From now on, it’s just Hannity and Limbaugh
January 12, 2009 by LD Jackson · 20 Comments
For twelve years, it has been a much watched program on FOX News, as conservative Sean Hannity and liberal Alan Colmes interviewed guests from across the country. They liked to call it the fair and balanced show of FOX News. Personally, I have watched very little of the program, since I don’t have a television, but I have caught some of it online, during the presidential campaign of 2008. With Alan Colmes having left the show on January 9, it is left up to Sean Hannity alone to fill the time slot with his own show.
Most of my experience with Hannity has been on his radio program and I have listened to it a lot, when I had the chance to be in my car during his time slot. I usually agreed with most of what he had to say, especially when it comes to his efforts to help the troops. He has done a lot to raise money for them, as they come home and are faced with the different problems that go hand in hand with a war and wounded veterans. I do applaud him for that, because he has done a vast amount of good in that respect. However, as it is with Rush Limbaugh, I have a big problem with his delivery. I am not so much fond of the “in your face” kind of thing that they do. Maybe that’s why I don’t care for Ann Coulter as well. Anyway, I digress.
As the 2008 campaign got fully underway and I decided to support Mike Huckabee for the Republican nomination, I fully expected to see other conservatives supporting him as well. Maybe that was a naive approach, but that’s what I thought. Imagine my surprise when I managed to tune in one day to Sean Hannity and heard him bashing Huckabee so badly that I wondered if he was talking about the same Huckabee who governed Arkansas so well for over ten years. The surprise was compounded when I discovered Rush Limbaugh’s disdain for Huckabee and the fact that Ann Coulter called him stupid.
It wasn’t so much the fact that they may have disagreed with some of his policies while Governor of Arkansas, but the way they cast him in the same light as some of his Democratic counterparts. All manner of accusations were made by Hannity, Limbaugh, and Coulter. To hear them tell it, he was nothing but a big government liberal in disguise. Hannity went so far as to explain to his listeners that Huckabee had pulled out of the Florida primary, several days before it even took place. That was more than just policy disagreements, it was simply a lie. I wonder what they would have done, had he managed to win the nomination? Can you imagine the crow they would have had to eat? So, now we will have Hannity on the radio and Hannity on FOX News, with no one left to counter him or offer an alternative point of view.
In my opinion Sean Hannity is just one of the problems we face in trying to elect conservatives to Congress and the White House. My father is as conservative as they come and I talked to him more than once about Mike Huckabee and his campaign for the Republican nomination for President. I really thought there would be no way he wouldn’t vote for Huckabee, but I was shocked when I learned he voted for Mitt Romney. He cast his vote as he did because his source of information was conservative talk radio. He is 82 years old and is very active, but if at all possible, he is going to be listening to the radio every day when Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity air their shows. The two clearly had an agenda to push and it pains me to think of all the people they led down this road of thought. Because of them, the Republicans were facing Barack Obama with someone like John McCain, someone who stood virtually no chance of winning, even after picking the darling of the conservatives, Sarah Palin, as his running mate.
It may sound like I hold a grudge and maybe I do, but every time I turn the radio on and hear Hannity’s voice, I can’t help but thank him for having Barack Obama as our President-elect. Of course, that little fact helps him and Rush Limbaugh out tremendously. For the next four years, they will have no end of topics to discuss and raise their voices against. No doubt, they will voice their protest at every little thing the man does, no matter if his policies seems to be working or not. From listening to what they have had to say in the past week, it is already clear that they are failing his administration, before he even takes the oath of office. As for me, I will not be listening to the clamor.
Good afternoon, Larry. There is certainly some agitation in your writing voice, and that’s to be understood. I’m not the brightest bulb regarding this topic, but I don’t really think Hannity or Limbaugh wanted Obama to be elected. It’s true, Senator McCain was a long shot, and perhaps the two talk show hosts had a part in pushing him instead of someone more qualified.
I’m just learning about Governor Mike Huckabee, and like what I see. You’ve been impressed with his qualifications for a long time, if memory serves correctly. It seems to me if we (conservatives) are going to have a chance at winning the White House, senate and house, we need people who are more in tune with technology, youth and people’s concerns, while maintaining a strong conservative ideology. We can win.
My opinion is this: give the man (Obama) some room to see what he is going to do. Treat him better than the wacky left treated our current president, but be ready to speak rationally and passionately about his failures. Believe me, if he’s half the person in the White House as he was on the campaign trail, and if truth continues to come to light, there will plenty to be concerned with.
I can’t bring myself to blame Hannity or Limbaugh for the majority of this country voting for the Illinois senator. To date, I can’t figure out why anybody with any sense would vote for him. His moral stance alone would make me look elsewhere. What’s done is done, and we must move on.
