I suspect you and I are on different sides on this, but I'd like to respond your point here.
There is nothing that discredits people, politicians, and lawyers faster than making stupid/obviously incorrect arguments. Because as you can see from what happens here, when some leftist politician says something dumb, or easily disproven, conservatives are all over it. It zooms around via Twitter, YouTube, etc.. We love it when they say stupid things.
But that applies just as much to us as it does to them. When bogus stories, misleading headlines, and just bad facts get promulgated and repeated, we're just setting ourselves up to look like morons if/when we repeat this stuff to outsiders. So it is in our interest to police ourselves. That means checking the claims we are making, verifying articles or claims that look suspicious, and not using wild hyperbole that amounts to just...lying.
The problem here is that if you attempt to do that to other conservatives by pointing out flaws in articles, or in reasoning, or in facts, you get immediately attacked as a leftist, or concern troll, or whatever. Rather than defending the truth, you're accused of defending whomever was the subject of the article. So the result is that the standards for what is considered a good conservative argument have dropped below basement level. Clever invective and insults now substitute for building a solid argument.
So it isn't "operating under the Marquis of Queensbury rules". It's trying to make sure we don't sound like jackasses for repeating claims that any un-biased person with half a brain can recognize as flawed. But...that's kind of gone out the window here in a drive for MAGA orthodoxy. Question anything, and you're the enemy.
It's beyond salvage at this point, which is kind of sad. Too many smart people chased off or just tired of the diminished level of discourse. I first posted here under another screenname back in November 2000, and the diminution in quality is beyond dispute.
Tl;dr.
Excellent post.