How Radio Wrecks the Right (Don't barf, it's by John Derbyshire!)

You can’t help but admire Rush Limbaugh’s talent for publicity. His radio talk show is probably—reliable figures only go back to 1991—in its third decade as the number-one rated radio show in the country. And here he is in the news again, trading verbal punches with the president of the United States.

Limbaugh remarked on Jan. 16 that to the degree that Obama’s program is one of state socialism, he hopes it will fail. (If only he had said the same about George W. Bush.) The president riposted at a session with congressional leaders a week later, telling them, “You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done.” Outsiders weighed in: Limbaugh should not have wished failure on a president trying to cope with a national crisis; Obama should not have stooped to insult a mere media artiste, the kind of task traditionally delegated to presidential subordinates while the chief stands loftily mute. Citizens picked sides and sat back to enjoy the circus.

For Limbaugh to remain a player at this level after 20-odd years bespeaks powers far beyond the ordinary. Most conservatives—even those who do not listen to his show—regard him as a good thing. His 14 million listeners are a key component of the conservative base. When he first emerged nationally, soon after the FCC dropped the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, conservatives for the first time in decades had something worth listening to on their radios other than country music and bland news programs read off the AP wire. In the early Clinton years, when Republicans were regrouping, Limbaugh was perhaps the most prominent conservative in the United States. National Review ran a cover story on him as “The Leader of the Opposition.”

Limbaugh has a similarly high opinion of himself: “I know I have become the intellectual engine of the conservative movement,” he told the New York Times. This doesn’t sit well with all conservatives. Fred Barnes grumbled, “When the GOP rose in the late 1970s, it had Ronald Reagan. Now the loudest Republican voice belongs to Rush Limbaugh.” Upon discovering that Limbaugh had anointed himself the successor to William F. Buckley Jr., WFB’s son Christopher retorted, “Rush, I knew William F. Buckley, Jr. William F. Buckley, Jr. was a father of mine. Rush, you’re no William F. Buckley, Jr.”

The more po-faced conservative intellectuals have long winced at Limbaugh’s quips, parodies, slogans, and impatience with the starched-collar respectability of the official Right. American conservatism had been a pretty staid and erudite affair pre-Limbaugh, occasional lapses into jollification on “Firing Line” being the main public expression of conservatism’s lighter side.

Now the airwaves are full of conservative chat. Talkers magazine’s list of the top ten radio talk shows by number of weekly listeners also features Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, and Mark Levin. Agony aunt Laura Schlessinger and financial adviser Dave Ramsey are both in the top ten too, though their conservatism is more incidental to the content of their shows.

Liberal attempts to duplicate the successes of Limbaugh and his imitators have fallen flat. Alan Colmes’s late-evening radio show can be heard in most cities, and Air America is still alive somewhere—the Aleutians, perhaps—but colorful, populist, political talk radio seems to be a thing that liberals can’t do.

There are many reasons to be grateful for conservative talk radio, and with a left-Democrat president and a Democratic Congress, there are good reasons to fear for its survival. Reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine is generally perceived as the major threat, but may not in fact be necessary. Obama is known to have strong feelings about “localism,” the FCC rule that requires radio and TV stations to serve the interests of their local communities as a condition of keeping their broadcast licenses. “Local community” invariably turns out in practice to mean leftist agitator and race-guilt shakedown organizations—the kind of environment in which Obama learned his practical politics. Localism will likely be the key to unlock the door through which conservative talk radio will be expelled with a presidential boot in the rear.

With reasons for gratitude duly noted, are there some downsides to conservative talk radio? Taking the conservative project as a whole—limited government, fiscal prudence, equality under law, personal liberty, patriotism, realism abroad—has talk radio helped or hurt? All those good things are plainly off the table for the next four years at least, a prospect that conservatives can only view with anguish. Did the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Savages, and Ingrahams lead us to this sorry state of affairs?

They surely did. At the very least, by yoking themselves to the clueless George W. Bush and his free-spending administration, they helped create the great debt bubble that has now burst so spectacularly. The big names, too, were all uncritical of the decade-long (at least) efforts to “build democracy” in no-account nations with politically primitive populations. Sean Hannity called the Iraq War a “massive success,” and in January 2008 deemed the U.S. economy “phenomenal.”

Much as their blind loyalty discredited the Right, perhaps the worst effect of Limbaugh et al. has been their draining away of political energy from what might have been a much more worthwhile project: the fostering of a middlebrow conservatism. There is nothing wrong with lowbrow conservatism. It’s energizing and fun. What’s wrong is the impression fixed in the minds of too many Americans that conservatism is always lowbrow, an impression our enemies gleefully reinforce when the opportunity arises. Thus a liberal like E.J. Dionne can write, “The cause of Edmund Burke, Leo Strauss, Robert Nisbet and William F. Buckley Jr. is now in the hands of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity. … Reason has been overwhelmed by propaganda, ideas by slogans.” Talk radio has contributed mightily to this development.