Ron’s last blog post..Happy Campers at the University of Florida
Ron, the accusation against Hannity isn’t that he backed Obama, but rather that by undermining Huckabee he helped lead to a situation in which the GOP nominated a can’t-win candidate. After Hannity was done pushing liberal Giuliani, he tried to promote liberal Romney.
Had the Republicans gotten behind a candidate early, it might have been a different story.
Wickle’s last blog post..Are YOU in Blogapalooza?
Wickle. I misunderstood. You have made it clear now, and thanks.
Ron’s last blog post..Happy Campers at the University of Florida
The antics that took place “behind the scenes” this election cycle… I almost gave up on our political system all together! I still can recall the religious right meeting with Mike Huckabee and determining he was the most conservative by far, only to turn around, walk out the door and back Romney. What a disgrace!
I have to humbly agree with you, Larry, about Hannity. My issue is that we have individuals on both side who are no longer in the center and I think Hannity falls in that area. Actually, I did catch the Hannity and Colmes show and it really re-iterates the problem for me. Sometime, the show almost seemed scripted as they took their perspective sides. For me, it ruined the “balance” that was suppose to be the there as well as the debate. It came across empty. It was as if Hannity could only think this way and Colmes could only think that way, so no one was thinking outside the box to find answers. They were just stuck.
I personally think sometimes the answer might come a little to the left or a little to the right but most of the time, right down the middle. This push and pull politics where it is the extreme right pushing against the extreme left just seems like child play to me. Sometimes I wonder if they really understand the world around them or if they are just part of the political game.
I doubt I will watch Hannity much but it has to be better than watching the two of them do that two-step!
Too bad, Chuck Norris could start his own show. Now that would be cool.
Dominique’s last blog post..A Blog Within A Blog
Ron,
You are correct when you say there is some agitation in my writing voice. This topic has incensed me more than once and I could be much stronger about it, but I try to keep it peaceful. I didn’t explain it as clearly as I should have, but Wickle has explained it better. It may be a little strong to place the blame for Obama’s election on Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, but that is where at least part of it lies. They didn’t even have to support Mike Huckabee if they didn’t want to, but they didn’t have to trash him as they did. That was just wrong.
Dominique said “Too bad, Chuck Norris could start his own show. Now that would be cool.” I heartily agree with her; that would make for a great show, and would certainly be far from boring. He is a class act, as far as I’m concerned.
You’re right, Larry. If they didn’t want to support Huckabee, that was alright. They shouldn’t have treated him as you say, either. Good point.
Ron’s last blog post..Happy Campers at the University of Florida
Every one misses the point. Hannity and Limbaugh are not the problem as stated in the privivous articles. The problem lies in the fact the Republican Party is not as conservative as it was under Regean. It is full of moderates (moderates are politicians who can never take a strong conservative position on anything) who are like jelly fish or an ameba. Guiliana, Huckabee, Romney, McCain and all the rest of them. None of them would have received the 58,000,000 million votes McCain received and that was because he picked a true conservative for a running mate. Every one said she was not qualified to be VP. Is Joe Biden smarter?
Rembember, Obama thinks he had to visit 57 states. How dumb can you be? Palin was asked “What do you think of the Bush Doctrine? Charlie, there is no Bush Doctrine just as there was not Clinton Doctrine.
Prisident Bush ruined the Republican Party because he was a democrat turned inside out. He sleeps in the fetal position because he no backbone. There is no way a Republican was going to be president because the socialist-Marksist press has taken control of the print and TV media and we now are under a Tolatarian rule and the only one that can make this country great again is Sara Palin, She withstood the “heat in the kitchen”. She came out firing on all cylinders until McCain put a rope around her neck and told her to do what your told and nothing else. If they let her loose from the beginning, it would have been a closer race but McCain was too weak to be president and it showed throughout the campaign. So what is the final result? A moron for Speaker of the House, a mental midget for Majority House leader, and a socialist, marksist, and anti-American do nothing Congress. Your president (he is not my president) Obama will go down as the president who put the final nail in the American Democracy coffin. Snicker if you will, live in ultimate denial but the people that he is appointing to his cabinet and close advisors are all pathogogical liars, crooks, and hate mongers. You can not build America on a socialist foundation. It is impossible. By this time next year, you will find out that I am right. The reason I say he is not my president is because the day after he is sworn in a president, I am on a plane and moving to New Zealand.
