Rush Limbaugh and The Politics of Revenge

[elfs]

Ezra Klein has an article about the New York Time's recent puff piece on Rush Limbaugh, in which he mostly excoriates the Times for succeeding in somehow turning the intellectual love child of Jesse Helms and Leona Helmsley into a loveable kind of guy, but along the way he says something rather profound. He quotes Limbaugh's "Presidential Platform:"

1. Open the continental shelf to drilling. Ditto the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
2. Establish a 17 percent flat tax.
3. Privatize Social Security.
4. Give parents school vouchers to break the monopoly of public education.
5. Revoke Jimmy Carter's passport while he is out of the country.
6. Abandon all government policies based on the hoax of man-made global warming.

Ezra then goes on to point that half of Limbaugh's points are "pure resentment politics." Drilling will do almost nothing to the price of oil, but it'll piss off liberals. Abandoning any governmental policies based on the premise of anthropogenic global warming might actually hurt us all, but who cares, it'll piss off the liberals! And why revoke Carter's passport except that it'll piss off the liberals!

Ezra also makes the point that Limbaugh says things Fox would never say. There's a bright line past which right wingerism seems so stupid that even high-minded self-described conservatives can't take it seriously anymore, and so we don't listen to it.

The problem with this is simple: Limbaugh is far on the other side of that line, comfortably out of earshot, and yet he's still the most listened-to talk show host in America. You and I learn about the libertarian line reading Hit and Run and the neocon line reading The Corner, and get our analysis of the economic stupidity of both McCain and the Democrats from Brad DeLong.

But most conservatives learn their conservatism from Rush Limbaugh.

Comments

[urox.livejournal.com]

Bleh. I fail to see how opening drilling is conservative.

What liberals (I hate using that term. Most marked liberals in today's media are just people looking out for the many instead of just the few) need is someone loud and intelligent. Unfortunately, those are usually exclusive groups as most intelligent people realize that they only have to be based in fact to be heard, not loud.

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

There ARE exceptions... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Olbermann)

[tagryn]

...and more than one.