But that bloc certainly had — and still has — a lot of power: power to stop the GOP from moving to the left on immigration in both and , power to help elevate Trump in and power to keep the party base from ever breaking with Trump, even after the Capitol riot. He repeatedly demonized liberals and pushed GOP politicians further to the right on issues such as immigration, government spending and climate change. But with Trump that changed.
Keep in mind, too, that this was less than 24 hours after Trump trashed Mitch McConnell, who actually pushed his agenda through Congress. But you can still have a Cruz or a Rubio where media figures like Limbaugh exist.
Limbaugh was perhaps the biggest figure in that system, too. Perhaps not as relevant now, but that ecosystem has mattered so much in the s to now. And it is that ecosystem that pushed the Republicans more generally into a non-policy, identity-obsessed, own-the-libs direction.
Conservative media personalities Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter had their own versions of this, but neither were as influential as Limbaugh. Instead, it was the issue of immigration. To paint a lawless and lunatic president as a wronged and heroic savior of the republic, a symbol of all the myriad wrongs done to Team White America.
And, ultimately, to lead the cheers and comfort the troops as Republicans turned against democracy itself. He did it all so well, in fact, that Limbaugh — despite frequent absences — shot back to the top of the Power 50 radio rankings for audience and influence. It was the strangest sort of comeback-slash-curtain call.
And it should be career-defining now that Limbaugh, who died on Wednesday, has had his final say. Limbaugh might have begun as a ratings-obsessed provocateur, but he became one of the most influential subversives in American history.
No single person — not Reagan, not Cheney, not McConnell, not Trump, not Q — has contributed more than Limbaugh to the mass derangement of white America. C-SPAN was devoting a week to that hottest of new media trends, talk radio. He was only joking, Limbaugh insists. Limbaugh had blasted into national syndication two years earlier, at age 37, with a talk show that sounded like no talk show before: faster, louder, ruder, and way more opinionated.
Also, very quickly, way higher-rated. It was intentionally irrelevant. Before him, the only successful syndicated radio talker was Larry King, and that was a very different thing.
It was about callers and guests. Within a year of the C-SPAN telecast, Limbaugh was beaming out to stations, with 25 million listeners, and hosting a minute syndicated TV show also with no guests produced by Roger Ailes, who would go on to launch Fox News in His moon-shaped mug smirked over Broadway on its biggest billboard.
It was a little of both, actually. When Limbaugh landed his first local talk gig in , rescuing him from a dead-end sales job with the Kansas City Royals, he started boning up on politics, he later claimed, by reading George Will and William F. Essentially, when Limbaugh opened his mouth to start opining about politics, Big Rush came flowing out. Once Limbaugh had his own show, he added his DJ skills to the talk-show mix — and the bluster — and launched a whole new genre. It was the way he used sound effects, production elements, musical parodies, and the way he blended his voice into the continuum of sounds.
It was an audio festival. The content was as jarring as the format. Until , there was a federal policy against The Rush Limbaugh Show. At first, Limbaugh was more of a culture warrior than a partisan spear carrier. He was selling political attitude. The swaggering certitude. The mocking dismissiveness. In , Limbaugh admitted an addiction to painkillers and entered rehabilitation. He married his fourth wife, Kathryn Rogers, in a lavish ceremony.
He had no children. Louis Rams. Through it all, though, his message remained crystal clear. Key to his monologue was a constant belittling of mainstream media outlets, even as his power grew greater than many of them. He offered a version of the news that was easy to digest, in which his side was truthful and right and all others were liars hell-bent on destroying the country.
He strung stories together to portray what amounted to elaborate left-wing conspiracies. To Limbaugh, his opponents relied on half-truths, bias and outright lies, the very same combination others would say was his magic formula.
Rusty, as the younger Limbaugh was known, was chubby and shy, with little interest in school but, from a young age, a passion for broadcasting. Louis Cardinals games, offering play by play, and gave running commentary during the evening news.
By high school, he was already working in radio. He was known as Rusty Sharpe and then Jeff Christie on the air, mostly spinning Top 40 hits and sprinkling in glimpses of his wit and conservatism. It was just the beginning of the blowback the radio star would face from the left for his sometimes overheated words and penchant for flirting with controversy. Democratic politicians would denounce him. But his legion of fans would always stay loyal.
There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve' If Limbaugh was loved by his listeners and reviled by his critics, his continued dominance of the talk-radio airwaves - with a weekly audience more than 20 million Americans - helped the scope of his media empire, and popularity, to expand. He hosted a television programme, penned numerous best-selling books and had a newsletter with half a million subscribers.
He debuted a line of "no boundary" neckties and hawked stuffed-crust pizzas for Pizza Hut. He reached perhaps the pinnacle of his crossover appeal in , when the ESPN cable sports network hired him as a studio analyst for its Sunday football preview programme.
Limbaugh, who dabbled in sports media in his younger days, called the job the "fulfilment of a dream". The stint only lasted four weeks, however, as Limbaugh's derogatory remarks about McNabb prompted widespread outcry in the sports world and beyond, as previous controversial comments on race relations were given another airing. A few days later, Limbaugh announced he was talking a break from his radio programme to deal with an addiction to pain medication after back surgery.
He would return to the air in five weeks, but he never again approached the kind of widespread popular culture visibility he had earlier in his career. It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute' With the Obama presidency, Limbaugh returned to the familiar position of leading a right-wing resistance to the liberals in power.
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