arthur, Las Vegas
It’s hysterical to read your bashing of Hannity or to mourn the loss of “balance” provided by Colmes or to think that yeah, just maybe, the positions are scripted. Are you kidding??? Hannity, Limbaugh, and Coulter are the bane of the Republican party and they should be taken out behind the woodshed and given a good whooping. Talk about hate-mongers these three are the leaders of the pack. The Republican party is as lost as the Democratic party was 20 years ago when special interests pulled it left and elevated social issues including the environment, womens rights, civil rights, etc. above fundamental domestic and foreign policy issues. Republicans who find in Sarah Palin the source of salvation continue to completely miss what’s important for this country. She has solid conservative Republican views but she’s an idiot (and no Joe Biden is no genius but he has credibility and will help get things done on the Hill). I don’t think any of the Republican candidates put forth this year had a chance of winning but when the most vocal talking heads bash McCain and later bash Huckabee then Republicans get what they deserve. We need a fresh group of faces for 2012 and the focus needs to be on conservative issues of consequence — tax cuts, balanced budget, smaller government, etc. while supporting the majority of socially conservative platforms. I don’t know who they are but these people are out there. Mike Huckabee may be one answer though I don’t think he has a chance. But I’m absolutely certain it’s not Sarah Palin who will continue to trip herself up because she just isn’t very bright and is an embarrassment to the party.
Larry, you hit the nerve that nobody, least of all the GOP power brokers and their media machine, wants to agitate. Conservative talkers, eager to inflame the base and extend their TSL (time spent listening), undermined the credibility of their best candidates in the field. They shouted before they thought, and were a large, noisy reason for the electorate confusion and the nomination of the least Conservative choice.
But go further. The biggest tragedy wasn’t the talkers and their fickle ways, but rather when the GOP strategists began to act like talk hosts themselves. Media bias, race-baiting, and birth certificates became not just tactics in the GOP playbook but their whole strategy. Who could ever forget the embarrassing convention, which focused on media bashing more than putting forth a solid agenda. Yes, it played to to the base, but it alienated everybody else. Throughout the entire campaign, they fed their media machine with nothing solid-or new- to present to the American public. With no substantive sustenance from their party, what else was a talker to do?
Laurie,
You stated that very well. As a party, the Republicans abandoned the effort to talk about the direction they wanted to take the country and went after Obama with everything except what would do them any good. As true as the media bias may have been, it didn’t do us any good to continue pointing it out. The race-baiting and birth certificate issues just helped us dig the hole deeper and deeper.
At one point, I thought the media bias was legitimate. Story angles and choices are still a legitimate concern, but as soon as Fox New’s Carl Cameron admitted to holding back on information regarding Sarah Palin’s broad misunderstanding and igonorance (in some cases) of extremely relevant material I thought Conservatives lost a lot of ground on the issue. Hearing him on a talk radio program gushing over Sarah Palin’s intellect and leadership capability one day later made me seriously question the veracity of his original report when he said he “wished” he’d been able to share the information during the campaign.
Why does this stick in my mind? Because at the exact same time tthat the ENTIRE Fox line up was screaming to high heaven that the Los Angeles Times should release a tape of a dinner Obama attended with nefarious characters- and damn their claim of “source protection”-, the news arm (not the opinion arm) of Fox was doing the very same thing. At least the Times reported their relevant news, sans the tape. Fox News chose to sit on everything. Fair and balanced? Their screeching was hollow and anything but.
10-12 years ago, America was listening to, and carefully considering, the media bia argument. But since then, Conservatives have contributed very little that would pass as “objective” news delivery, and many Americans, including a lot of Conservatives, can only scratch their heads and ask “Is this really the best we can do?
It’s not the best we can do but Americans have short attention spans, are easily influenced by passionate pleas for articulate spokespeople, and need to be entertained. Coulter, Hannity, and Rush give this in liberal doses (pun intended). But George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Brooks, Heritage, AEI, and many others make strong, persuasive arguments for conservative doctrine — they just don’t have the platform and conservative America doesn’t care to make the effort to learn. So we’re left with policy discussion too narrowly focussed on abortion and gun control to win radical constituencies while Democrats moved on to the things that matter. It’s inexcusable but it’s where Republicans went because that’s where the talking heads led it. They prefer yelling “fire” because America listens. “Fire” is airtime. “Fire” is ad revenues. “Fire” sells books. It’s all very sad for Republican politics.
Mike,
Would it be safe to say that Americans go more for style than for substance?
I am a very strong proponent of the 2nd Amendment and am strongly pro-life. However, that does not mean they are the only issues that are important to me. There are many other issues that are important, not only to me but to other Americans. The Republican party needs to understand that and until they do. they may never regain control of Congress or the White House.
