That’s the suspicion of First Read:
Despite polls showing that more Americans are blaming Republicans than Democrats for the shutdown, and despite establishment Republicans admitting they aren’t winning this fight, conservatives aren’t backing down. In fact, they feel they have survived the fallout from the first few days. Case in point is Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) admission in that hot-mic moment that “We’re gonna win this, I think.” Is that the reality of this standoff? Or it is simply due to the conservative echo chamber? After all, one of the major differences between the last shutdown (in 1995-1996) and now is the rise of FOX News, Drudge, and Breitbart News. As the New York Times recently wrote, “a fervent group of conservatives — bloggers, pundits, activists and even members of Congress — is harnessing the power of the Internet, determined to tell the story of the current budget showdown on its terms.” It explains why conservatives aren’t as convinced as many others are that this will do significant damage to the party.
Larison connects shutdown spin to the larger GOP misinformation problem:
Some Republicans are making all of the same mistakes that they made when they ignored all of the evidence suggesting that the GOP was likely to lose in 2012. Most of the time, the echo chamber hurts conservatives and Republicans by making them oblivious to inconvenient facts and ideas, but in this case it is leading them to believe in an alternate political reality with its own set of rules.
In a follow-up, he tackles Kristol’s latest nonsense.
The Dish 