It’d be easier buy into the whole explanatory journalism experience if the editor-in-chief believed confirmation bias and identity-protective cognition existed on both sides. Not just with a throwaway line, but with an example. In Klein’s thought experiment, though, it’s radio host Sean Hannity — not Paul Krugman or Rachel Maddow — who is captive to an audience of rabid ideologues that would run him out of the business if he took a contrarian position. Hannity, according to Klein, is slave to faulty ideas because he is a slave to his paycheck. Yet, in the same piece, Klein also brings up Justice Antonin Scalia, a man with a lifetime appointment and no fear of financial retribution for changing his position. Yes, he too is wedded to the very same evidence-free ideology because … well, because, evidently, it’s not politics that makes a person stupid, it’s right-wing politics that makes them stupid.

So why are liberal immune from this destructive partisanship but not conservatives? You know the reasons:

1– They are innately intolerant.

2- They’ve been duped by plutocrats.

3- They are slaves to faith-based mumbo jumbo.

4 –They are misinformed – typically by Fox News.

5 – All of the above.