Each night, Tucker Carlson battles coastal liberal elites w/ his plucky demeanor and affable tribalism. But this version of the character was only written 3 years ago by the great Roger Ailes. Prior to Ailes’ rebranding, Tucker was your run-of-the-mill, Northeastern moderate elitist.

Here’s Tucker defending close ally Karl Rove’s anti-Tea Party group “Conservative Victory Project”:

“The Republican Party apparently isn’t strong enough to weed out the poor candidates…I mean, somebody’s got to be…a gatekeeper keeping morons from running for office.”

Good times…

• Tucker lols at populism

  Tucker mocks Fox News’ hosts populism shtick.

• Tucker trashes Sarah Palin

  Tucker sides w/ Karl in his feud w/ Sarah Palin.

• Tucker defends trashing Sarah Palin

  Greta scolds Tucker for publishing misogynistic remarks about Sarah Palin. After the uproar, Tucker “added context” aka threw in a bunch of shit to make it seem like a legitimate article (no judgment, MFP does that all the time).

• Tucker censors immigration hawks

  Anti-amnesty activist Mickey Kaus resigned from Tucker’s website after Tucker personally pulled an article accusing Fox News of pro-amnesty bias:

  “It’s pretty simple,” Kaus said in an interview, “I wrote a piece attacking Fox for not being the opposition on immigration and amnesty — for filling up the airwaves with reports on ISIS and terrorism, and not fulfilling their responsibility of being the opposition on amnesty and immigration…I posted it at 6:30 in the morning. When I got up, Tucker had taken it down. He said, ‘We can’t trash Fox on the site. I work there.'”

That the Tucker character is now accepted as a populist conservative is a testament to Ailes’ talent and deep understanding of Fox’s low-information audience.

Kudos.