. The problem, again, is that candidates with heads full of pudding, hatred, and conspiracy theories aren't going to appeal to the public; especially younger Americans who increasingly realize the modern Trump GOP is routinely and violently full of shit.