Archive for November 10th, 2010
The more things change…
A piece written by historian and commentator Rick Perlstein is making the rounds. Titled, “We Are Ruled by Liars,” Perlstein says:
We live in a mendocracy.
As in: rule by liars.
Political scientists are going crazy crunching the numbers to uncover the skeleton key to understanding the Republican victory last Tuesday.
…
[Discussion of Obama and the well-received speech he gave trumpeting the stimulus package]
…
The next morning I tuned in to Rush Limbaugh. I was fascinated to see how the hell he might respond.
Like a deer in the headlights? Not quite. The first caller, though a self-professed ditto-head, took objection to Rush’s argument that Obama had revealed himself in the speech as a tax-and-spend liberal. The caller quoted Obama’s words: “Because of this plan, 95 percent of the working households in America will receive a tax cut—a tax cut that you will see in your paychecks beginning on April 1.” (Which was true: People did.)
Rush responded, fluidly and without a gram of doubt. “Pay no attention to what Obama says. He means the opposite in most cases. What he says is irrelevant.”
So the guy to whom all Republicans must kowtow on pain of political death had just laid down a marker that everything Obama said was a lie.
I think Rick misses one key piece of info: Rush Limbaugh is heard by more people on a near-daily basis than any other person in the world. I’m not positive about that, but pretty damned sure.
A good cable news audience (Bill O’Reilly sets the standard here, I believe), may reach 5 million people on an excellent night. Network news shows get 7-8 million people.
For three hours every single weekday, Rush Limbaugh reaches (for at least part of those 3 hours) 20 million people.
The naked fact is that he is the most influential political voice in the United States. Probably moreso than the President himself.
Over his 25 years of broadcasting, Rush has built up a ton of trust with his audience and completely changed the AM radio spectrum. Hannity is close on his tail in terms of reach. Just behind him, you find Beck. And Ingraham. And Levin and Savage and Medved and Prager and Dobbs and Mancow and Bennett and Doyle…. and… and…. and….
What is more scary? The fact that these folks vote in wildly disproportionate numbers. They aren’t passive listeners. They open their wallets (fear does that to some folks, I guess), forward ridiculous email chains (when is the last time you got a progressive email from a crazy uncle?) and can be reliably counted upon to flood Congress with faxes, letters and phone calls. All of that gives them an outsized voice in our politics. It’s why our issues poll well, but we can’t elect people that do what we want them too. The talk radio crowd, combined with the moneyed interests, crowd progressive voices out.
I’d love to see a graphical representation of American politics compared against the arc of right wing talk radio. My bet is that it’d open up some eyes. I suspect that too many of us believe that since we see talk radio for the hucksterism that it is, it can’t really be a true threat. And I don’t think that could be more wrong. Talk radio is the nervous wiring of the right wing. The Koch’s and Scaife’s and the Waltons may be the brain sending signals through the wires, but as an organizing tool, it’s incredibly potent.