Rush Limbaugh and Liberalism’s Fatal Flaw

One of the Left’s great agonies and frustrations of the past fifteen years has been its abortive quest to field a counterpart to Rush Limbaugh. Fully cognizant of the massive damage inflicted on it by talk radio, a number of contenders placed bids to mount a counterattack. To their bitter dismay, they all came to grief despite the great hype and hope that surrounded each successive attempt.

A decade and a half worth of feverish effort thus produced no headway, not even a single nationally viable liberal host. With nothing to show for, the time has surely come to ask the obvious question: Why?

Why have liberals failed to make any inroads in talk radio? And why has their failure been so complete?

It surely cannot be due to a lack of trying or will, since they have done everything they could to prop up their hopefuls, even to the point of raising donations in this consummately commercial medium. All to no avail.

But rather than to reevaluate their obviously failing approach, they stubbornly carry on in the same way with predicable results. Again and again they run headlong into the same wall, each crash more pathetic and embarrassing than the one before. So bad things have gotten that most recently they placed their bets on Al Sharpton, hoping that the kooky reverend would carry their water on national airways. A futile dream if there ever were one. Rather than pursuing vain hopes, liberals would do much better to take a pause and search for the root cause of their fiasco.

Any such effort would have to begin with a hard look at the format in which they are trying to succeed.

In the type of political talk show invented by Rush Limbaugh, the host openly takes an ideological stance (conservative or liberal) and then applies it to the issues of the day during his hours on the air. What this in effect amounts to is in-depth analysis of current affairs from a specific political point of view.

The key to success in this kind of enterprise is the host’s ability to articulate his positions in a logical and cogent manner. This is because most people will not listen for very long to an analysis-driven program if the analysis itself does not make rational sense.

And this is precisely where the crux of liberals’ problem lies. They are simply not able to explain and defend their views in rational fashion. This is not at all surprising, for how does one justify high taxes, gay marriage, abortion, multiculturalism and such? They are all based on false premises and they all produce disastrous outcomes. Anything more than a superficial examination must reveals them for the frauds and failures that they in truth are. This is why liberalism cannot withstand the analytical vigor of talk radio and why it has failed so abysmally in it.

Talk radio has thus exposed in a striking way a fatal flaw at the very heart of liberalism – its indefensibility by rational argument. Without having yet grasped it, it is the medium’s format that became liberals’ stumbling block.

However abysmal their current predicament may be, the future holds bleaker prospects still. Most liberals do not yet realize that they will never be able to succeed in talk radio. To make it there – at least in the form in which it is currently practiced – requires that hosts do something which liberals simply can’t: logically and rationally expound their views. To make matters even more desperate there is nothing they can do about it short of abandoning their untenable ideology. In popular parlance, they are cooked… completely and utterly cooked.

Things used to be infinitely more palatable (for liberals) when the television talk show was the main forum for the mass dissemination of political opinion. Its relatively short broadcast time – rarely more than fifty minutes – is usually intensely contested by several guests. As a result of severe time constraints, the discussants rarely speak for more than a couple of minutes at a time. This, of course, makes any serious analysis all but impossible. This problem is made all the more acute by the fact that the guests’ statements are routinely intended to rebuff points made by their opponents which themselves are often quite irrelevant to the topic under consideration.

This format is just fine with liberals who – knowing instinctively that their positions cannot withstand thorough scrutiny – are always happy to avoid in-depth discussion of anything. Conservatives, on the other hand, are badly disadvantaged in this kind of environment. Conservatism requires methodical exposition, quite unlike liberalism which can only survive in the realm of disjointed statements and unsupported assertions. The television talk show is thus liberalism’s perfect vehicle. Often nothing more than a scattered clash of personalities, it is normally dominated by those with the biggest mouth. And since liberals have almost a complete grip on television, they make sure that the biggest mouths on their programs come from their own camp.

But things changed dramatically with the advent of Rush Limbaugh, when the program format he made commonplace became the first ever forum in the mass-media that allowed for the systematic analysis of issues. Nowhere indeed are things discussed more deeply and thoroughly than in talk radio where not infrequently the whole show revolves around two or three subjects. The level of analysis is further deepened by the input from callers who enrich the discussion with their unique input and perspective.

And then, of course, there are those who disagree and openly challenge the host’s positions. To retain his audience’s trust he must be able to deal with their objections in an honest and fair manner. Woe be to the host who keeps dismissing those who oppose him without properly addressing the points they raise. Sooner or later he will be abandoned by all except the most narrow-minded in his audience. No one understands this better than Rush Limbaugh who accords those who contradict him the time and courtesy which go far beyond the bounds of common politeness.

Unable to face the unsavory truth, liberals charge that Mr. Limbaugh owes his success to his showmanship and that their failure to compete is due to their inability to field an equally talented performer. But this surely is not the case. Success in talk radio is not contingent on the host’s ability to be funny. There have been a number of other conservatives who succeeded in this medium without possessing Mr. Limbaugh’s flair for entertaining. Sean Hannity, Michael Reagan and Oliver North immediately come to mind. Funny or not, not a single liberal talk show host has come even close to matching their level of success.

