![]() ![]() Perry: I think it’s hard to prove that Limbaugh created Trump. ![]() Perhaps for a candidate like Trump, a kingmaker in the media was needed because Trump lacked other elite constituencies at first. The Tea Party seems to have emerged from related but distinct forces. But I’m not totally sure I buy the “kingmaker” label. Julia_azari: One thing that jumped out at me in reading about Limbaugh is how much he contributed to the contemporary GOP by creating this style of politics. In fact, he arguably operated in a way that gave other, more establishment Republicans cover for these views within the party. Limbaugh was unique, as you said, in that he was able to maintain access to “establishment” conservative figures without having to censor himself to make his points. “When a Republican politician promoting racist and sexist policies could only use a dog whistle, Limbaugh provided a bull horn - he was, for example, an early progenitor of the racist birther conspiracy theory about Obama that Trump would later use to fuel his political career.” Sarah: That’s an interesting point, Julia, and makes me think of something HuffPost’s Nick Robins-Early and Christopher Mathias wrote in their Limbaugh obituary regarding his conservative credentials: In fact, now you have a situation where outlets like Fox News, including their high-profile hosts like Tucker Carlson, have in some ways explicitly taken up Limbaugh’s mantle of both representing the base and pushing it further to the right. ![]() First, they have amplified the views of the party’s base, which sometimes haven’t been held by more establishment figures, and second, they have often expanded those views so that more in the party hold them. In many ways, Limbaugh and others in the talk-show wing of the party have played two key roles in GOP politics. And part of that was because of Limbaugh and the rest of the conservative talk-show wing of the party. Bush was trying to move a bill that would grant citizenship to some undocumented immigrants, opposition on the right was strong and intense, even against a Republican president. But, that said, I remember in 2007, when George W. A media person doesn’t control the legislative agenda, doesn’t have votes on the Hill. Perry ( Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): It is always hard to prove how a media figure affects a party. Maybe it’s the difference between being part of the media and being part of the government - or a particular quirk unique to Limbaugh - but this doesn’t seem to have happened to him. People like former Ohio governor and 2016 Republican presidential candidate John Kasich or former Speaker of the House John Boehner - they were very conservative, but because they had access to power or were part of the “establishment,” their conservative credentials sort of faded. Julia_azari ( Julia Azari, political science professor at Marquette University and FiveThirtyEight contributor): Something particularly interesting is that, while new figures came onto the right-wing media scene, Limbaugh himself didn’t seem to be subject to what I’ll call “the establishment effect” that happens to a lot of Republicans in government. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |