I spent a good deal of Sunday listening to some Rush Limbaugh radio shows while performing household chores. There’s a fair number of “full show” recordings on YouTube.
No particular reason for it initially, other than it was something that would play for a couple of hours without me having to pick another show, so I could work. But as I listened, it occurred to me how much I had enjoyed his work while he was with us. I hadn’t listened to his stuff much after he passed. But it all came back to me yesterday.
There are many reasons for Rush’s success, but there isn’t a single one of them that his opponents would understand, even to this day. The left will tell you that we deplorables had to wait until Limbaugh told us what to think, but that is not it at all.
I cannot stress this enough; Limbaugh’s most significant degree of success came from the fact that he correctly identified the mood of the rank-and-file American, and gave voice to it, then, encouraged those rank-and-file Americans to take on the sacrosanct status of big government, the globalization of our world, and the rebellion against western cultural values, none of which the rank-and-file has never trusted but never had the voice, in majority, to fight against.
Donald Trump has the same talent; He has (I would venture to say, with Limbaugh’s example) the ability to identify the mood and values of Joe and Jane Everyman, God-fearing, America-loving voters, and give them not only a voice, but results to their ideas, their dreams, their needs, their views. That is why Rush remains so loved even this far along after his passing and why Trump voters remain constantly in his corner. It’s because, demonstrably, they have been steadfastly in ours.
A good (online) friend of mine, Billy Beck, said about five years ago to me, "Never before in my entire life has the prospect of the complete collapse of the Democratic Party seriously occurred to me."
That’s just it. Until Limbaugh, nobody else had, either, including, it should be noted, the GOP establishment: the John McCains and Mitt Romneys of the world. We are currently witnessing the destruction of the Democrat party, that meltdown. Do any of you suppose that our current successes under Donald Trump would have been possible without Rush Limbaugh digging in the spurs for 30 years?
I mentioned the mistrust of big government above. There is a mistrust of self-proclaimed experts. That’s another spot where Limbaugh agreed. Rush said it himself: “The government should not be picking winners and losers in business or to try and set industrial policy. If it were up to the experts in government for instance, who would have selected my show for success?”
How much success? Back in 2008, I observed Limbaugh’s then-new contract within the framework of the old line media dropping ”Journalists” and cutting paychecks and essentially drowning in their own juices, when my co-writer at BitsBlog, DavidL (who sadly passed on a few years ago), quoted Radio Equalizer:
Meanwhile, a key industry source confirms speculation that Limbaugh has signed a stunning mega contract renewal deal with Premiere Radio Networks and parent company Clear Channel Communications.
The figure mentioned at the time was around $400MUSD. That is a staggering sum for someone making a living on AM radio. Some of you will recall I used to be in the Radio business. I can tell you from that experience that radio is a great example of meritocracy… in other words, pay for performance. I think we can take that as a measure of success in connecting with the people. It’s no understatement to suggest Rush single-handedly saved AM radio.
I live outside Rochester, N.Y., and worked in this radio market for years, so let’s use that market as an example. When Rush started out, he was on WYSL in Avon, N.Y., with their transmitter located about 40 miles south of Rochester. At the time, WYSL was running 500 watts on 1030 kHz. The listenership of Limbaugh on that station was likely the highest they ever got on that frequency and with that power. They had more folks tuning in than a number of the bigger stations with better in-town signals. Clear Channel recognized what was what and had him on a network of 50,000-watt stations all over the country in short order. (WYSL, for their part, has gone to 27000 watts on 1040Khz and on a total of two AM and 4 FM signals) .
Others tried to copy Rush and failed bigly. Take the monumental failure that was Air America, for example. They tried being the Rush Limbaugh of the left 24/7 on a fair number of stations. rimshotters, mostly, stations in smaller towns without earshot of larger towns, much the same as Rush did. Their listener numbers never even scratched the surface of Limbaugh’s.
Same story for Mario Cuomo. Did you even know he had a radio show? Don't feel bad; nobody else did, either. It crashed and burned even faster than Air America did, and for the same reason. The reason for that failure is easy enough; neither one had any connection with the American people. They did not share American values, and listeners got immediately turned off by what they heard, and the stations carrying those shows got turned off as well.
It occurred to me while listening again that Limbaugh’s words are still potent today. As an example from 2010:
The latest liberal meme is to equate skepticism of the Obama administration with a tendency toward violence. That takes me back 15 years ago to the time President Bill Clinton accused "loud and angry voices" on the airwaves (i.e., radio talk-show hosts like me) of having incited Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. What self-serving nonsense. Liberals are perfectly comfortable with antigovernment protest when they're not in power.
The leftist comfort level with violence in pursuit of political power is something I mentioned even as recently as last week, and several times before that, in reference to Charlie Kirk, the so-called summer of love, where American cities were burning, and so on.
All of this leads me to a point: The popularity of Limbaugh in the day, Charlie Kirk, and these days of Trump, is not about these remarkable individuals alone. Their popularity rests on the fact that they represent the American idea, and they are loved and hated by those who love and hate the American idea, which, when Limbaugh came along, was vastly underrepresented in the public space. They are wildly popular because they have been willing to stand up for the values of the American people that our institutions have so sorely neglected.
Those who hate that idea, that ideal, and those values, celebrated when Limbaugh succumbed to his illness. They tried arresting and convicting, and even tried killing Trump a couple of times, and succeeded with Charlie Kirk. We all saw the left’s grotesque reaction to that.
Limbaugh represented the love of America and of the individual. As a direct result of his efforts, others like Trump and Charlie Kirk have taken up the challenge of representing that love and reinforcing it.
