Donald Trump Makes History With Zero Major Newspaper Endorsements

It's an oft-repeated phrase since the shifting of media to online: "Facts tend to have a liberal bias." And it's not incorrect. Despite the notion that liberals are bleeding-heart muh feelsies type basement-dwellers, since the advent of fact-checking, the Republican Party has been well behind the Democrats in using factual statements to support their assertions. It's not even a contest. And that should bug Republican voters.

The prime example of this recently is Newt Gingrich talking about how it feels like there's more crime—despite statistics stating otherwise. Because he "feels" more unsafe than he used to, it must be so. But it should be bothersome that the Republican Party and its face-people to continue to tout the birther movement, or Obama being a Muslim as grounds for disagreeing with his statements.

If the Republican Party wanted to be taken seriously by the moderate middle, they should've abandoned those stances long ago and decried people who made them, but they continue to run campaigns focused on (and here's that term again) anti-intellectualism. They want the birthers, the feelsies, the conspiracy nuts. Fear is an incredibly powerful motivator to push one out to the polls, and losing only cements that base harder because they believe everything is a conspiracy out to ruin them and them specifically.

Y'know, I'm not a pollster or a forecaster in any way, but I have a sneaking suspicion that until the Republican Party re-introduces facts to their campaign, they will always come up that little bit short in their big elections (incumbent bias will keep their House and Senate seats much more easily, save for cases like Anthony Weiner). If Trump loses in November, that "reimagining Republicans" pamphlet that went around after Romney's loss talking about how to engage alienated demographics is going to see a resurgence.

If you ask me, that's an important reason for "fence Republicans" to vote for Hillary. We may finally see a Republican Party that abandons its hardline antiquated social ("family") values, abandons anti-science, anti-intellectuals like Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh. Hell, Glenn Beck is basically setting himself up to lead the vocal wing of such a movement, what with his public recanting on his stance on Black Lives Matter and other revelations over the past year, so it's not outside the realm of possibility. The Democrats had to rethink their strategy after multiple losses in the late 20th century, and it brought about Bill Clinton and Clintonian politics—the new Democratic Party. No one is saying Republicans couldn't do something similar, and if they want the White House ever again, I think they'll have to do so.

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