David Brooks always makes me think when I read his New York Times column. But with his latest column about Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh and their impact on the Republican Party, I wonder if it will make his Republican readers do the same.
Brooks’s words jumped off the page. He writes in part:
Just months after the election and the humiliation, everyone is again convinced that Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and the rest possess real power. And the saddest thing is that even Republican politicians come to believe it. They mistake media for reality. They pre-emptively surrender to armies that don’t exist.
They pay more attention to Rush’s imaginary millions than to the real voters down the street. The Republican Party is unpopular because it’s more interested in pleasing Rush’s ghosts than actual people. The party is leaderless right now because nobody has the guts to step outside the rigid parameters enforced by the radio jocks and create a new party identity.
The party is losing because it has adopted a radio entertainer’s niche-building strategy, while abandoning the politician’s coalition-building strategy.
The rise of Beck, Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and the rest has correlated almost perfectly with the decline of the G.O.P. But it’s not because the talk jocks have real power. It’s because they have illusory power, because Republicans hear the media mythology and fall for it every time.
Fake Virginia 
Over the past ten years, I have served on three different county Republican committees in, Henrico, Westmoreland and Hampton. That’s a lot of times doing canvassing, petitions and working at polls.
After Bush basically ignored the Constitution and used government agencies to do real and permanent harm to our own citizens, I decided that the Party that I had supported since Goldwater ran for President in 1964, was working against the People, rather than for us.
In Henrico, longstanding members of that Committee, were openly advocating for the RealID act and happily supported the imprisonment and torture of US citizens. They didn’t care who was tortured, as long as it wasn’t them.
Many Republicans who are active in the GOP establishment here in Virginia are heavily influenced by the propagandists on national radio programs. With few exceptions, most of what I refer to as, Old Guard” Republicans, simply do not read anything of substance and certainly not that leftist propaganda rag, the New York Times.
The real problem, at least as I see it, is that many of the key leaders in the GOP are very old and set in their ways. Most Republicans who I know, are xenophobic and they truly seethe with hatred toward people who are not essentially, just like them. At the national level, the Republican Party is devoted to doing the bidding of the multinational oligarchs. They don’t give a damn that our strategic manufacturing base is being shipped to India and China, and they don’t care that there are 44 MILLION White Americans in poverty (greater than the ENTIRE respective Latino and Negro populations, not just their poor).
In the words of Jim Gilmore, when I asked him why the GOP never actually did anything to help the White poor, his reply: “Why? Where else do they have to go?”
From my direct, and close observations, the Republican Party (or what’s left of it) does pay attention to the radio propagandists, and since they don’t read diverse sources, or interact with diverse citizens, they have little information to counter what the blubbering idiots spread via the airwaves, twelve hours a day.
Since those who call the shots in the GOP really don’t give a damn about the working classes, they are content to have the radio mouthpieces keep the sheeple mesmerized with hate filled diatribes designed to foment distrust of anyone who supports anything other than the Republican Party line.
Back when we were united under Reagan, most of us believed that America was finally back on the road to greatness and the People were back in control. Under Bush, we quickly were taught that his government would jail and torture, anyone they wanted, without due process, charges or trial.
The Republican Party has rightfully lost the trust of the American people. It cannot be “brought back, repaired, or reshaped.” Americans who love LIBERTY, and insist that government be returned back to within its Constitutional limits, must awaken. We must have a new political party to emerge and REPLACE the Republican Party, so once again, there will be a voice for Americans who have traditional values, and a Party with the vision and leadership, that shall lead us back onto the path to the, shining city on the hill.
Loved this editorial. Found his analysis of the election and the lessons to be learned to be on the money.