Does this understanding of American conservatism not describe effective points for voter galvanization? In other words, it's an operational definition in tune with American voter behavior. One might point to the rallying cry for a US Constitutional ban to gay marriage, during the Bush presidential candidacy.
Did that not serve to rally the American conservative base? Is Alex Jones not representative of effective (meaning the kind that wins elections) conservatism? Isn't Alex Jones, perhaps the #1 most popular media personality of today, being censored part of the reason why people are concerned?
As far as I know (which is not much), opinion on gay rights has shifted drastically in the last 10-20 years, both among democrats and republicans.
And I really don't think that Alex jones is the #1 most popular media personality today, not by a long shot (where did you get that statistic?). And him specifically being censored is not why many people are concerned, except insofar as it is indicative of how other people are treated. Most people that I listen, on both the left and the right, absolutely abhor him.
No, it didn't. Even Obama said he was anti-gay marriage in 2008.and California, one of the most liberal states, banned gay marriage in 2008 with prop 8: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8_(20.... Gay marriage divided people on both sides of the aisle. Conservatives were slower to move in favor of it...but that's sort of the definition of conservative (keep things status quo). It wasn't a major platform for Trump, who chose to make immigration a much bigger issue.
Alex Jones is a conspiracy theorist shock jock. He's no more representative of conservatism than Howard Stern is of liberalism. He is not representative of the kind of conservatism that wins elections. Trump being an anomaly (and I wouldn't say Trump is nearly as batty as Jones), you've got a history of folks like Romney, McCain, Bush 1 & Jr, Dole, and Reagan in recent history carrying the election. Even those names though, don't encompass the nuance of the range of views of tens of millions of people in this country.
I view Alex Jones as relevant to the prediction of future elections not because he is vulnerable to criticism of being a "conspiracy theorist shock jock", but simply because of the scale of his influence. That's what makes him far more relevant as a conservative voice than Rush Limbaugh, Bill O Reilly, or Steve Bannon.
And if you're viewing President Trump as an anomaly, then you have to view this whole period as an anomaly, because Trump-like candidates are bluntly replacing low energy Jebs. I remember one recent advertisement where a candidate teased how different they were from Trump with an imaginary childhood rearing situation involving building a wall, and learning language by talking about making America great again.
The latter is relevant as Alex Jones has a popular mobile app, YouTube, and podcast presence, which is not captured entirely by radio presence. If only he weren't banned, we could see how the popularity spike would've resolved.
The quote I shared above included online numbers (not just pure AM/FM), by Talkers methodology. I don't know about YouTube. But search trends aren't a complete metric either, as even critics of Jones could be searching for things related to him. A search is not necessarily a sign of support or devotion, just a sign of curiosity.
