The only reason people like Bush, Palin, and Trump even got close to the White House is the monumental mistake by Democrats, liberals and the ‘left’, of ignoring talk radio for the last 30 years.
This mistake has to be fixed before the next elections.
Barring some real victory for America, control of the talk radio PSYOPS will soon be back in the White House, like it was during the Bush administration.
Talk radio will do the groundwork repetition for everything the Trump administration does. It will be used in advance to create constituencies to support what they want to do and it will be used retroactively to excuse their failures, cover for their crimes, and attack their critics. In emergencies they will decide the national response, like they did for 911.
Like in 2014 with ebola and diseased brown kids streaming across the border, something will happen in 2018 they can turn into a major scare to distract from the real problem and Trump will look like a king, full of certainty and power, and save the day. And we can’t put it past this bunch to create their own emergencies. We know Bush/Cheney/Rove created the Iraq disaster.
With their coordinated messaging dominance in 40 red states, with 80 senators, they can have it both ways all the time. Everything will be blamed on the Democrats.
I can’t remember who spotted this (thanks again), but from New York Magazine, Operation Trump, by Gabriel Sherman April 3, 2016:
Throughout 2014, the three (Roger Stone, Michael Cohen, and Sam Nunberg) fed Trump strategy memos and political intelligence. “I listened to thousands of hours of talk radio, and he was getting reports from me,” Nunberg recalled. What those reports said was that the GOP base was frothing over a handful of issues including immigration, Obamacare, and Common Core. While Jeb Bush talked about crossing the border as an “act of love,” Trump was thinking about how high to build his wall.
How can any analysis of Trump political success ignore that. It was probably Putin’s gang that figured out Trump could piggyback 30 years of unchallenged Republican talk radio.
All he did was repeat talking points and memes that have been prechewed by a few hundred professional liars for 25 years. That’s how he won.
From: Conservative Talk Radio Sees Golden Opportunity in Trump Administration Daily Beast Tim Mak 11/25/16
Come January 2017, the first in the presidential line of succession will be Vice President Mike Pence, who was a radio host before his election to Congress. Trump will be staffed by former SiriusXM radio host Steve Bannon, who will act as his senior strategist. And rumors have swirled that Laura Ingraham, another conservative talk radio host, is under consideration to be a White House spokesperson.
“The fact that these [talk radio hosts] are talked about in the general news, in the same level as politicians are, means their influence is growing… and people are used to having talk radio,” said Michael Harrison, editor of Talkers, a trade magazine for talk radio. “I safely believe that talk radio is more influential today than it ever was.”
Whatever happens in the next month, Democrats have to win the House and Senate in 2 years.
We can improve GOTV, donation drives, messaging, and recruit more progressive candidates, but all of those factors are minimized by ignoring talk radio.
The weakness of Trump’s messaging advantage is its dependence on pro and college sports to help stations attract advertisers. At least 43% of Limbaugh’s 600 stations depend on the 88 major universities in 40 states. Many of those are the loudest radio stations in the Republican propaganda network.
Whatever the outcome, pushing and protesting those universities until they stop supporting RW radio directly effects Trumputin messaging.
Students, faculty, and communities associated with those universities need to ask what happens when the Gulf Stream stops and Europe starts freezing. Or a station goes to all KKK programming.
Will the schools finally tell major licensing companies like Learfield Sports to find radio stations that aren’t dedicated to global warming denial and excusing racism?