It does so by routinely descending into the ad hominem—Feminazis instead of feminism—and catering to reflex rather than thought. Where once conservatism had been about individualism, talk radio now rallies the mob. “Revolt against the masses?” asked Jeffrey Hart. “Limbaugh is the masses.”

In place of the permanent things, we get Happy Meal conservatism: cheap, childish, familiar. Gone are the internal tensions, the thought-provoking paradoxes, the ideological uneasiness that marked the early Right. But however much this dumbing down has damaged the conservative brand, it appeals to millions of Americans. McDonald’s profits rose 80 percent last year.

There is a lowbrow liberalism, too, but the Left hasn’t learned how to market it. Consider again the failure of liberals at the talk-radio format, with the bankruptcy of Air America always put forward as an example. Yet in fact liberals are very successful at talk radio. They are just no good at the lowbrow sort. The “Rush Limbaugh Show” may be first in those current Talkers magazine rankings, but second and third are National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered,” with 13 million weekly listeners each. It is easy to mock the studied gentility, affectless voices, and reflexive liberalism of NPR, but these are very successful radio programs.

Liberals are getting rather good at talk TV, too. The key to this medium, they have discovered, is irony. I don’t take this political stuff seriously, I assure you, but really, these damn fool Republicans... Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert offer different styles of irony, but none leaves any shadow of doubt where his political sympathies lie. Liberals have done well to master this trick, but it depends too much on facial expressions and body language—the double-take, the arched eyebrow, the knowing smirk—to transfer to radio. It is, in any case, not quite populism, the target audience being mainly the ironic cohort—college-educated Stuff White People Like types.

If liberals can’t do populism, the converse is also true: conservatives are not much good at gentility. We don’t do affectless voices, it seems. There are genteel conservative events—I’ve been to about a million of them and have the NoDoz pharmacy receipts to prove it—but they preach to the converted. If anything, they reinforce the ghettoization of conservatism, of which talk radio’s echo chamber is the major symptom. We don’t know how to speak to that vast segment of the American middle class that lives sensibly—indeed, conservatively—wishes to be thought generous and good, finds everyday politics boring, and has a horror of strong opinions. This untapped constituency might be receptive to interesting radio programs with a conservative slant.

Even better than NPR as a listening experience is the BBC’s Radio 4. One of the few things I used to look forward to on my occasional visits to the mother country was Radio 4, which almost always had something interesting to say on the 90-minute drive from Heathrow to my hometown. One current feature is “America, Empire of Liberty,” a thumbnail history of the U.S. for British listeners. The show’s viewpoint is entirely conventional but pitched just right for a middlebrow radio audience. Why can’t conservatives do radio like that? Instead we have crude cheerleading for world-saving Wilsonianism, social utopianism, and a cloth-eared, moon-booted Republican administration.

You might object that the Right didn’t need talk radio to ruin it; it was quite capable of ruining itself. At sea for a uniting cause once the Soviet Union had fallen, buffaloed by master gamers in Congress, outfoxed by Bill Clinton, then seduced by the vapid “compassionate conservatism” of Rove and Bush, the post-Cold War Right cheerfully dug its own grave. And there was some valiant resistance from conservative talk radio to Bush’s crazier initiatives, like “comprehensive immigration reform” and the Medicare prescription-drug extravaganza.

But there was not much confrontation with other deep social and economic problems. The unholy marriage of social engineering and high finance that ended with our present ruin was left largely unanalyzed from reluctance to slight a Republican administration. Plenty of people saw what was coming. There was Ron Paul, for example: “Our present course ... is not sustainable. ... Our spendthrift ways are going to come to an end one way or another. Politicians won’t even mention the issue, much less face up to it.”

Neither will the GOP pep squad of conservative talk radio. And Ron Paul, you know, has a cousin whose best friend’s daughter was once dog-walker for a member of the John Birch Society. So much for him!

Why engage an opponent when an epithet is in easy reach? Some are crude: rather than debating Jimmy Carter’s views on Mideast peace, Michael Savage dismisses him as a “war criminal.” Others are juvenile: Mark Levin blasts the Washington Compost and New York Slimes.

But for all the bullying bluster of conservative talk-show hosts, their essential attitude is one of apology and submission—the dreary old conservative cringe. Their underlying metaphysic is the same as the liberals’: infinite human potential—Yes, we can!—if only we get society right. To the Left, getting society right involves shoveling us around like truckloads of concrete; to the Right, it means banging on about responsibility, God, and tax cuts while deficits balloon, Congress extrudes yet another social-engineering fiasco, and our armies guard the Fulda Gap. That human beings have limitations and that wise social policy ought to accept the fact—some problems insoluble, some Children Left Behind—is as unsayable on “Hannity” as it is on “All Things Considered.”

