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Imagine how happy Ted Cruz would be if parts of the second season of House of Cards actually happened. (Spoilers ahead, obviously.) The lawless president has resigned in the face of impeachment, and all because of the Democratic Party's ineptitude and corruption. While the Heritage Foundation thought the show increased America's cynicism about DC, Will Rahn at The Daily Caller went so far as to call the show "a stunningly right wing piece of entertainment" and "the most Tea Party show ever," which implies it's more conservative than Duck Dynasty.
Rahn argues that, because entitlement reform passes, while Democrats are murderers and the War on Women is fake, this is the best Hollywood can offer the hard right. Also, the "mainstream" media is still mainstream. As Rahn put it:
House of Cards isn’t your typical red state show, a sub-genre defined largely by an embrace of Christianity and an aversion to smut. ... But any entertainment that makes Washington’s inhabitants look this unsympathetic is appealing to a conservative impulse, whether it wants to or not.
That true, in a sense. The show centers on its Democrats, and they're all awful like Frank Underwood and Majority Whip Jackie Sharp, or useless like the president. But FreedomWorks' Deneen Borelli identified with the season for a different reason — Underwood's use of the FBI to persecute the journalists on his trail mirrors the intimidation tactics the GOP establishment uses against the Tea Party. The establishment is cutting off donors who support the Tea Party movement, as The New York Times reported last week. "Isolating FreedomWorks from its donors is a tactic that fictional character Underwood would appreciate," Borelli wrote. In that sense, Borelli agrees with people who argue that Cards proves the need for smaller government.