Like heck they aren't. Every time I post my opinion here, I have to defend it. If I make the tiniest factual mistake, someone spots it and points it out to me. If I don't know all the facts, someone will provide them to prove me wrong. As a result, the average freeper is far better at articulating and factually supporting their opinion than the vast majority of people in media. The talking heads don't like dipping their toes in the water here because the aquatic life snaps back, something they are not used to in their controlled media environments where they can cut off callers at will or simply ignore what they don't care to write or report about.
You are assuming that there lies somewhere a repository of conservative truth. If one deviates from you or others consdier conservative orthodoxy, you are drawn and quartered.
I take it you are unwilling to let your opinions be tested in the FR gauntlet. Trust me, if they don't survive, they were weak, and if they make it through, what you learn in the process will make your opinions much stronger.
Liberalism has prevailed because they have not adopted a policy of eating their own. Conservatives could learn a thing or two from them.
Yeah, the Dems now control the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court because of their lock-step approach. Oops, they haven't. Exactly what are you getting at here? The reason conservatism appeals to so many Americans is that it is an intellectual as opposed to an emotional politic. And intellectualism calls for debate. Some folks get carried away, but that's life here. The plusses are much greater than that particular negative.
Second, many arguments are shot down not because they are weak but because another party engages in fallacious reasoning, ad hominem attack or engages in plan of attrition. That does not result in discerning the best approach on anything.