I enjoy these radio bloviators (and their TV equivalents) and hope they can survive the coming assault from Left triumphalists. If conservatism is to have a future, though, it will need to listen to more than the looped tape of lowbrow talk radio. We could even tackle the matter of tone, bringing a sportsman’s respect for his opponents to the debate.

I repeat: There is nothing wrong with lowbrow conservatism. Ideas must be marketed, and right-wing talk radio captures a big and useful market segment. However, if there is no thoughtful, rigorous presentation of conservative ideas, then conservatism by default becomes the raucous parochialism of Limbaugh, Savage, Hannity, and company. That loses us a market segment at least as useful, if perhaps not as big.

Conservatives have never had, and never should have, a problem with elitism. Why have we allowed carny barkers to run away with the Right? __________________________________________

John Derbyshire is a contributing editor of National Review and the author of, most recently, Unknown Quantity: A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra.

Excellent post!

The question is ... how does one go about getting somebody like Eric Cantor a "toehold" so that he can actually express himself in a meaningful way?

It's certainly not impossible -- but it does require some thought and effort, which conservatives right now do not seem to be expending.

It seems to me that the underlying format of the NPR shows is something that conservatives could, and should, take advantage of -- it would give Mr. Cantor a chance to shine; and it would also allow the formation and promulgation of a consistent conservative point of view.

Also, conservatives seem to have missed the huge political impact of people like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, whose take on current events is amazingly effective at "shaping the battlefield." It's not like there are no funny and insightful conservatives, and God knows there's no shortage of juicy targets on the left -- but we're not even in the ballgame!

Of course, we need more than just a medium -- we also need a message. That's where the real work lies. Question is, who's available to start putting it together?

Conservative talk radio doesn't disseminate "conservative thought."

It depends on which show you're listening to. Savage doesn't. Hannity is entertaining but, shall we say, a little shallow on the philosophical front.

But, then, there are Limbaugh and Levine and a group of local hosts -- Mark Davis (DFW), Mark Belling (Milwaukee), Jason Lewis (Twin Cities), Hitchcock (San Diego), along with Mark Steyn, etc. -- who have a large philosophical and intellectual component to their shows.

It's no coincidence that the local list also constitutes Limbaugh's "bench".

The primary attraction and entertainment value of talk radio, to me, is that it makes me think!

I stand by my comment. Yes liberals have ideas and an agenda, and yes they are good at getting the agenda accomplished, but they do it by taking every issue and distilling it down to a 30 second emotional soundbite. A perfect example is a discussion I had with a friend of mine concerning the the Medicare drug plan. I was trying to get her to consider the cost and the expansion of government that it was going to entail, not to the mention control it was giving to government over people’s lives. Her answer, don’t you want old people to get the drugs they needs? Do you want old people to have to decide between food and medicine? How you can you conservatives be so unfeeling and cruel? I tried to engage her in an honest argument about the issue, but she just kept returning to the emotional side of the issue. The Left is very good at playing the easy emotion card. It can take a few minutes to explain the conservative view and why it makes more sense, it takes 30 seconds to make an emotional appeal to an Oprahized nation.

I totally disagree with you. Conservatives are the thinkers, liberals are the feelers, with nothing of any substance to back up their feelings.

Disagree all you like, but the fact remains that liberals have been leaving their footprints on conservative backs for the past several decades -- and even our greatest victories have proven to be only temporary.

It's time to face an ugly truth, FRiend: it takes one hell of a lot of substance to maintain a record like the liberals have created over that time. They've got focus and patience and methods that we can't hold a candle to right now.

And we conservatives seem far more beholden to our "feelings" these days than the liberals do -- just look at our mindless invocations of "Reagan's legacy," with no substance to back it up.

Perhaps your own feelings have simply gotten in the way of your realizing that.

“A clever tactician (i.e., not me) might well parlay the current DNC vapors with respect to Mr. Limbaugh into an opportunity to offer “responsible” conservative viewpoints on Morning Edition or All Things Considered.”

That’s you talking. Not me.

Unless of course you mean something other than Rush is irresponsible.

Your argument is irresponsible. You take out the one media outlet conservatives dominate. Sure, it’s not perfect. Obviously it doesn’t satisfy your high ideals. Well, get on the radio and fix it. Do something.

And my life is nice.

Flame away.

I'm not a big fan of Rush myself, but I think he does a lot of good for the conservative cause. While his address at CPAC may not have met your intellectual standards, it was very motivational. He laid down the gauntlet. That needed to be done.

