Here we go again.
Over there in the Washington Post there is yet another mainstream media jab at Rush. This time it is Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, freaking out about….Rush Limbaugh specifically and conservative media in general.
The header on his Post piece reads:
Republicans are paying the price for their addiction to their own media
Boot says, in part, this:
“This election year is memorable for many reasons but among the most important is showing Republicans the cost of their infatuation with “alternative” news sources.
The rise of the conservative alternative media can be traced back to the founding of the newspaper Human Events in 1944, Regnery Publishing in 1947 and National Review in 1955. But it did not become a mass phenomenon until the debut of Rush Limbaugh’s national radio show, in 1988, followed in 1996 by the launch of the Fox News Channel and the Drudge Report. Those still remain three of the most popular outlets on the right, but they have been joined by radio hosts such as Mark Levin and Michael Savage, authors such as Ann Coulter and Dinesh D’Souza, and websites such as Breitbart News, TheBlaze, Infowars and Newsmax.
….But in the long term, the right’s addiction to its own news has become destructive — it promotes the election of tea party absolutists to Congress and the nomination of presidential candidates who have trouble appealing to swing voters. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence but in the 28 years since Limbaugh was syndicated, Republican presidential candidates have won a popular majority only once (2004); in the 28 years before then, Republicans won the popular vote five times (1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988). Whether Trump wins or loses, conservatives need to re-evaluate their infatuation with “alternative” news sources that tell them what they want to hear and join a more mainstream conversation that includes different points of view.”
There was more, but let’s start here. Note this particular swipe at Rush: “Perhaps it’s just a coincidence but in the 28 years since Limbaugh was syndicated, Republican presidential candidates have won a popular majority only once (2004); in the 28 years before then, Republicans won the popular vote five times (1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988).” Hmm. Rush Limbaugh was born in 1951. Unless he had an earlier first life, Rush was not on the air when GOP Establishment candidates who were “appealing to swing voters” were losing presidential elections in 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944, 1948 and 1960. He was a teen-ager when Barry Goldwater, who knew no Republican was going to win in the wake of JFK’s assassination, none-the-less took it upon himself to begin the process of returning the GOP to its philosophically conservative Lincoln roots as opposed to the idea that the GOP should be, as Goldwater described it, a “dime store New Deal.” He succeeded.
Two years later the GOP scored large congressional wins as well as victories in state legislatures and governorships. One of those wins was a million-vote landslide in California for Ronald Reagan - who had been pilloried in the mainstream media as another Goldwater-style (Limbaugh-style?) “extremist” who could not possibly appeal to “swing voters” much less be elected. It was precisely this turn to conservatism that produced the victories Boot cites in 1968, 1972,1980,1984 and 1988. Not to mention that when this conservative approach was abandoned the inevitable result was defeats in 1992, 1996, unnecessarily narrow wins in 2000 and 2004, and yet more defeats in 2008 and 2012.
Note as well that Boot concludes with this: “Whether Trump wins or loses, conservatives need to re-evaluate their infatuation with ‘alternative’ news sources that tell them what they want to hear and join a more mainstream conversation that includes different points of view.”
The amusing assumption is that the “more mainstream conversation that includes different points of view” actually includes “different points of view.” The rise of Rush Limbaugh and “conservative media” came about precisely because the “more mainstream conversation” was -and still is - highly intolerant of conservative views. Look no further than Max Boot’s own words.
Here is Boot on the conservative and Trump take on ex-Miss Universe Alicia Machado: “Turns out that the porn clips circulating online feature another Latino actress and the “sex tape” is an outtake from a reality TV show.” Correct on the first…but typically misleading on the second. The “outtake from a reality TV show” does in fact show Machado writhing - for real -under the sheets. Decidedly she was having sex. Which, per force, makes the clip by definition a “sex tape.” And makes Trump’s statement that she is in a sex tape 100% accurate. Yet there is Boot dismissing what is plainly in evidence for all to see. Move along folks, the mainstream media has determined there is nothing to see here. Right.
Boot dismisses the “Barack Obama is a Muslim” business as a “conspiracy theory”….without mentioning that the Washington Post itself reported on January 29, 2015 that then-Senator Obama himself personally accused Clinton - to her face - of allowing her campaign to send out e-mails “labeling him as a Muslim.” Conservative media conspiracy theory indeed.
To sum up? This jewel of a piece by Max Boot exhibits all by itself why conservative media exists. He misleads - Republicans were losing presidential elections repeatedly long before Rush Limbaugh was even born - and for the same exact reason they have been losing them while Rush has been on the air. And in a classic case of projection ascribes racism to conservatives when in fact racism has been the virulent poison of the left since Jefferson’s 1800 alliance with slavery as he formed the Democratic Party.
All in all, what Max Boot has wrought is a pluperfect example of exactly why there is a conservative media in the first place - and just how the liberal media spin machine operates.
