Rush Limbaugh Talks to TIME
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What is it that the mainstream media don't understand about your role and the role of conservative talk radio in general?
I don't think they understand why I do it, number one. I treat it as a business. My definitions for success have nothing to do with who wins elections, but rather, Is the program growing audience-wise? Are we attracting new sponsors? Are those sponsors paying confiscatory rates? Are we able to charge confiscatory rates? Which we are. Are they getting results for their advertising? Yes they are. We're sold out constantly, we've got a waiting list for people to get on. That's how I define it.
Now, in terms of the content, I just come here and I try to have fun every day. And I'm honest. I don't say outrageous things I don't believe just to get people in a tizzy. I have the benefit here of not having anybody tell me what I can or can't say. It's totally up to me. But I'm very serious about a lot of things. And so I get very passionate about those things, and I do so with honesty. But I also — it's show biz, too. There's a lot of radio out there. There's a lot of TV. There's a lot of competition. And you have to do certain things to cut through the noise. And that's where the showbiz characteristics will surface, such as "Talent On Loan From God." You know people think I'm saying I'm Christ, which I'm not. But it's just these little signature things that sometimes rub people the wrong way or make them think that I'm an arrogant and pompous person. Those are just the showbiz things.
The second thing that the media doesn't understand — and I think it's because talk radio is outside the Beltway. It's a phenomenon that attracts what I call the people who make the country work. I don't think politicians and elected officials and bureaucrats and even the media are responsible for the greatness of the country. I think it's individual Americans laboring in anonymity, not seeking fame, just trying to get by, play by the rules, work hard, ordinary people doing extraordinary things. And those are the people that listen to talk radio. And the media thinks that they're all hayseeds and hicks without minds of their own. When in fact, they are totally independent thinkers. And most of my audience is there not because I have Pied Pipered them to where they believe. They already believed what they believe — I just came along and validated it. When I started in '88, there was CNN, the three networks, your magazine and Newsweek and US News and the newspapers. That was it. I started in '88 and I was the first so-called national voice espousing conservatism and people glommed onto it because finally, "Somebody who agrees with me!"
So the assumption is that people who listen to talk radio are idiots, or mindless robots, or victims of slick marketing and packaging. So there's sort of a condescending view of the audience of talk radio, people are sometimes held in contempt by some people. It's just totally wrong. It's 180 degrees out of phase.
[It seems to me that] it's a positive to have people listening to radio, listening to issues, talking about politics and policy. That's about an informed public. That's what is annoying about the condescension — it's that anybody who is tuning into [talk radio], or watching cable, is more engaged than people who are watching game shows.
You are absolutely right. I've been doing radio for 20 years, and there's still these gross and great misunderstandings of what I do, why I do it and how I do it, and I'll get calls from people who are new listeners, and some of them will be critical: "Why are you trying to just continually make people mad. Why can't you help people come together?" And I say, Look, what you do with your life and your thoughts is fine. All I'm interested in here is a more informed, educated, engaged, participatory public in matters of state. The more people that show up to vote informed, the more people that participate and get involved in these kinds of things who are informed and passionately engaged is better off for the country. So you nailed it. You're exactly right.
Why did the rallying behind Mitt Romney by talk radio not pull it off for him?
You see, candidates win or lose elections. Nobody who does what I do, nor can I, influence mass numbers of votes. We might be able to influence or inform people about things they didn't know. But it's up to candidates to get elected. It's not my job to get them elected. And when they lose I don't take it personally. And Romney was like every other candidate in our field, Jay. The reason why we're in this mess is because not one of our candidates, from top to bottom, fully met or meets the three-legged stool of conservatism. You've got this foreign policy crowd, you've got the fiscal conservative/small government crowd, and you've got the social and cultural crowd. We didn't have one candidate who wrapped them all up. As such, the conservative voter decided, Okay, this issue is more important to me — I'm going there. [And] this issue is more important to me, I'm going there. You've also got the Mormon thing; the media played that up. You have some people on the social side of the Republican Party [who are] just not going to vote for a Mormon, no matter what. Also, he had his flip-flop problems on abortion he had to talk about. I think he did a more persuasive job of convincing people he had genuinely changed his mind than other people had on some certain things.
But I don't think it would have made a difference. You know what turned... You know, Romney was up ten points in Florida until two things happened — until McCain started with this bulls--t about Romney being in favor of a timeline for withdrawal — he did that on a Saturday. And then [Florida Governor Charlie] Crist endorsed [McCain]. Those are political realities on the ground, and nobody in talk radio could do anything about that. Even if I had decided six months ago that Romney's my guy and [I] had been pumping Romney... that stuff happens a couple days before the election and I guarantee you it's going to have real effects with voters on the ground in Florida beyond what I do.
This thing about McCain and Romney — I know it's politics. It's what it is, and I don't whine and complain about it. But I found it very interesting. It was a Saturday he made that claim. So it's three days before the election. And Romney, because of McCain-Feingold, his groups could not go out and run ads countering what McCain had said. And I said, Maybe we need to add to McCain-Feingold and make sure that candidates can't say anything 30 days before an election that's not true about their opponents. So while McCain-Feingold prevented Romney, or Romney's groups, from responding to it [with] TV ads, McCain was free to mouth off. A little irony.
What will it be like, because you're a conservative and speak to an audience that tends to be conservative, if McCain wins the presidency? How will it be different for you having an incumbent President of the party that you tend to support whom you don't see eye-to-eye with? How will that be different from when Bush Senior was President or George W? Will there be a difference?
Well, who can predict the future? I don't plan these things. And I don't. My show is event-driven. I'm sitting here today and I happen to know I'm going to lead today with the Democrats last night, I think. But most days, Jay, when this show starts at noon, and I've got my stuff in front [of me], I really don't know what I'm going to start with. It's almost all spontaneous.
You see, your question comes from, again, what I think is a mistaken template. You're [asking], What is talk radio going to do if McCain wins and he's sort of one of our guys but isn't? Ah, we've had that with President Bush. I mean, go talk to President Bush about my attitude on illegal immigration. The thing about Bush that kept his people unified for the most part was the war, and what the Democrats were savaging him with, and trying to secure defeat, wrap it around his throat. That served to unify people who had disagreements with Bush on other things. Plus Bush is a likable guy. Now we're still going to have a war and we're still going to have terrorist threats and so forth. But this is what I fear, Jay. I have looked in the future. And you're going to have probably a Congress with even larger Democrat majorities in the House and Senate. I mean, Pelosi's out there saying that she thinks Obama can bring 75 new seats. Let's say they have sizable increases in their voting majorities. You and I know that Presidents like to get things done, and they define getting things done in terms of legislation, and other things. Here we're going have a guy, if he's elected, who has made a practice of getting things done, not by reaching across the aisle, but walking across the aisle and sitting down with the Democrats. He is who he is. And so it looks like, we're going to get a Democrat agenda regardless of who wins the presidency. And so arguing against liberalism and a Democrat agenda is always going to be on my plate, it's always going to be the first thing out there regardless of who the President is. I mean, I don't view myself as having to defend my President if he's in my party. That's not my job; that's not how I go about it.
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