Can someone please explain to me why the Republican Party still enjoys

[KingCharlemagne]

97. A little historical perspective: I think the resentment at the so-called 'liberal media' dates back

to America's inability to exert its will in Vietnam over many years and the search for whom to blame that failure on. The "Hippies" and the "liberal media" each played the role of useful scapegoat in this search, Few ever stopped to consider that we lost the war because the Vietnamese had a highly committed population and a brilliant military cadre headed by General Giap. So the "liberal media" got the blame because, supposedly, their negative portrayals of our efforts there (culminating in Cronkite's verdict after Tet '68 that the most we could hope for was statemate) caused Americans to turn against the war effort.

It was all bullshit, as you rightly point out, made more so by the fact that scholarly studies of the media after the war showed that the media largely remained firmly pro-war long after a majority of Americans had turned against the war effort.

If the 'liberal media' didn't exist (and it really doesn't save in the delusional minds of Faux News viewers), it would be necessary to invent it.

It's weird because after the end of Operation Desert Storm in 1990, then-President George H.W. Bush proclaimed that we had finally kicked the 'Vietnam Syndrome.' The fact that a tired, worn out old trope like the "liberal media" still gets brought out and dusted off whenever a convenient scapegoat is required is proof, if any were needed, that we really haven't kicked the 'Vietnam Syndrome.'