A lot of people don't listen to Limbaugh because his speech pattern is irritating. The outspoken 97-year-old mother of Sen. John McCain said, to cheers from the audience, that Limbaugh “does not represent the Republican Party that I belong to.
Chris Mathews described Limbaugh as a walrus who goes woo, woo, woo when he talks. Rush also has the shape of a large marine sea animal. Insults aside, most of Limbaugh's bombast is emotional and lacks a factual basis.
Lets take a look at Limbaugh calls his first televised address to the nation which was really his Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Speech.
Two paragraphs that were cut and pasted from the Limbaugh speech at random.
For those of you just tuning in on the Fox News Channel or C-SPAN, I'm Rush Limbaugh and I want everyone in this room and every one of you around the country to succeed. I want anyone who believes in life, liberty, pursuit of happiness to succeed. And I want any force, any person, any element of an overarching Big Government that would stop your success, I want that organization, that element or that person to fail. I want you to succeed. Also, for those of you in the Drive-By Media watching, I have not needed a Teleprompter for anything I've said. And nor do any of us need a Teleprompter, because our beliefs are not the result of calculations and contrivances. Our beliefs are not the result of a deranged psychology. Our beliefs are our core. Our beliefs are our hearts. We don't have to make notes about what we believe. We don't have to write down, oh do I believe it do I believe that we can tell people what we believe off the top of our heads and we can do it with passion and we can do it with clarity, and we can do it persuasively. Some of us just haven't had the inspiration or motivation to do so in a number of years, but that's about to change.
For example, we gather here -- I understand that. I talked to David and Lisa in the super exclusive private green room that nobody, but about 55 people were allowed into, and they said that there's a sense of liberation here among all of you that are attending CPAC. I understand what the sense of liberation is about. But don't make the mistake at the same time of feeling liberated as thinking we're better and we can do better as a minority. Because we're not a minority. And if you start thinking of yourselves as a minority, you're going to be defensive. And you'll allow the majority to set the agenda and the premise and you're responding to it. The American people may not all vote the way we wish them to, but more Americans than you now live their lives as conservatives in one degree or another. And they are waiting for leadership. We need conservative leadership. We can take this country back. All we need is to nominate the right candidate. It's no more complicated than that. In both paragraphs I was able to find one fact. Apparently 55 people were allowed into 'the super exclusive private green room.' Mr. Limbaugh stated more than 400 words in these two paragraphs, yet there was only one fact and it was not a political fact.
All paragraph one said was motherhood and apple pie. Rush and his Republicans want Americans to succeed. His makes a pointless dig about Obama's use of the teleprompter. He also indicated conservatives have passionate beliefs. That is the gist of paragraph one.
Rush is very wordy and repetitive as are most demagogues. For example, Adolf Hitler could ramble for hours. The main reason Hitler was not assassinated at Valkyrie is because he gave an unusually short speech and he left the conference room before the bomb went off. Rush's key ideas could be expressed in about 30 words in his first paragraph, but it took him more than 400 words to give his low content spiel.
His second paragraph is more interesting. We feel revved up and liberated at CPAC, Rush states, “But don't make the mistake [sic] as [of] thinking we're better and we can do better . . . as a minority. Because we're not a minority.”
Actually the GOP is a regional minority and may stay in that status for many years. James Carville may be overly optimistic is suggesting the Democrats will run things for 40 years, but most political commentators think a 10-12 year Democratic run is likely. Rush then makes a call for conservative leadership.
At this time the latest US News and World Report poll put Rush at the top of the GOP pack with a 13 per cent saying he speaks for the party
1. Rush Limbaugh ranked as the face of the GOP by 13 percent of U.S. adults
2. Dick Cheney ranked as the face of the GOP by 10 percent of U.S. adults
3. John McCain--6 percent said John McCain
4. Newt Gingrich--6 percent said Gingrich
5. George W. Bush--3 percent said W The problem is there is no clear leader. There is internecine warfare between the right represented by Limbaugh and Cheney and the center represented by RNC Chairman Michale Steele and Colin Powell. Unless the party can unite, the GOP may end up as a regional party with permanent minority status.
Republicans like Limbaugh are sensitive about being called anti-intellectual, but what do they expect after years of ridiculing colleges and university professors. I have even run into right wing businessman who looked down educated people. One of these business owners wasn't as smart as he thought he was.
His IT staff had used pirated software to run his enterprise network and he ended paying Microsoft more than $200,000 in a legal settlement. His new staff spent months reinstalling activation keys, patches and security updates to bring his business up to speed. The reality is that almost all businesses need educated people as employees.
You could look at other paragraphs in Limbaugh CPAC speech or his other transcripts on the Limbaugh web site. All the Limbaugh rants are low content, high style and very emotional. One of his standard techniques is to take a bitch from a caller and make it bigger than life. One man called in today who was dyeing from Stage 4 melanoma. He could only be treated in the US for his cancer but had to travel 3.5 hours instead of a half hour to Detroit for his treatment. Limbaugh used this as an example of what will happens to Americans if they get a public health option.
Of course, Limbaugh never provides the big picture. The World Health Organization (WHO) rates the US medical system 37
th and the Canadians are rated 30
th in the world. He never mentions that 88 per cent of people use public health in the UK because it only costs them US$600 per year and they don't have to worry about pre-existing conditions. He never mentions that the French are rated first by the WHO. The French also have a public health system with some private options.
Limbaugh problems are many. Limbaugh always uses a deductive approach and tries to use one one extreme example to generalize from. He doesn't look at all of the trees to see the real forest. The lack of content in his talks reveals his lack of education. Unlike most college students, Rush doesn't look analytically at politics. He doesn't have the organized mind of a college graduate who took weekly tests and wrote dozens of papers. Rush really doesn't think too deeply about anything. He is fundamentally anti-intellectual.
Why is this? Limbaugh had enrolled at Southeast Missouri State University. He dropped out after two semesters and one summer. According to his mother, "he flunked everything", even a modern ballroom dancing class. As she told a reporter in 1992, "He just didn't seem interested in anything except radio."
Rush Limbaugh really never learned how to think.
Sources:
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