Your comments about Rush's lifestyle and concern for the little guy sound like Democratic class envy. I'm not saying you are guilty of that, just that your comments give that impression.

For my part, I'm a firm believer in the American dream. And for me the American dream includes humble beginnings and entrepreneurial success. Small businessmen are my heroes because they provide the jobs that give people a chance to work and advance their lives. --I am certain Rush understands that point.

I guess my point here is that Rush serves an important purpose. He articulates the conservative view in a clear and entertaining way. Part of the design of his radio format is to allow listeners to join him for 20 minutes at a time (often in the car bewteen stops) and come away with a message.

He is an entertainer with a message. He is not an intellectual with a radio show.

Yes liberals have ideas and an agenda, and yes they are good at getting the agenda accomplished, but they do it by taking every issue and distilling it down to a 30 second emotional soundbite.

That's not true. Hell, if all it took was 30 second soundbites, conservatives wouldn't be in our current disastrous position. But we are in deep trouble despite spending millions on soundbites.

Here's the deal: that 30 second liberal soundbite has traction because it simply summarizes a point made far more broadly over months or years -- it does nothing more or less than tell people what they already "know" from other sources.

Obama didn't win the election because of his soundbites -- he won because the foundations for his victory had already been under construction in the media (broadly defined) for years. His team played it brilliantly, taking advantage of the cultural framework built by the likes of Jon Stewart, whose message was essentially "conservatives are funny, and deserve to be made fun of." And despite the dismissiveness of many FReepers, Stewart's send-ups of conservatives are often hilarious, because they're based on accurate (albeit highly skewed) depictions of conservative talking points.

Obama's an empty suit with no record, of course -- but that simply aided his team's approach: with no clear record on anything, a sharp eye could spot the "cultural holes" that Obama's image could be moulded to fill. Obama's soundbites were just taking advantage of spots where the "cultural framework" was not being effectively addressed.

That's the liberals' real strategy: to control the cultural landscape. Once they've done that, they pretty much get to pick their battles on ground of their own choosing. We conservatives are at an intrinsic disadvantage. Obama found a chink in their armor, but I think it serves mostly to expose their strategy, rather than to weaken it.

There's more, though. We conservatives love our theories -- but we seem to have forgotten that real politics is played among real people, rather than just among academicians. Regardless of what it eventually ended up being, W's "compassionate conservatism" was essentially correct in its diagnosis -- that we tend to ignore the "people" side of politics.

Let's take a look at your Medicare discussion, because it highlights the point. You say that, despite your arguments, your friend kept returning to the "emotional side of the issue." She probably did -- but I think you've forgotten the most important part of the political equation (it's something I tend to do, anyway).

The fact is that many seniors do have a great deal of difficulty dealing with their medical expenses. I'm sure you gave her all sorts of fine and correct conservative economic arguments ... but how do they help the old lady down the street who really is trying to find some way to pay for her prescriptions?

I think I'm like most people, in that I tend to be more favorably disposed toward the person who offers to help me solve my current problem; than I am toward the person who offers theories that don't do anything to help me deal with what's ailing me at the moment.

Liberals understand that dynamic; conservatives seem driven to work against it -- which merely strengthens the liberals' hand.

Unless of course you mean something other than Rush is irresponsible.

It's true that I think Rush is responsible for a lot of bad things -- chief among which is the propagation of conservative emotionalism. His show is both shallow and narrow, and designed to play only to the choir. As I noted above, whenever Rush (or whomever) talks about a topic on which I'm well-informed, he's usually ill-informed, and often flat-out wrong in his assertions. That sort of stuff doesn't carry over well to reasoned debate with an informed opponent (cf. Mr. Hannity's tendency to get trounced by his liberal guests.)

My point, however, is not that Rush is "irresponsible," but rather that is is possible to take advantage of the Democrats' perception of his irresponsibility. I trust you can understand the distinction -- it's not that subtle. I've found that even ardent liberals are often receptive to an offer of substantive debate -- a good tactician could parlay that into something "in the lion's den."

You take out the one media outlet conservatives dominate.

I didn't suggest any such thing. Like Derbyshire, I believe conservative talk radio is a great way to purvey "lowbrow conservatism" -- just as MSM television programming appeals to "lowbrow liberalism." But we must acknowledge that it is, indeed, "lowbrow," and as such is incapable of building a sound intellectual foundation for conservatism. Moreover, its political impact is pretty isolated to a demographic that would vote conservatively anyway -- it doesn't do much to bring in new recruits.

What conservatives need, is something that offers a "middlebrow" outlet for conservative thought -- something with depth and breadth -- so that people outside of the die-hard talk radio audience can begin to assess and approve of what conservatism is really about.

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