Larry,
Americans AND the GOP became enamored with style over substance. Think back to mid-2007. The GOP and their media delivery device had spent years convincing the base that illegals were as big a threat to the US as terrorism. And there was a confluence of the GOP power base that could have easily taken steps to change the problem. But when Kennedy-McCain was introduced, talk radio (in particular) went on a frenzied campaign to turn the base against it. Conservatives flexed their “no” muscles, viciously enough to kill the bill. People loved the havoc they created, jamming Congresional phone lines and prompting Trent Lott to wonder in print if “talk radio was running America”.
The people spoke, the party listened and then? Cue the crickets. Once the fanfare and hubbub was over, the will to legislate a real solution died. Talk radio hosts and listeners crowed over their victory, but what had they won? The GOP dropped the attempt to fix what ails, seemingly satisfied to let the base feel good about winning the battle while the war raged on- unabated and unchanged. Even most talk shows dropped the topic, but only after having branded Senator Brownback as Senator “Switchback” and John McCain as “McAmnesty”- at term that was repeated-by the base, not Liberals- over and over when he became the Presidential pick.
Feel good, aspirational politics-not real solutions- is the style that killed the GOP’s substance. It is the job of the media machine to ask questions and present problems, but the political arm is obligated to hear the people’s will and translate it into legislated solutions. And the GOP failed miserably to do this, even when the sailing was smooth.
Laurie,
I think the same kind of attitude applies to the choice of Sarah Palin as McCain’s running mate. Not to belittle her, because I did like her, but she was more style than substance. She did not have real solutions to the problems Americans are facing and in all honesty, she really doesn’t have the experience to provide those solutions. Hopefully the Republicans can produce a candidate in 2012 that can provide those solutions.
Larry, I admire your restraint re Sarah. I think she’d be fun to have a beer with and to chat with about politics at the local level. She is solidly conservative on social issues and that had great appeal for people to whom those issues count most. And of course she brought enormous energy and enthusiasm to the ticket because she made people feel that she was a “normal” American who genuinely lived their issues and problems. Unfortunately that’s where her “qualifications” end; but Rush LOVES her and he alone can and will keep her in the forefront of Republican politics for the next four years. And if he then proceeds to bash other qualified candidates in order to promote her then we’ll have a repeat of 2008 and Trent Lott’s comment that Laurie cited will be confirmed to the detriment of the party. That said, I’ll wait and see how Obama does, allowing him to change his mind when the facts change, and recognizing that with a nearly bulletproof majority in the Senate he has already been substantially more inclusive of Republicans both in his Cabinet and in policy discussion than W was at any point in his eight years. One cheer for Obama with the other two held in reserve to see if he actually practices substance over style.
Mike,
I supported Sarah Palin during the campaign and I think she is a good person. I can see in hindsight that she may not be as good a candidate as I thought she was, although that could change in the future. With further experience, she could do a world of good in Washington. However, I am not sure that VP or President would be the best place for her. Secretary of the Interior or something else along her lines of experience could allow her to do real good things.
As for Barack Obama, if you look at some of my posts just after the election, you will see that I am leaning heavily in favor of at least giving him a chance to do the job and see what happens. After all, that is part of what this country is all about. Stay tuned for another post that I am working on that will be published January 20, at about the same time the inauguration is taking place. It will go a little further into detail about that subject.
As always, just my opinion.
Looking forward to the new post, Larry.
I think it’s crucial that the GOP membership stop looking towards 2012 and concentrate on today. You want the next Conservative superstar? Then require him (or her) to be the one who takes our country’s immediate probelms seriously, embraces cautious, smart consensus building to work with the new Administration for forward movement on issues that really affect us, and proves that he/she cares about the entire country, not just the base. The country has no more patience for whining publicity hound politicians who can only play to the negative. Aside from her stunning lack of substance (I was appalled by her selection as a candiate from the beginning), Palin has proven and continues to prove that she is the worst bad actor on that particular stage.
As I have already said, hindsight is 20/20. Looking back I can see that she was out of her league when it came to answering some of the questions she was asked. To be fair, the first interview with Charlie Gibson was an exercise in creative editing by ABC. They did their best to make her look as bad as they could, which was even worse than she really was. Looking forward, I can see her doing some good, although it may not be on the level of VP or President.
Larry,
Back to the original subject of your post, I thought you might be interested in what’s passing for Conservative leadership on the airwaves.
Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_011609/content/01125113.guest.html
And, presumably, the country with him? Dangerous “patriotism”, nakedly spoken. God help the GOP if this attitude takes hold. Listeners would do well to understand that even if Obama fails and the country tanks, Limbaugh’s wallet is fat and happy as long as he keeps the base inflamed. But where will the rest of us be?
This one was intriguing, as it bolsters your point.
McCain Campaign Manager Blames Rush Limbaugh for McCain’s Loss
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_011609/content/01125108.guest.html