If you thought that President-elect Barack Obama would get maybe an hour’s worth of honeymoon from many conservative talk radio hosts — just an hour free of the kind of attack and demonize radio show that gets big ratings because it riles up audiences and wants them to tune in again — then I have a company named Microsoft that I can sell you for $1.98…
Listening to a variety of conservative national and local talk shows here in Southern California yesterday was a revelation: many of these hosts seemed more determined than ever to recycle campaign-related charges against Obama, repeat his middle name repeatedly as if it signaled a danger to the Republic and push hot buttons that in effect urged listeners not to trust or work with those who don’t totally agree with the talk show radio host (Democrats, independents, liberals and moderates).
One key point they make: Obama didn’t win by a landslide, which is true. The other key that many of them made is that the votes proved Obama has no mandate to press for any programs he advocates.
But that, like many of their other charges, doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Note these background paragraphs in a story from U.K.’s Telegraph on Obama work on assembling a cabinet:
An estimated 130 million voters cast their ballots, a turnout of about 62 per cent and the highest in more than 40 years. The first black president-elect won with 63.25 million votes, more than the total of any other presidential candidate in history.
He also netted a higher percentage of the overall vote than any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
With the results finalised in 48 states and the District of Columbia, Mr Obama had recorded a near landslide in the electoral college with 349 electoral votes compared to Mr McCain’s 163 for Republican John McCain.
He won by a six-point margin in the national popular vote. Missouri and North Carolina were still too close to call.
So these hosts who insisted in 2004 (and 2000) that George W. Bush had a mandate to lead say Obama doesn’t now, even though he got a higher percentage of votes than Bush. But it’s clear if you monitor these programs that many are not about facts but about fanning anger towards one party and whip up listeners so they’ll tune in again and again.
Here’s a list of some of the arguments being made yesterday. Many these were made within minutes of shows being aired. So Obama, who asked his opponents to work with him in his victory speech, is already being demonized before he has even been sworn in. Some key points and arguments in the show:
*The Obama administration will be a Marxist-Socialist regime.
*He only won by 6 percentage points in the vote which isn’t a big deal and is not a mandate.
*One host begins his show now with audio of a speech by Reverend Wright.
*There is no reason to cooperate with the Democrats who didn’t cooperate with the Republicans. Cooperation has only brought the Republicans electoral defeat and the Democrats and Obama should be fought every step of the way.
*It’s suspicious that Obama went to Hawaii to see his dying grandmother at the height of demands that he produce his birth certificate — and she died later.
*John McCain is nothing but a country club Republican who was never a real conservative and virtually threw the election to Obama.
*John McCain’s concession speech to Obama pledging to work with the new President shows McCain is not a real conservative and was a sham all along.
*The names now being floated in the news media as part of the Obama administration are all Clinton retreads or extremely partisan and far left Democratic liberal hacks and show that Obama is no centrist or moderate but a Socialist.
*Continued talk about Bill Ayers and Wright and that these issues need to be pressed and not forgotten.
You could argue these are just broadcasts, so who cares? But conservative talkers command large audiences. Essentially, the U.S. has some people with three-hour blocs of time who, even before a new President is sworn in, are urging their listeners: a) not to give him the benefit of the doubt b) not to try and put aside the past campaign and differences and give bipartisan cooperation a chance, c) demand the GOP continue to confront and battle, every inch of the way, the new President.
The issue isn’t the hosts having the right to say what they want. They do. And if you believe, ask me about that little company I can sell you for $1.98…
The issue is that talk radio remains entertainment for some, but is a major news source and a place to get what are basically political prompts about what partisans should do and say. And Obama is not getting a second’s worth of honeymoon from these hosts, who were badmouthing Obama within hours of his victory.
On his KFI Show yesterday, lawyer Bill Handel, who is an independent, was asked whether he thought Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and other conservative talk show hosts would ease off Obama during the transition. Handel flatly said no…and explained that there are people who genuinely believe that Democrats, independents and other voters who voted for and think like Obama and working with evil people (the Obama administration) to destroy the country and hand it over to its enemies.
There’s also the element of ratings. During an Obama administration these shows will get HUGE ratings since they can now go after a Democratic administration. Now it’ll be the progressive talkers who will likely fall into the trap of playing defense for their party in power — most likely shrinking their already modest audiences even more.
The real danger of conservative talk radio: during the campaign it was clear that at several points McCain took the advice of conservative talkers. The advice proved to be awful (such as Rush Limbaugh’s lobbying for Sarah Palin as Veep).
The dangers is that the powers that be in the downsized GOP will again follow the advice of conservative talkers — who want to narrow the GOP tent and paint those outside the tent as being dangerous and ill-intentioned.
Hopefully the GOP bigwigs with their hands on the now-smaller levers of GOP power will remember what happened when John McCain and his handlers thought these talkers had some terrific ideas about campaign strategy.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.