JENNFIER RUBIN JOINS DOROTHY RABINOWITZ

Like Rabinowitz, Rubin points out that the gasbags & the Baggers are on the fringe of America. The important point isn't that Rubin has some reality-based principles, it's that she is standing up to the radio gasbags and the Baggers.

Why do Cruz and Heritage Action do what they do?

By Jennifer Rubin, Published: September 25 at 8:45 am
WaPo

But say you are a conservative cable TV show host. If you get a few million viewers each night in your audience, you’re extremely successful and beating the pants off the opposition. If you’re a conservative magazine editor and you get a few hundred thousand readers (many of whom are the very same people who watch the conservative cable TV show) you’re going gangbusters. All of them and a fraction of those who write in or interact with you may heartily believe in the same stanch conservative principles you do. Nevertheless, if it were an election and they all turned out to vote, someone who got all those votes would only be in the category of “also getting votes were . . . ” In some states, they wouldn’t get on the ballot.

That is the disconnect between conservative media and conservative electoral success. What is the entire political universe for a conservative cable TV host or magazine is miniscule when it comes to a winning electorate, even in a single large state.

When things don’t turn out as planned, excuses must be found (e.g. the MSM, the weak-kneed Republicans). But in fact, the easy and more accurate answer is often that their view was a small minority of public opinion.

You see this disparity again and again in the stark contrast between the hard-line conservative media’s views and national polling on everything from immigration to the government shutdown.