George Allen was on his way to being the front runner in the republican until his infamous “miccacah” (?) remark was videoed.
Can’t recall right this moment the democrat who challenged the press to find dirt on him, which they did in short order, ending his run for the presidency.
For people who are supposed to be the smartest and the best, not knowing every word you utter outside the privacy of your home is going to be public information in a matter of hours has always perplexed me.
Debates are televised and participants need to realize that more than just the hardcore base are going to hear whatever they say.
I think that if the economy is in recession in 2016, then the Republicans win. The demographic baseline may be moving against them, but election year economic performance will continue to be decisive. Besides, minorities often have lower turnout and voter suppression can postpone reckoning for a while.
Then again in California the Republican Party has suffered electoral collapse and their antics have led that of the remainder of the US. And conservative radio and TV heads have every incentive to pump up the crazy, as that is what sells.
I think you would probably be right if the race was generic Republican vs generic Democrat. The problem is you need an actual candidate to pull it off. This candidate needs to be crazy enough to survive the Republican primary and sane enough to get elected in the national, and I think unless major changes on the right, those may be non-overlapping sets.
I think that is good evidence on the dangers of keeping themselves inside their bubble of information.
That definition applies to the technology version of this, but I think that algorithm existed for a long time among groups that follow strict ideologies.
The problem for those groups is that the current fragmentation of the sources of information and the filters, both automatic and made up, are contributing to this group of conservative Americans to get used to very unsavory concepts or ideas or to see it as normal, they only see nods or tolerance to very ugly memes, like “rape not causing pregnancy if the woman is not willing” and then finding themselves tarred and feathered by all others outside the bubble.
Seeing the Tea Partiers go more off the deep end, I foresee more of those creepy ideas crawl from the rocks that friendly moderators (that also live in that bubble) will think are OK to turn over.