In 1988, my dad was raving about this brash young conservative named Rush Limbaugh, and after a lot of prodding, we finally listened to him together. And...I was hooked. For a dozen years thereafter, Rush would be both a political guide and a friend. Of course, he had no idea who I was. But it’s safe to say that if it weren’t for Rush, I wouldn't be writing this today.
Now, you might be thinking that I was some sort of rube or aspiring young fascist. Not so. When I started listening, Rush was still in his 30s and living in New York City. He was tech savvy and sophisticated (he even went on a dinner/date with Maureen Dowd, who would later write that “He talked about Chopin’s Polonaise No. 6, C.S. Lewis and how much he loved the end of the movie ‘Love Story.’ In those days, he called himself a ‘harmless little fuzzball,’ before adding: “He’s a lot less harmless now.” (By contrast, I was the son of a prison guard, in my early teens, living in Wolfsville, Maryland. I didn’t have the internet, cable TV, or any dates, much less Maureen Dowd-level dates.)
There’s something magical about the intimacy of radio that younger readers simply cannot possibly appreciate. The medium fosters a uniquely strong emotional connection between listener and host. I suspect this has something to do with the amount of mundane time you spend together (for decades, Rush was on for three hours a day, five days a week).
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With this much time to fill, hosts let you in on the details of their lives. They become like people you know...like friends. If you’re going through a lonely period in your life, they are always there to keep you company every day. When done right, this builds something of a community.
At some point, I even had a gaudy Rush Limbaugh necktie (designed by one of his ex-wives, I think, Marta) and a homemade “deficit spending awareness” ribbon. (These were the good old days, when young conservatives were more nerdy than menacing.)
Again, though, this was a different Rush Limbaugh. Now, I’m not suggesting that he never crossed the line rhetorically. I can tell you, he did! Hillary was a lesbian, Chelsea was the family dog, “Feminazis,” the Clintons murdered Vince Foster… there was lots of pretty ugly stuff from the 90s.
Still, the more modern Rush of the 21st century was far different—darker—than the Rush of the 1990s. As Dan McLaughlin recalls, “the essential thrust of his program in those days—and for many years thereafter—was upbeat, hopeful, even jaunty. Rush could thunder with a smile… Conservatism, Rush wanted you to know, was good for everybody, more people should try it, and it didn’t have to be stuffy or dour; it could be fun.” I have often said that if Rudy Giuliani had died in 2002, there would be statues of him today. Likewise, my estimation of Rush’s legacy would have been much different had he retired in, say, 1999.
As Rush was changing, so was I. In fact, we were going in completely opposite directions. Instead of leading me to the fever swamps of the right, Rush’s “Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies” served as a gateway drug for me to delve into more serious conservative thinkers and resources. When he went low, I went high. Or tried to, anyway.
At some point, instead of being a young conservative who merely outsourced his opinions (and facts) to El Rushbo, I started reading about politics and actually working in the conservative movement. At first, this only confirmed my priors. But ignorance is bliss, and somewhere around 2010, I started noticing that Limbaugh’s framing of daily news events did not fully comport with what I was now (in some cases, personally) witnessing as a conservative political journalist.
Additionally, it became clear to me that he was playing the game of being outrageous to garner attention. This was hardly unique to Rush, but it was also a game that, I believed, was harmful to conservatism.
This led me to do some introspection: Was this a new phenomenon on the right, or was I simply a more sophisticated/less naive media observer now? Had I been misled all along? Had the media landscape changed or become more competitive, forcing formerly respectable conservatives to play games? Was the very definition of conservatism changing beneath my feet? Or was I becoming a different person? To some degree, I suspect all of the above.
In 2011, another incident opened my eyes. At the time, I was working for Tucker Carlson at the Daily Caller, the GOP was heading into the 2012 presidential race, and Michele Bachmann was gaining steam as the truuuuue conservative in the primary. Contrarian that I am, I wrote a piece pointing out how she had supported earmarks and taken farm subsidies (this was during the Tea Party era, when such apostasy might have mattered to conservatives). Much to my surprise, Rush took to the air to criticize me and defend Bachmann.
For someone who sort of grew up listening to Rush, I can’t tell you how surreal it was when he would mention me on air—or how crushingly ironic it felt when, as in this case, he was criticizing me. The Bachmann mini-scandal was a very, very small moment that nobody else remembers. But for me, it pointed to an emerging bias toward populism, personalities, and prioritizing a "but she fights!" mentality over philosophical purity (or even ideological consistency).
Of course, this wasn’t limited to Rush. But it was indicative of the trend of favoring style over substance. It was the trend of dumbing down conservatism. It was the trend that would ultimately give us Donald Trump. Rush played a key role in that, too—primarily by virtue of the passivity of granting permission.
In July 2015, I made one last plea to the Rush of my youth, begging him to “smother” Donald Trump before it was too late. “[W]ith great power comes great responsibility,” I wrote, “And Limbaugh is one of the few leaders in the conservative movement who has the megaphone and the juice to enforce discipline and good behavior, the way Bill Buckley did when he chose to write Ayn Rand, the Birchers, and a whole host of other unpleasant factions out of the conservative movement.”
If it sounds like I was buttering him up, I was still holding out some sliver of hope that Rush would do the right thing. Sadly, as you know, he did not rise to the occasion.
We got Trump, and Rush, who became an unapologetic cheerleader, got a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In 2016, he took his defense of Bachmann to the logical conclusion, explaining that if conservative ideas were what animated conservative voters, that Trump “literally would have no chance.” This was because “whatever [Trump] is, he’s not and never has been known as a doctrinaire conservative…” Rush then went on to say that what does unite conservative voters is “opposition to the left and the Democrat [sic] Party and Barack Obama. And I, for the life of me, don’t know what’s so hard to understand about that.”
This was a long way from the days of Ronald Reagan, or even the “Contract with America.” It was also a long way from that little AM radio I listened to in Wolfsville, Maryland. If Rush had died 20 years ago, I would have felt like a member of my family had died. Still, I’d be lying if I said that Rush’s death hasn’t rocked me. For me, it is all wrapped up in a confused entangling that touches on familial connections, my past, and even my identity.
As recently as last month, I would still tune in to Rush’s show while driving my kids around (you know, to balance out the NPR). Listening to my old “friend” would bring back memories of the “before” times. It would remind me of going on car rides with my dad, who passed away in 2004. It would remind me of a time when I still felt like part of the tribe—when I was a “Dittohead.”
But those feelings didn’t just die this week. They’ve been fading for a long time now. The consequences of this long fade are that I am still conservative, but not considered a conservative. And the movement that was once proudly embraced by a more cosmopolitan young Rush Limbaugh (and a decidedly more naive Matt Lewis) has become the home of so many cranks and conspiracy theorists. When Rush went national in 1988, Republicans were ascendant.
Today, they have lost the White House, the House, and the Senate. Most importantly, they have lost our respect. Now, Rush’s career was merely one of the data points, but you would be hard-pressed to find too many conservative voices during that time who were more influential or important. In weighing his legacy, it is perhaps appropriate to paraphrase a question famously asked by Ronald Reagan: Are Republicans better off now than they were in 1988, when Rush started? The answer, I think, speaks for itself.
