People who tend toward conservative political ideals are often binary thinkers. They have a personal sense of "right and wrong" that is almost trapped in a child like developmental state.
When speaking with children at around 5 to 8 years old and offering them the scenario about a person "stealing" medications to prevent their child from dying, the children will almost always say that stealing is wrong and is the problem within the story, not acknowledging that there may be moral, ethical, and even legal prerogatives that supersede the theft. Conservatives have a similar reaction although as a adults their responses are not quite as simplistic and would be something like, "Well he could have gone to a charity and gotten help", but still fall along the lines that the answer is simple.
When listening to mainstream media and especially more liberal leaning media, we often hear about the complexity of a situation. As infuriating as CNN and MSNBC can be for inviting and letting conservatives try to spin a situation, they do so for a couple of reasons. One, is to not appear biased to one point of view. Two, to show that there is complexity in the way people are processing a situation. Nuance is often mistaken for weakness when we are tired of hearing the conservatives lying or spinning their message. Conservative media is much more simplistic. They tell their listeners exactly who is to blame and feed into their childlike idea of "right and wrong" even though conservative media is almost always wrong or blatantly lying.
The mindset, in my opinion precedes the media and the media only perpetuates the mindset.
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