From Newsweek: Have Republicans Been Out-Foxed?
Some conservatives are beginning to question whether Fox News is good for their movement.

GOP Sen. Tom Coburn scored a perfect 100 on the American Conservative Union's rankings for lawmakers last year. That makes him one of the last people you'd expect to criticize what liberals see as the GOP's most notable media mouthpiece, Fox News, but that's exactly what he did at a recent town-hall meeting in Oklahoma. When an audience member fretted about going to prison for not buying health insurance, Coburn responded, "The intention is not to put anyone in jail. That makes for good TV on Fox, but that isn't the intention." When discussing disagreements with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he described her as a "nice lady" and warned the jeering crowd to be civil and to get their news from more than one source: "Don't catch yourself being biased by Fox News that somebody is no good."

Coburn's calling out of Fox was notable precisely because it's rare for Fox and Republicans to find their messages out of sync. The image of Fox that one gets from liberal critics such as The Daily Show's Jon Stewart is that it parrots Republican talking points, pushes conservative ideas into the mainstream, and keeps the base animated. But some conservatives are asking whether the news channel has become too extreme and whether, by angering and agitating the base, it may be making it harder, rather than easier, for Republicans to win elections.

David Frum, a prominent conservative pundit and former speechwriter for George W. Bush, led the charge last month when he lambasted Republicans’ handling of health-care reform. In a piece about the health-care vote titled “Waterloo,” Frum wrote, "We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat. There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible…By mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead." On Nightline, Frum noted, "Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we're discovering we work for Fox…The thing that sustains a strong Fox network is the thing that undermines a strong Republican Party."...
And all of Murdoch's horses and all of his men couldn't put Faux News together again.