According to Vox’s David Roberts, activist conservatives are “bending the political system to their will” not by scoring policy victories but by taking their cues from “fever dreams” (i.e., conspiracy theories).

In a Thursday article, Roberts suggested two reasons why conservatives generally are more inclined than liberals to buy into CTs. One is that for conservatives, not trusting “the political system [is] built into the ideology.” The other is that even though right-wingers are “politically engaged and intense,” their sources of information tend to be, in Roberts’s estimation, unreliable.

“Conservative media, activists, and politicians have every reason to convince their most engaged supporters that the whole system is rotten and can't be trusted," contended Roberts. “It makes it easier to fill their heads with nonsense about Sharia law, Agenda 21, and all the rest, which in turn increases their intensity and engagement.”

From Roberts’s piece (bolding added):

[C]onspiracies have always been a part of politics, of course, on both sides of the aisle (see: 9/11 truthers). But since Obama was elected, conservative media and activists have pushed the right's conspiracy theories squarely into the mainstream of the party…

…[I]t's pretty obvious that conservatives are less likely than liberals to trust the political system. It's built into the ideology. What's more, conservative anti-government, anti-establishment sentiment has become more and more virulent over the past several decades…

Declining trust in institutions is a broader phenomenon in the US, of course, not confined to any political persuasion. But it is not symmetrical. Low trust has become endemic in American conservatism, not only when a Democrat holds the presidency, but generally. Thus the rise of Trump, Carson, and other "outsider" candidates.

What's more, the conservative base is, relative to the broader electorate, more politically engaged and intense, which means its members are likely to pay more attention and have more knowledge (or at least "knowledge") about political events...

What this suggests to me is that the prevalence of [conspiracy theories] among conservatives is not a temporary phenomenon, tied to Obama's presidency, but the result of deeper, longer-term social and demographic trends. Low-trust, high-knowledge conservatives are a breeding ground for CTs…

…Side note: Liberals often want to dismiss the Tea Party as ignorant hicks, but demographic data shows that Tea Partiers are in fact higher income and higher education than the average voter or the average Republican…

There are some horrible incentive structures built into current conservative politics. Conservative media, activists, and politicians have every reason to convince their most engaged supporters that the whole system is rotten and can't be trusted — it makes it easier to fill their heads with nonsense about Sharia law, Agenda 21, and all the rest, which in turn increases their intensity and engagement…

But as we've seen, if that process goes on long enough, it produces two unpleasant results. First, the most engaged conservative voters will be more and more adrift in a paranoid fantasia, wrapped in an epistemic bubble filled with conspiracy theories…

And second, they won't trust conservative elites any more than they trust liberals, scientists, or the media. That means they are not only deluded but unchecked, beyond the influence of any moderating force, easy prey for demagogues and hucksters…

And that's exactly what we're seeing unfold, as illustrated by the horror comedy that is the GOP primary race. Low-trust, high-knowledge conservatives — a.k.a. the conservative base — are bending the political system to their will on the basis of fever dreams that neither the media nor politicians can afford to ignore.