You Report, We Marginalize

And the way your flock sees it, the modifications that Republicans need to make to become competitive again in American politics -- acknowledging a need for state intervention to make the economy work, backing off the primitive religiosity, embracing a more tolerant pluralism -- amount to nothing less than heresy.

As an aide to Richard Nixon back in the day, Roger, you were around for the birth of the Southern strategy -- the policy to move all those disgruntled racist Southern whites into Republican ranks. But the party as Nixon would have recognized it ceased to exist after the Republicans captured Congress in 1994. Since then, the national Republican Party has been dominated by far-right Southern legislative leaders -- Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Trent Lott -- and by George W. Bush. The past two elections, Republicans have grown weaker everywhere but the white rural South -- the region that remains the least educated and least diverse.

And rather than present these voters with a picture of a complex, changing world, you guys at Fox serve chiefly to reinforce their fears, to paint people who hold different viewpoints as alien and threatening.

In that sense, your work remains dangerous and disintegrative to the nation. But it is also, more narrowly, tactically, for now, a great gift to liberals and Democrats. You ensure the ongoing Palinization and marginalization -- electorally, the terms are synonymous -- of the Republican Party.

And to think that you're doing all this not on the Democratic National Committee's dime but on Rupert Murdoch's.

Cheers from your new fan,

Harold

meyersonh@washpost.com