Joe Scarborough says that middle Americans who swing elections will think that the Republicans have gone off the deep end. But that is not the Limbaugh audience. His audience is, to put it mildly, a non-random sample of the electorate. They eat this up. Limbaugh loses nothing. The people who, as Scarborough says, are “smarter than that” are not watching the program; they are not in the Limbaugh demographic. Unless this clip goes viral, they may not see the behavior that Paul Krugman rightly likened to that of “a bratty thirteen-year-old.” It would be great to see Michael Steele confronted with this video clip and asked whether he supports Limbaugh now, in a forum that the swing voters would see in large numbers. That seems unlikely to happen.
What is important is that there is now a grown-up in the Oval Office. People want an adult for President of the United States. They will compare candidates with one another, not with overgrown adolescent talk show hosts. I am not saying that this clip is irrelevant to the political process, but is is rather close.
I’m beginning to wonder whether this (apparently coordinated) push is really a sort of “No true Scotsman” campaign against media competitors. Scarborough and his ilk are still pretty crazy, and they stand to gain some amount of market share by pushing a few other crazy voices off the rightward edge of acceptability, even for a little while.
Joe Scarborough says that middle Americans who swing elections will think that the Republicans have gone off the deep end. But that is not the Limbaugh audience. His audience is, to put it mildly, a non-random sample of the electorate. They eat this up. Limbaugh loses nothing. The people who, as Scarborough says, are “smarter than that” are not watching the program; they are not in the Limbaugh demographic. Unless this clip goes viral, they may not see the behavior that Paul Krugman rightly likened to that of “a bratty thirteen-year-old.” It would be great to see Michael Steele confronted with this video clip and asked whether he supports Limbaugh now, in a forum that the swing voters would see in large numbers. That seems unlikely to happen.
What is important is that there is now a grown-up in the Oval Office. People want an adult for President of the United States. They will compare candidates with one another, not with overgrown adolescent talk show hosts. I am not saying that this clip is irrelevant to the political process, but is is rather close.
This morning’s Denver Post has a cartoon that nicely sums up the situation.
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_13491665
I’m beginning to wonder whether this (apparently coordinated) push is really a sort of “No true Scotsman” campaign against media competitors. Scarborough and his ilk are still pretty crazy, and they stand to gain some amount of market share by pushing a few other crazy voices off the rightward edge of acceptability, even for a little while.