Bruce Bartlett discussed on Reliable Sources yesterday his recently-published study showing how Fox News undermines Republicans.

Host Brian Stelter framed the issue around Fox’s decision to restrict participation to the top 10 candidates when it hosts the first Republican candidate debate later this year. The suggestion was that exclusion from the debate would be a huge, quite possibly fatal, blow to a candidacy – and therefore Fox is set to play a role in selecting the eventual nominee.

However, that strand of the discussion got sidelined in favor of a more general examination of Fox’s role in GOP politics and conservative mindset as a whole.

BARTLETT: I think many conservatives live in a bubble where they watch only Fox News on television, they listen only to conservative talk radio: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, many of the same people. When they go on to the internet, they look at only conservative websites like National Review, Newsmax, World Net Daily, and so they are completely in a universe in which they are hearing the same exact ideas, the same arguments, the same limited amount of data repeated over and over and over again, and that’s brainwashing. 

Bartlett said this kind of “self brainwashing” is more prevalent with conservatives than liberals because once conservatives “got a media of their own, (they) just sort of glommed on to it like a man in the desert being given some water. They drank very heavily from the Fox waters.”

Bartlett continued, “What I don’t think they’ve quite come to understand yet is, it’s a double-edged sword. There’s no question that Fox helps the Republican party enormously. But it’s not 100% positive."

As an example, Bartlett cited Fox viewers being “unrealistically confident” that Mitt Romney would win in 2012.

I’ll leave it to the Republicans to sort out the role of Fox in their politics. My concern is the Fox effect in the world beyond: Where ACORN is stripped of federal funds – shortly after the network touted their sting videos but before the videos were debunked; where Fox’s dishonest portrayal of food stamp recipients works its way into a House of Representatives committee hearing; where the tragedy in Benghazi is a forever GOP “scandal,” investigated endlessly, despite a GOP-controlled report that found no wrongdoing.

Bartlett aside, unless there's a groundswell of rebellion from the GOP grassroots over Fox's role in the 2016 election, there’s no sign that the network's hold over Republicans will be loosening any time soon.

Watch yesterday’s Reliable Sources discussion below, via Media Matters.