The Great Rush Limbaugh

 

I think the best remark about Rush Limbaugh today was this headline “The talent is returned”. 

Rush’s famous quip about himself was that he had “talent on loan from God”. And so he did, and we’ll never get to hear him shouting last minute instructions to Snerdly or the staff at EIB just as the show began. We’ll never hear another golf weekend anecdote or a complaint about the ‘drive by media’. We’ll never get another cigar recommendation or a ‘Renaldas Magnus’ reference.

I heard his wife Catherine start the show today and my heart sunk. I knew. We all knew.

 I clicked it off after they started doing ‘best of’ stuff. I just couldn’t bear it. It’s impossible to sum up the man’s influence on conservatism in America, the Republican Party and especially Trump. I think the best I can do is share my personal experience of his show and philosophy. I came to the show late. I don’t think I ever really listened to him in high school or even after. I remember segments of his TV show but I didn’t know anyone that listened to his radio show. It’s an age thing I guess. I can’t pinpoint the transition from general knowledge of the man to regular listener but it had to be shortly after my time in the Army. Let’s say 2001 to have a time frame.

I was splitting wood for a guy I knew from church. We did some landscaping as well and some odd deliveries, but I had more time in the car than ever before. His certainty in conservative values and American exceptionalism convinced me to come along for the ride. Day after day I started to pick up new information and a certain way of thinking critically about politics and information. He was articulate in the way he talked about media bias and the liberal slant it carried. This is a two way street of course. Conservative news also has heroes and villains but before Limbaugh the only source on the right was National Review. After him came other talk shows like Sean Hannity and TV networks like Fox News.

I might have come to conservatism at some point, via another source, but Rush was my gateway drug to politics.

 More than having my eyes opened to some new truth, he articulated what I instinctively thought about life. Here is a just a sample: hard work is key to success, let your passion drive you, personal liberty is the most important right. I picked these up from countless shows. The partisan politics he is known for is tied to his view of America’s founding and principles. He fought with the Democrat party and liberalism (later progressivism) because he believed it antithetical to the founding. He showed his audience how the Left worked to undermine personal liberties and traditional values. I always took his negative comments about Obama, Clinton, Pelosi and any other fill-in Democrats to be strictly in service of the cause.

I don’t believe he was a nasty person. Others will probably disagree but I can’t imagine him going after someone for a personal failing. Less than a year ago he mentioned Hunter Biden as someone who needed help, not someone who need be ridiculed for his drug problem. Rush also struggled with a prescription drug problem which caused him a lot of embarrassment in 2004. 

At the height of the election season (2020) he was averaging 45 to 50 million listeners a day. Those are incredible numbers and ones that probably won’t be duplicated for a long time. After listening for a while a certain comfortability set it with the format and his particular way of talking about current events, not just politics. Listening to Rush was never about waiting to form an opinion that aligned with the great man, it was more about hearing it through his particular world view. That kind of trust from the audience takes years to build up. I always felt like he gave an honest view of life—or at least the best vision of events he could offer.   

He was entertaining right up to the end and I’m sad that it’s over. There will never be another Rush Limbaugh and I’m grateful for the time I listened. I’m encouraged that so many millions of us learned about this great country from him.