The inspiration for this post came from having run across this announcement of the speaker lineup for this year's CPAC while scrolling my Twitter feed. I retweeted it with the comment, "And to to think the great Dutch was a regular featured speaker in the early days."
Every stinking one of them is a Trumpist to one degree or another. My attention was particularly drawn to Mark Levin, to whom we'll return shortly.
The whole phenomenon of conservative talk radio was like manna from heaven when, in its present form, it took off in the late 1980s. (It has a longer history, but figures like Joe Pyne and Bob Grant never had anything like the impact of the figures that have peopled the last 30-plus years.) Even in the era of Reagan and Bush 41, the pressure, which has only intensified in the ensuing years, to keep the peace with one's left-leaning fellow citizens made conservatives feel like aliens in their own land.
The thrill of hearing Rush Limbaugh for the first time was palpable. He was coming right out and saying things that one could only otherwise avail oneself of in the pages of National Review, The American Spectator and Commentary in the privacy of one's own home.
In retrospect, one can see that his style was the prototype for today's own-the-libs approach to right-of-center opining. He relied heavily on segments he called "updates," which were devoted to aspects of the national landscape such as feminism, environmental activism, and peace activism. He had theme music for each one explicitly designed to get a rise out of any progressive who might encounter it. (Case in point, leading into the Feminist Update with Sandy Posey's "Born A Woman.")
It fired conservatives' imaginations because it was unprecedented. It was the first major pushback against the onslaught of "social change" that had been laying siege to our civilizational underpinnings for the previous 20-plus years. And Limbaugh could pull it off effectively, given that his background was the radio industry. He's spent years spinning pop records as Jeff Christy. He was an experienced showman.
But in retrospect it can be seen that it was to a large degree about giving space to conservatives to self-congratulate. "Hell, yeah, that's my brand." Since he was the first and he was so good at the schtick, he quickly gained entree into highbrow circles. He addressed Heritage Foundation events and was interviewed by William F. Buckley, Jr.
It must also be conceded that he was a loudmouth. While his interest in, and success at, carefully thinking out his positions and rooting them in actual principle was impressive compared to most who have followed in his wake, he reveled in delivering his message in the style of an overheated yay-hoo. It was not easy to see for the enthralled conservative at the time, given that there wasn't anyone or anything to compare him to.
The success he's enjoyed in the intervening decades, as manifested in the ever-more-hoity-toity circles he's run in, hanging with NFL team owners and golfing with - well, to hew to the point at hand, Donald Trump - has undoubtedly had an effect on him. Still, until relatively recently, he made a point of distinguishing between conservatism's immutable principles and the rising and falling fortunes of the Republican Party. He wanted it to be clear that he was no figure's or party's water-carrier.
Something changed in 2016. The stakes involved were no doubt a factor. Still, his giddiness at Trump's entry into the fray when there were still several appealing candidates couldn't be hidden. He tried his best to couch his remarks in an objective-analysis framework - an eyebrow-raising move, given that he was most definitely in the opining business - but there was no denying that when he would bellow about how Trump was going to swagger onto the debate stage and upend the board-game table, how Trump had no patience for the rules of the game, it was because he thought it was great. Since then, any remaining trace of his I'm-just-providing-objective-analysis-here posture is gone. He's one of the biggest shills for the Very Stable Genius barking and blustering today.
One of the next talk-radio stars to come along in his wake was Sean Hannity. He'd gotten into radio from a background of bartending and construction work. He brought an Irish Catholic Long Island sensibility to his radio work. He made it clear that his self-made-man route to success was the main formative factor in his embrace of conservatism.
He didn't - and doesn't - have much depth. He's a crummy polemicist. So many times leftists who were standing on shaky ground would call his show, and I'd want him to step back and let them expose their hollowness, let his audience get the full measure of leftism's inherent flaws. But no, he'd interrupt with some you-and-your-liberal-friends bluster and hang up.
So it was really no surprise that he became a Trumpist early on. He shares with the Very Stable Genius a tendency to drop a train of thought like a hot potato before anyone listening would have a chance to get a full picture of the point ostensibly being made.
Now, back to Mark Levin. When he first became a well-known figure, it was as the author of some very good, well-researched-and-argued books on the legal framework for defending liberty. He demonstrably had those chops in good working order. But on the radio, he was prone to shouting, at a decibel level even higher than that of his run-of-the-mill competitors. He was, like Hannity, a hanger-upper. "Get off my phone, you dope!" he'd bark.
Still, he seemed to have his wits about him as he informed his audience that he was an ardent supporter of Ted Cruz. He publicly declared himself a Never Trumper. What a difference three years makes. He now calls Trump the first Jewish president.
My point is that there seems to be a correlation between the degree of bombast in a talk radio host's style and the fullness of his conversion to Trumpism. The medium itself lends itself to the kind of brand-hustling and verbal swagger that is the VSG's hallmark. Thoughtful reflection and calm discourse don't play well on the AM airwaves.
For a while, talk radio had a role to play in advancing conservatism's three pillars. It could reach people and provoke thought in a way that highbrow magazines and think-tank conferences could not. But when the Very Stable Genius descended the escalator at Trump Tower and made his announcement, radio hosts saw way more potential for positive impact in a style of comportment with which they identified than was really possible. And now they're so inextricably tied to to the success of the project that they can't back away. For one thing, like Republican Senators who voted not to call witnesses in the impeachment trial, they have no interest in being the objects of the VSG machine's wrath.
They love this stuff at the modern iteration of CPAC, though. I notice that Dan Bongino is also among the speakers. Notice has been served that, whatever the "C" is supposed to stand for, this annual and once-important gathering has been reduced to a sewer of cult worship.
If you want to convene with actual conservatives, there are alternatives.
Talk radio's limitations are on full display in 2020 post-America. At this point, it's a medium best avoided.
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