"Jane, you ignorant....." sarcasm, irony, and the conservative mind - AND the bubble we live in.

[JHB]

6. You left out the original way around it...

...the "Crossfire" model:

a squishy "moderate" or "cenrist" cast as representing "The Left" (Tom Braden, Michael Kinsley, etc.);
a no-holds-barred, no-compromise, partisan conservative on "the Right" (Pat Buchanan, Robert Novack, etc.)

So you have someone attacking even Republican administrations for failure to be sufficnetly conservative, but no countering forceful argument for liberal policies and positions, nor liberal perspective on whatever topic was at hand. Since this marked the range of the debate in Washington circles, it helped pull "normal" to the right.