Conservatives are Independent Thinkers. Not Limbaugh Automatons

(This Article first ran in October of 2006.)
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Conservatives are Independent Thinkers. Not Limbaugh Automatons.
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From time to time, like most conservatives, I am accused of listening, too much, to Rush Limbaugh.

I admit, I am guilty of listening to Rush. But, I can tell you with no hesitation, whatsoever; that I do not draw my conclusions from info Rush supplies me from his daily radio show. Far from it.

Having been in the business, and having done a daily broadcast of conservative commentaries, I can tell you that it doesn’t work that way, at all.

When I was active in broadcasting, before retirement, my commentaries were based on conservative core belief and core principles. My program was popular among conservatives…but not because I was providing “direction” for them. It was just the other way ‘round.

I listened to fellow conservatives and I read conservative columnists and watched, and listened, and read, Left Wing media. In other words, I simply spoke the words, in my commentaries, which my listeners were already thinking. I put into words their feelings and opinions. I did not try to lead them anywhere they had not already been.

And that is the secret of Rush’s success and it is also the secret to the failure of Liberal talk radio.

Rush validates what his audience is already feeling and believing. Rush’s program is unlike Liberal talk radio, which insistently tries to get out ahead of its audience and persuade them to follow their lead.

As an old advertising man, I learned, early on, that when you get caught trying to convince someone that your idea is better than theirs, and that you are better informed on the product than they, and they should follow your direction and buy said product, you will fail. The secret to successful advertising is to “let it be the listener’s idea”… always!

There you have it. And this is exactly why the liberal agenda is always at the edge of the abyss. Liberal candidates for office do not speak to you, they lecture you. They come across as stiff necked, and rigid, and convinced of their superiority of intellect, over yours, and they, and they alone, are your salvation.

There is something in the human animal that resents the living daylights out of that approach to anything, including politics. It is one of the underlying reasons Northeastern candidates do so poorly in the South. In the South you are free to suggest most anything you want. But, the instant you begin “telling” or ‘commanding” or “demanding” we bristle, and we get our backs up. We do not like being ”talked down to”. We find it offensive… extremely offensive.

In Rush’s case, he simply has his finger on the pulse of his audience. The fact that he is a fellow believer helps his cause, too.

I don’t expect this to come as any surprise to fellow conservatives. They know this already. But our friends on the Left cannot seem to come to grips with the fact that conservatives are independent, even from the political party they happen to belong to. We don’t, as I have been accused of often, drink anyone’s Kool-Aid. Anyone who does… is not a conservative.

Longstreet

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