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WASHINGTON — There may be signs of disarray in the Republican camp, but America's biggest right-wing shock jock just goes on and on.
Rush Limbaugh, radio's most powerful political voice, has signed a new contract that Mr. Limbaugh confirmed Wednesday is worth $400-million, extending his program to 2016.
John McCain should wish he could be so popular. The Republican presidential nominee, consistently lagging in the polls and subject to internal grumbling over sloppy logistics and lack of clear lines of authority among senior advisers, shook up his campaign organization, Wednesday, in the middle of a swing through Colombia and Mexico. (Mr. McCain lately has been campaigning outside his country as much as inside it.) But it's more than logistics and flow charts.
A recent Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll reported that only 22 per cent of respondents identified themselves as Republicans, while 39 per cent said they were Democrats, a 17-point gap. Twenty-seven per cent of respondents identified as independent, so the Republicans are now polling below None of the Above.
Every one of those remaining Republicans must listen to Rush Limbaugh. The show celebrates its 20th anniversary next month, attracting an audience of 14 million listeners who catch the show at least once a week on one of the roughly 600 radio stations that host it. The new contract – with Clear Channel Communications and its syndication subsidiary Premiere Radio Networks – ensures that America's most influential conservative radio host will be on the air for years to come.
“First and foremost I'm a businessman,” Mr. Limbaugh, 57, told The New York Times, for a magazine profile that will appear Sunday but that the Times has already posted on its website.
“My first goal is to attract the largest possible audience so I can charge confiscatory ad rates,” he said. “I happen to have great entertainment skills, but that enables me to sell airtime.”
On Wednesday's show he vowed: “I'm not retiring until every American agrees with me.”
Mr. Limbaugh is the most popular of conservative radio commentators, outdrawing rivals Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and Laura Ingraham, among others. Many others. Conservative commentary has breathed new life into AM radio, providing countless –some might say interminable – hours of far-right-wing commentary.
Mr. Limbaugh takes credit – whether he deserves it is another matter – for prolonging the Democratic race into June. His Operation Chaos urged Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton in their state primary in order to prolong the contest with Barack Obama and weaken the Democratic Party.
One recent Limbaugh show was almost entirely devoted to lambasting Mr. Obama's “diabolical” campaign.
“Someone is running Obama,” Mr. Limbaugh claimed, alleging the candidate is simply a front for left-wing power brokers inside the party.
He also lamented “the chickification of America.” Apparently, there are too many women in newsrooms.
Other targets typically include the “drive-by” media (too liberal), the courts (too liberal), liberals (“they hate America”) and government (there's far too much of it).
But Mr. Limbaugh and his compatriots have a problem this year. There is no one for them to love.
While Barack HUSSEIN (as they love to say) Obama makes a delightful opponent, the conservative commentariats' approach to Mr. McCain is ambivalent at best. After all, this so-called conservative believes in global warming, sponsored legislation that would have put millions of illegal immigrants on the path to citizenship and initially opposed the Bush administration's tax cuts, which for Mr. Limbaugh et al is a mortal sin.
Arch-conservative commentator Ann Coulter, who has concluded George W. Bush is “a great president,” savages Mr. McCain in her latest column.
“The sheer repetition of lies about Bush is wearing people down,” she writes, “… John McCain should be so lucky as to be running for Bush's third term. Then he might have a chance.”
Mr. Limbaugh reluctantly supports Mr. McCain because “what choice do we have?” He has vowed, in the event the Republicans win the White House, to devote his program to pushing Mr. McCain farther to the right.
Personally, Mr. Limbaugh has had an up-and-down life. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas officiated at his third wedding, but that one didn't take either.
Seven years ago, Mr. Limbaugh started losing his hearing, and became deaf, before a cochlear implant restored partial hearing.
And in 2006, after he was charged by police with obtaining prescriptions illegally, Mr. Limbaugh acknowledged that he had long been addicted to painkillers, though he was successfully treated after checking into a rehabilitation clinic.
But it hasn't been all bad. Mr. Limbaugh says he is going to use the money from his new contract to buy his own personal jet.
With a report from Associated Press
