Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. The Republican nominee wasn’t the choice of the people, but rather of the media.

That is a very common argument made by many on the right. They didn’t want Mitt Romney last year, but it was the media that pushed him onto them. It’s also an argument I happen to agree with. I remember last year’s Republican primary season, when you could go to Drudge and find out anything bad you wanted in regards to Herman Cain, buried inside of a bunch of fluff about Mitt Romney.

But the problem conservatives have is that they have generalized the boogeyman too much. They want you to think that it’s all the media, including CNN and MSNBC, but they misdirect their outrage away from where it really belongs – the conservative media.

Take Chris Christie as an example. The conservative media loves him and their love has made him the front runner for the GOP nomination in 2016, per every poll of likely Republican voters. Do we blame MSNBC or CNN for this? Before you ask yourself that, ask yourself which channel you think the likely Republican primary voter turns to for news. I guarantee you it isn’t MSNBC and I highly doubt it’s CNN. I would bet the house that a vast majority would say “Fox news”. How can anyone rightfully blame the media outlets over the decision makers, which in this case is the Republican primary voters, when a barely any of those influenced watch those outlets? Simple – you can’t.

So how is this influence pushed? Well the Chris Christie bridge scandal is a great example of it playing out today. Conservatives, especially the Tea Party ones, have loathed Chris Christie since his embrace of President Obama over a year ago. To them that instantly disqualified Christie from higher office or even acting as though he is representative of Conservative, and therefor Republican, values. So you would think a possible career ending scandal like the GW Bridge one playing out now would be a moment of joy for the conservative media. We’ve got over 2 years until we elect our next President and a scandal has embroiled the man the media has been pushing to lead the Republican Party. Plenty of time for the story to go away and the right find their real candidate.

You would think that, but you would be wrong. If you watched Fox News at all yesterday you would have seen a circling of the wagons and constant cheers for Christie. They helped elevate Christie’s “I’m the victim” card he was playing throughout the 2 hour press conference. 

Then you got the king of conservative talkers, Rush Limbaugh. He has declared war on any Republican not standing behind Christie and crowned them all RINOs, the same label countless conservatives use to describe Christie. 

Now some can argue that this is Reagan’s eleventh commandment, “thou shall not speak ill of fellow Republicans” in full play, and part of it may very well be. Of course that same argument shows just how dangerous that little rule of GOP politics really is. The fact is that even if Christie had no involvement in the lane closures at all, what he did admit to was being a terrible manager, which is a trait everyone will agree must be present in the President of the United States. Let’s take that a step further. If Christie is being 100% honest and say there was a traffic study that started all this, then why didn’t he, as the leader of his state, come to the conclusion that a study resulting in 2/3rds of the busiest bridge in the nation being shutdown during rush hour was a bad idea and put an end to it? That too shows a complete lack of managerial skills and leadership; traits that are imperative in a commander in chief. 

So if Christie is actually involved or some innocent “victim”, as he is trying to claim, one thing is known – this is a man not fit to hold the highest office in the land.

And knowing that we still find the conservative media holding this man up as a hero and the future of their party. Also knowing that, we see something that would plague a Christie White House run, especially in the primary. 

But conservatives are now destined to repeat their own failures of the last two cycles. Should Christie become the Republican nominee in 2016 and lose to his Democratic rival, the conservatives will again scream that they didn’t want him, but rather had him forced upon them by the “media”. And of course they will be right about this, but they won’t admit that the media that has once again given them a losing candidate isn’t the so-called “liberal media”, but rather their own conservative media. So perhaps it’s time for the conservative voters to come to fruitition with the fact that their own media is the culprit in this and either demand they change or punish them the only way you can, by turning them off!