I don’t listen to much radio. There isn’t much radio to listen to where I Iive, and outside of a few shows like our own Kagro in the Morning, it seems that most talk radio is geared to a more fanatically conservative audience.
Apparently, that conservative audience has developed a taste for red meat that is so all-consuming, the Republican Party is growing concerned—as well they should be. A conservative radio host in Greenville, South Carolina, reported that on the day after Donald Trump’s call to ban all Muslims, all of those who called into his show did so in support of Trump’s position. For three solid hours they called the station to express support for banning Muslims. In America. Sadly, his was not the only show to see such support for Trump.
A decade ago, the Republican Party believed that talk radio was the perfect platform to convey its message to the millions of party faithful. When Barack Obama was elected, the Republican Party happily went along with—and even supported—the attacks that were made on the president by talk radio hosts. It dovetailed nicely with party leaders’ plans to obstruct every policy that he proposed.
It is doubtful that they ever expected those attacks to be turned against themselves.
An October Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showed that 98 percent of talk radio listeners feel the country is headed in the wrong direction. Which makes sense when you consider that they are fed a daily diet of anger and fear from hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck.
And those are just the big names. According to Talkers magazine, there are about 5,000 radio talk show hosts around the country. Most of them are conservative. And the majority of those appear to be backing Donald Trump, which may have a lot to do with why his poll numbers seem to increase every time he says something truly offensive and outrageous.
Inside Radio, a trade publication, was quoted by The Intercept as reporting that Trump has been “cozying up to conservative talk radio.”
He sometimes calls in unexpectedly, and spent $300,000 advertising on talk radio in early primary states, his only advertising buy of the election so far.
Back in August 2015, Rosie Gray of BuzzFeed, observed:
Unlike cable news, conservative talk radio speaks directly to the disaffected conservative base fueling Trump’s rise. Rush Limbaugh’s is still the most-listened-to talk radio program in the country, pulling in 13 and a quarter million weekly listeners, according to estimates in Talkers magazine, an industry publication (Limbaugh himself has estimated it in the past at 20 million). Talkers puts Sean Hannity in second, with 12.5 million. Mark Levin ties with Glenn Beck (a Trump critic) for fourth, with 7 million. Savage has more than 5 million, according to Talkers’ estimates.
In the world of right-wing talk radio, the Republicans that they have elected and sent to Congress and the statehouses to stand up to the anti-Christ secret Muslim President Obama have instead meekly surrendered to Democratic Party demands. Or as Iowa radio host Steve Deace put it when discussing the Republican Party “brand:”
‘‘Pass Obama’s agenda, lie to conservatives, defraud voters and total capitulation.’’
Fed up, they are turning to outsiders like Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina. Ted Cruz fits into this group because even though he is a sitting U.S. senator, he has managed to grab headlines for being a thoroughly unlikeable person. The radio listeners, no doubt, felt he spoke for them when he attacked Chuck Hagel and Mitch McConnell and shut down the government.
In an interview with the New York Times Magazine, Deace expressed his dissatisfaction with Fox News, which he sees as the establishment mouthpiece and gatekeeper. Deace and his fellow talk radio hosts are the ones that the grassroots activists listen to on a regular basis, and in order to keep them listening, they are having to move further and further to the right. Currently, the extreme views of their listeners are not shared by the majority of self-identified Republicans, but those fanatic listeners are the ones who vote in the primaries.
Deace and others like him boast of being more conservative than Limbaugh or Fox News; like much of their audience, they consider themselves conservatives first and Republicans second (if only because being a Democrat is unthinkable). This strain of conservative media, and its take-no-prisoners ideology, have proliferated on websites, podcasts and video outlets, greatly complicating the Republican Party’s ability to govern and to pick presidential candidates with broad appeal.
And so the Republican Party is stuck with blowhards like Donald Trump as a frontrunner, followed closely by Ted Cruz and Ben Carson. Try as I might, I still don’t seem to be able to feel much sympathy for the Republican establishment. They have created this monster which now appears to be turning on them. As Rush Limbaugh explains:
“You Republicans, you can denounce Trump all day, all week, all month, and the Democrat[sic] Party and the media are still gonna say you laid the table for it,” Limbaugh said. “You can condemn Trump all you want, but it is not going to buy you any love or respect or admiration from the drive-by media and the Democrats. Now, folks, the conventional wisdom is that Trump is scum, that Trump is a reprobate, that Trump is dangerous, that Trump is obscene, Trump’s insane, Trump’s a lunatic, Trump’s dangerous, Trump’s got to go. Why join in with that phrase? Why join that crowd? We never fall in with conventional wisdom here.”