The most acute observer of the American scene, it is his intelligence, penetration, and grasp of issues that primarily account for Rush Limbaugh’s success. His sparkling humor is merely the icing on the sumptuous cake of analysis he serves up on a daily basis. To liberals, however, it does not taste as delicious and understandably so. To them his wit feels more like a stinging petard in their rear regions as they lie prostrate in the ruins of their ideology brought down by the power of his analytical firestorm.

As we move to election 2006 and 2008, all the more reason for libs to beef up those forums where they excel.

This morning, on the AM radio news, I heard a report conjecturing that Bush's low poll numbers would be the catalyst to bring down consumer confidence, and thus enter recession. Talk about the cart before the horse!

It's why it's so easy to listen to Rush even when not agreeing with his premise.

He engages in actual conversation. He listens to the caller's points. He has a sense of humor. He doesn't slur or slime the caller.

At the end of Rush's show I don't feel the need for decontamination, or a decompression chamber.

Liberalism survives when propaganda is the communications model. Read the oft-quoted words of Joeseph Goebbels --

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

“Whoever can conquer the street will one day conquer the state, for every form of power politics and any dictatorship-run state has its roots in the street.”

“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.” Bush lied. People Died. Domestic Spying. Bush Lied. People Died. Domestic Spying. Repeat after me … Lather rinse repeat.

"The author could have summed it up briefly by saying liberals have to hide their message."

Do liberals really have a message? Oh, sure, they want to raise taxes, are for gun control, abortion, gay marriage, against war, intolerance, and on - and on, but is that really a message or issues that simply stem from living emotionally with minimal benefit from reason?

I would suppose if there is a message, it is that capitalism is criminal and socialism ideal. But they really can't say that, can they? So, they emote.

In a move that confirms the author's thesis, Rush Limbaugh did what no liberal talk show host would ever do, he turned his show over to an economist and college professor, who had never hosted a nationwide talk show in his life. Indeed, he was a broadcaster's nightmare, totally unproven, halting and unsure of his own ability to operate in the format.

To do such as thing could destroy the show's ratings in a single day. Yet, what Dr. Walter Williams has to say is so compellingly interesting to people who love liberty that Limbaugh took the chance.

That single decision says more about Limbaugh and the talk radio format he invented than any other explanation.

It is also telling that when a person like Williams gets the opportunity to speak, even though at first he was a total novice at doing so behind a microphone (even the famous Golden EIB Microphone), the important thing was not how slick he was, but the ideas behind his words. Liberty, Freedom, Respect for the rights of others, Respect for their property, understanding the Cost of government, wanting government to be as small as possible. Ideas that the Left calls HATE SPEECH.

In the type of political talk show invented by Rush Limbaugh, the host openly takes an ideological stance (conservative or liberal) and then applies it to the issues of the day during his hours on the air. What this in effect amounts to is in-depth analysis of current affairs from a specific candid political point of view.

The author could have summed it up briefly by saying liberals have to hide their message.

. . . or that liberalism only seems to make sense when challenges to it are carefully circumscribed. As in a "Great Debate" in which the conservative is pitted against an open liberal and one or more "moderators" whose sole purpose is to prevent the conservative from raising and following up tough questions.

The liberal radio talk show fails because the masses can read the SAME Dem liberal message every day in the newsrags, newsmagrags and Internet newsrages. The can see it and hear it on the boobtube.
Radio is just too redundant.
Rush is different because there is only FOX on the boobtube and no conversative magazine/newspaper to read/hear. Neo-con ragmags aren't even worth mentioning.

Sean is showing his "talking points skill" and is growing thin on his listeners. And can you tell me what major markets that Michael Reagan and Ollie North are now carried in? I don't think Ollie even has a show any more and while I personally like Reagan when he was on in my market, his clearance was due to him being syndicated by Premiere at the time and carried by a Clear Channel station. Clear Channel owns Premiere. They tend to clear their own shows. Since he is no longer syndicated by Premiere, his affliates have dropped in number and strength of affiliate. HE is no longer in my market.

In my view, the current media is hysterical. They have no idea how transparent their bias is.

Turning on/listening to any "news" is like watching a brainless, corrupt, depressed, bipolar drama queen who suffers from panic attacks. We should hold a Continental Congress and force them to move to France.

Liberals deal in short soundbites, the shorter the better (eg., Halliburton), and repeated constantly. Also, in short phrases (tax cuts for the rich, Bush lied, culture of corruption, etc.).

This makes television news, newspapers and magazines the media of choice for getting the message out. Any medium that goes into any detail (eg., radio and books) are dominated by conservatives.

Here is what the liberals fail to realize- we LISTEN because the host agrees with US, not the other way around. And when Rush, et al, cease to agree with us, WE will stop listening.

THIS is why they fail. They will never get wise to this, because they will always think that THEY are smarter, know better, and are more "in tune" with what is best for all.

They are a bunch of smarmy, self-involved, morally superior elitists.

...and they are NOT-NOT- "liberals". They are LEFTISTS. Once we get the title right (and stop defining them the way they do)we can make that, that much more clear. Call them what they ARE.

There's also G. Gordon Liddy (is he still on?), Laura Ingraham, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, and Dennis Prager. And I've got to be leaving out another half-dozen.

The point is that liberals aren't even close.

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