If the Republican Party is to rebuild, it's going to have to drag its core supporters kicking and screaming out of the echo chamber.
Movement partisans - members of the apocryphal and ever shrinking "base" - increasingly are too often not involved in politics to support a particular set of convictions. Rather, they view politics as a sports competition of sorts: they have to root for the team above all else. Once a side has been chosen, it's Them vs. The Other, and what matters is opposing the other side.
One can quickly figure out whether they're a partisan or a principled thinker by their gut reaction to an article that criticizes their candidate of choice. There were articles that were released in the fall that accurately criticized Gov. Sarah Palin, R-Alaska, for lying about her supposed opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere, for instance. Although there were a few people who conceded that she was at the very least distorting her record, most conservatives' reaction to anyone that brought it up was to dismiss the source - or even the person furthering the information - as left-wing trash and, quite simply, reject the information from their mental processing. What mattered to such people was not whether the charge was verifiable, but whether it helped the team. Intellectual integrity took a back seat to being a Republican, little different from being a supporter of a sports team.
Once you're a devoted member of a team, accurately filtering information takes a backseat to cheerleading. Because they are not fellow team members, any information that comes from MSNBC, Salon, The Huffington Post or the Daily Kos can safely be ignored and dismissed. The flaw in this chain of logic, of course, is that - accepting its rules - if Hitler says the sky is blue, his opponents are obligated to disagree with him. But this is absurd: we opposed Adolf Hitler because he tried to conquer the Earth and massacre the entire European Jewish population, not because everything that he ever did in his entire life epitomized evil. One can safely presume that Hitler also enjoyed the occasional piece of cake; this does not mean that anti-fascists are obligated to refuse to eat cake. By the same token, one should oppose Keith Olbermann because he espouses liberal views and not conflate this with an inability to say anything that's accurate. Considering the source and making sure to verify the information that one is being given is what has to be done - not ignoring or flatly disregarding a source.
Most Americans aren't movement partisans, nor are they all that concerned with ideology. While most Americans will call themselves moderates or conservatives when made to select a label, this does not mean that they are subscribers to a rigid ideology or that they will refuse to vote for a candidate that isn't "on the same team." For those that mostly interact with other movement partisans, it's difficult to get in to the mindset of someone who could have been torn, like my own grandmother, between supporting Hillary Clinton or Fred Thompson back in the fall of 2007. But like her, most Americans are not dogmatic ideologues and don't reject information right out of the starting gate based upon the source. It's like the memory eraser from "Men in Black" or something: "Sure, Sarah Palin performed terribly in the interview, but man, that Katie Couric sure is left-wing! Information rejected!"
One can acknowledge a candidate's flaws while continuing to support him wholeheartedly. In fact, it's the best way to support him and convert others to the cause: Who wants to listen to a surrogate blabber about his candidate's infallibility? Acknowledging the flaws of one's own candidate is very attractive to converts, who will see you as intellectually honest, rather than as a cheerleader. And Lord knows that the world needs fewer of those.
Alex Knepper is a freshman in the School of Public Affairs and a conservative columnist for The Eagle. You can reach him at edpage@theeagleonline.com.
