Tweet
Originally posted by BlueK
View Post
Hannity is, and always has been, an intellectual midget with an enormously over-sized ego. Could never stand listening to him on the radio or on Fox News. Guy is a complete and utter moron. He isn't really that radical ... he is just completely vapid and apparently, given his fawning over Trump, has no principles whatsoever. Hannity was not representative of most talk radio, though, when I was paying attention to it.
Limbaugh is more of the "shock jock" type. He says things to get attention. He's actually pretty intelligent though. I didn't always agree with him, but he would make interesting points that made me think. He never seemed to be much of the social conservatism/evangelical type, although he'd pay lip service to that wing of the Republican Party at times. He also seemed to be a party over principle guy, so it doesn't surprise me that he would be OK with Trump. He's also a ratings over policy guy, so it also doesn't surprise me that he would egg on a shutdown that served no purpose. His audience probably ate that stuff up.
Overall, I don't think its really fair to blame the talk radio hosts for the current state of the Republican Party. They have their shticks, which are mostly motivated by ratings. There are people on the left that do the same thing, although to seemingly much less success. The real problem, as I see it, is the lack of intelligent and persuasive conservative thinkers in what is considered "mainstream journalism." The token conservative columnists at the New York Times and Washington Post are pretty pathetic when compared to those in the past. And conservative-leaning publications have either shut down completely or degraded in quality. Many of them have a disdain for younger voters and make no effort to win them or non-white voters over. Thus, "conservatism" (if you can even call it that anymore) seems to have been largely subsumed by the talk radio types.
Comment