The Fear Frame

This wise old elder is sitting around the campfire talking about saber-toothed tigers and how to make the best kind of arrowheads to deal with them. Suddenly the tribal idiot bursts onto the scene screaming that he just saw a big saber-tooth while he was out taking a leak, and he thinks it's following him.

In this instance, your survival may depend on your listening to the idiot instead of continuing to listen to the dispassionate lecture. Your brain's natural emergency mechanisms will override the cortical overlay that mediates dispassionate cognition. This is a highly adaptive trait in a saber-tooth world, but not in a world that requires complex mental processes to arrive at the right answer for survival.

The Republican strategy depends on activating the Saber-tooth fight/flight mechanisms and keeping them activated. This keeps people in an irrational, angry/fearful state, and shuts down their thinking apparatus, making them perfect pawns for the Republicans. The last election once again proved the value of this technique.

Fox News has nothing to do with news. It has everything to do with activating the viewers' adrenaline and cortisol production.

this is what the electorate responds to. It is dumber than a box of rocks... rational arguments don't work.

If it makes you feel better, this is not limited to the US Electorate.