Fire Rush?

By Ron Beasley

I try to watch FOX every afternoon for a few minutes to see "The FOX All Stars".  I do it for entertainment - it really is fun to watch Fred Barnes and Bill Kristol show the world what fools they are.  One bit of conservative sanity on the panel is Mort Kondracke who can frequently be seen with a pained look when Barnes or Kristol speak.  Well today Kondracke has some good advice for the Republicans - Fire Rush Limbaugh.

How can the Republican Party rebound? The first step would be to quit letting Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham set its agenda.

[......]

But Step One is to fire Rush Limbaugh and his ilk as the intellectual bosses of the GOP. They shouldn't be muzzled, as some liberals want to do by reviving the "fairness doctrine" in broadcasting, just ignored more frequently.

In recent years, Republicans have let right-wing talk show hosts whip the GOP base into frenzies -- over immigration, brain-damage victim Terry Schiavo and same-sex marriage -- that have branded the party as troglodyte.

The result is that the demographic groups representing the future of American politics shifted decisively to the Democratic Party in 2008 -- Latinos, young people, the well-educated, moderates, working women, first-time voters, suburbanites and "seculars."

Some good advice but he doesn't stop there:

A second step would be for Congressional Republicans to actually try to help President-elect Barack Obama succeed in addressing the country's dire problems -- offering better ideas where appropriate and opposing just when necessary, not reflexively.

And the third -- maybe the biggest one -- would be for GOP governors to use their posts to show the country how conservatives can solve problems, especially the dismal state of American education and its menacing cousin, lagging American competitiveness.

Of course the "troglodytes" are fully in charge of the 21^st century Republican party and Kondracke is just another voice that won't be heard.

Comments

[zak822]

Absolutely right that "troglodytes are fully in charge of the 21st century Republican party".

But what struck me was Kondrake's comparison of left side of the blogosphere with Limbaugh. I think there's big difference in audience numbers there, with Rush having a very large advantage in numbers. And he certainly has influence with the powers that be in the GOP. We on the left can't say that about our bloggers.

Still, it's sort of flattering to think that Kondrake believe Newshoggers and the rest are players!

[Zifnab]

I think there's big difference in audience numbers there, with Rush having a very large advantage in numbers. And he certainly has influence with the powers that be in the GOP. We on the left can't say that about our bloggers.

I don't know about audience size. Certainly, liberal leaning blogs have bigger constituencies than conservative counterparts - Kos averages half a million hits a day on my last check and that was before the Presidential Mania, while Powerline averages in the 25k range. If you added up the audiences of all the liberal blogs against Rush's radio listenership, who would win? I don't know, but as more people become net-savy the race gets tighter every day.

And if you look at political potential, the liberal blogs are far more potent. Ned Lamont ousted sitting Senator Joe Lieberman in his own primary with hundreds of thousands of dollars raised by netroots activists. Likewise, Howard Dean's fifty-state strategy was largely facilitated by internet fund raising and campaign coordination. Rush doesn't have that kind of command over his listeners. He can't fund raise like they do. He can't organize like they do. This isn't to say he doesn't have a political impact, but he's a different political animal.

Beyond that, Limbaugh's powers are ephemeral. He's the party mouthpiece not the party command. If Rush pushes Latino-bashing immigration policy, its only because he got his marching orders from the latest RNC news briefs. If he makes a stir about stem cell research, he does so at the behest of his bosses and his boss's bosses. But when Rush champions a candidate of his own - like he did with Romney or Guiliani or Clinton - during the primaries, he falls flat every time. If it looks like he's got pull, you mistake who is the puppet and who is the puppeteer.

By contrast, blogs have been bucking the puppeteers and refusing to bow quietly to Democratic Establishment. While they don't have the gravitas of Limbaugh, they have a great deal more political strength within their caucus. Esoteric issues that would normally fall to the political floor - issues like Net Neutrality - become platforms of the party. Blog-friendly candidates in rough states get better exposure and more funding, and when they win they provide valuable representation to the netroots that conservative radio listeners just don't get. The blogger caucus is young, so it looks weak, but its growing and building steam.

That's just my viewpoint, at least.