Laura Ingraham on her radio show (from The Rachel Maddow Show):

I couldn’t have said it any better: Republicans have real problems. They are wimps who surround themselves with like-minded people so they are never challenged.

I see this clearly today and I’ve been watching it happen over the last three decades. Republicans have systematically ghettoized themselves. It is sad to see conservatives I talk to who only get their news from conservative outlets like Fox News and right-wing radio: they are shocked that liberals even exist because their only experience of them is as straw-men seen through these media filters. What’s more, they are completely impotent against real arguments. Of course, this doesn’t cause them to abandon their beliefs; they simply don’t accept what are established facts.

It is really very tiring when you get to that point in all these arguments when you are asked to produce the proof, as though you should carry it in your pocket. They, of course, have accepted everything they’ve been told without a smidgen of proof. But if it goes against their prejudices, “There must be proof!” Occasionally, I do get through to these people. In time, I will provide them with newspaper articles and sometimes they actually read them. And then it is always the same, “You mean they’ve been lying to me?!”

Yes, deary: they’ve been lying to you.

And that’s how the Grand Old Party became the Simplistic New Party. And they have real problems, such as the fact that people like Ingraham think the party still has any relationship to Ronald Reagan—or even Bob Dole. Not that I’m saying that would be good, but it would be better.