GREGORY HOOD: The Conservative Media and the Microphone. [archive]

Few people involved in what is absurdly called the “conservative media” want to shift the Overton Window . . . Their goal is to carve out a niche, secure the loyalty of a certain market, and then push products . . . If you are . . . Glenn Beck, it’s buckets of food or packets of “survival seeds” . . . What you are actually writing about is beyond the point. . . .

The business model only works if the Narrative is predictable, the talking points are the same, and the supposed solutions are things people are used to. . . .

If 2016 has shown us anything, it’s the absurdity of pretending there’s a difference between the “Republican Establishment” and some virtuous TruConservative Movement. Ted Cruz’s campaign represents the unification of these supposedly disparate forces . . . When a TruConservative starts talking to you about “principles,” you’re simply hearing a sales pitch. . . .

Every movement, it is said, devolves into a business and then into a racket. The reason movement conservatives hate Donald Trump has nothing to do with “tone” or even “policies,” but because he threatens the smooth operation of that racket. As Joseph Sobran said of conservatives, “It was all a game, a way of making a living.” . . .

Like Megyn Kelly, many of the figures involved in the nominal American Right are simply looking for the opportunity to triangulate against their own institutions and transition into the “mainstream.” . . .

This is a key difference between conservatives and progressives. While progressives work to pull their institutions (and by extension, the culture) to the Left, conservatives constantly try to triangulate between their “friends” on the Left and the hated white constituency who actually reads or views them on TV. . . . Conservative journalists and even activists have no real stake in the success of their own movement.