And she publishes a long long paper about it.

The reporter is Jackie Calmes, and the paper is entitled “They Don’t Give a Damn about Governing” with the subtitle “Conservative Media’s Influence on the Republican Party.” It’s published by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center.

Vox’s David Roberts has read it and has some thoughts about her conclusions. (I’ve read about one-fifth of it so far. As I said, it’s long.)

For one thing, Roberts says, Calmes expresses her surprise at how voluminous the conservative media is. She obviously wasn’t reading the left blogosphere in the early 2000s, when one of its constant complaints was that the Mainstream Media continued to believe that the Republican party had lots of moderates who could pull the party back from the right and govern in a bipartisan fashion long after it was entirely clear that those people were no longer welcome in that party. There were thousands of blog posts written excoriating the New York Times, the Washington Post and the major networks for their inability to understand that.

Calmes quotes recently-retired Republican US House Representative Tom Latham (R-IA) talking about the conservative media and its consumers:

“They will not take 80 percent – it’s got to be 100 percent or you’re not pure,” Latham said. “They don’t give a damn about governing, or about anything than being pure themselves. And it’s causing more people to be concerned about primaries than ever before. I just don’t see – with continual pounding of the drums in the media and these outside groups – I don’t know how you function, I really don’t. I don’t know how you pass appropriation bills this year.”

One hopes some of Calmes’ colleagues read her paper and learn from it. They need to.