This is our leader?

(Note: More comments have been added to this thread on March 3.)

Rush Limbaugh is addressing the C-PAC conference. Am I supposed to care? Am I supposed to see this loud-mouth as the leader of conservatives against Obama’s attempted socialist takeover of America? Where was El Slowbo for the last eight years? I’ll tell you where he was. He was, with all the energy and devotion of which he is capable, carrying George W. Bush’s water while Bush advanced such proposals as the “American Dream Down Payment Plan,” which landed us in our current situation.

Update: From 2005, my reflections on What’s wrong with Rush Limbaugh conservatism. From June 2007, following the epochal defeat of the Comprehensive Immigration bill, the passage of which Limbaugh had repeatedly said was inevitable, a discussion of “The Mind of Limbaugh.” Also, immediately after the defeat of that bill, I showed how the liberals had tried to demoralize us by constantly telling us that the bill’s passage was a foregone conclusion, and how the supposed leader of American conservatism had been echoing the liberal line:

Let us also remember the drumbeat of announcements we’ve heard over the last few weeks from the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the rest of the liberal media, telling us that this was a done deal, that 60 to 70 senators were solidly behind the bill, that polls showed there was broad support among the American people for amnesty, that calls to senators from constituents against the bill had fallen off, and blah and blah and blah. They were lying to us. They were doing what the left ALWAYS does when trying to push through its ruinous innovations, which is to convince opponents that this new leftist measure is inevitable, that nothing can be done to stop it, that the “train has left the station” (as a Congressional insider said a few years ago about a bill to make Puerto Rico a state, and it wasn’t true, was it?). Like Aztec priests, the liberal media’s task is to cut the living heart out of conservatives so that their life energy will be transmitted to the gods of liberalism. Meanwhile the Conservative Hero himself, Slow Limbaugh, the Man on the Caboose of Societal Evolution, the man who went through the entire decade of the Nineties without saying a single word about immigration, sang in harmony with the liberal chorus, repeatedly making, alongside his faux opposition to the bill, definitive pronouncements that the bill was going to pass, period. In the midst of a battle to stave off the most ruinous legislative enactment in U.S. history, this happy warrior of our generation, this man who keeps Having More Fun Than Any Human Being Should Be Allowed to Have, kept throwing in the towel. He’s an empty windbag wedded to liberalism and he should be dismissed.

[end of quote.]

Also, be sure to see the above linked entry, from May 24, 2007, entitled “Defeatism and treason.” Right in the middle of the amnesty fight, Limbaugh said the bill would pass, then he laughed and called himself the leader of the opposition.

Don’t get me wrong. The fact that Limbaugh is an empty suit doesn’t mean that he doesn’t make a useful contribution from time to time. For example, despite his defeatism on the immigratoin bill, he did oppose it, and that helped, as I discussed here. And if he helps rally conservatives against Obama’s socialize-America schemes, that will be important. It’s just that his claims about himself and his view of himself as a great conservative are nonsense.

March 1

Dan K. writes:

I do not listen to Rush Limbaugh on even an irregular basis but given he has been on the Radio for about two decades I have heard many hours of his show over the years. I believe he is a good influence for the Right as you know the Right. Let me tell you why by a series of points listed below.

1) He is totally uneducated and has made no attempt to educate himself in his adult life. His vocabulary (speaking vocabulary ) is a common one and thus he is easily understood by the vast spectrum of people in his audience. That said he is glib and charming such that he fun to listen to and in my experience listening never appears mean, angry even when he is in Attack mode against Liberals which is his favorite sport.

2) I would hazard a guess that he has never read let alone studied in depth any of the books on your reading list (see: Is Nietzsche an antidote to liberalism? ). Rush is the perfect anti-intellectual but he has the gift for gab in front of a microphone, a spontaneous fountain of coherent speech, a white conservative fire hose of talk, talk, talk without rancor. Alan Keyes, a black conservative is similar and on the socialist (liberal ) side one can see Robert Reich and Alan Dershowitz as talented spontaneous quick talking vocal stars but none is as talented as Rush. On YouTube now is a clip of Keyes here.

3) As to Rush Limbaugh’s IQ I would guess that he is bright but not too bright. This is good. I suppose he is between 115 and 120 in IQ. At this level he is brighter than more than 90 percent of the population but not so bright that he can not connect with that left side of the Bell Curve. A book has been written that explains this point: Greatness: Who Makes History and Why by Dean Keith Simonton. This book also explains why the really bright both liberal and conservative have a hard time respecting and connecting with him.

4) Often as I listen to him, usually while driving a long trip, I find myself wanting to shout at him because something he says is ahistorical, unscientific or intellectually vapid. But then I calm down because his main audience has no clue as to the subtleties of what he is discussing and that he is giving them the Conservative ( Right ) message to counter the Socialist ( Liberal ) fog horn blaring messages being drummed constantly by the Media.

Rush is probably the best we are going to get. I wish him a long career.

LA replies:

I stopped listening to Limbaugh many years ago, at least ten years ago. I cannot stand his constant stops and starts, his constant repetition, how long he takes to make a point. Something that could be said in five minutes, he takes 15 minutes to say it. (Hannity is much worse, but Hannity is actively stupid. The last time I listened to Hannity was on a long car trip about six years ago in which during a 30 minute monologue he must have repeated the same point 20 times. And how anyone could stand listening to Hannity’s voice I’ll never understand.)

Bob Grant in his prime was far more articulate and eloquent, putting together beautifully crafted sentences, pausing to find the right word, and then finding it. Grant cared about the English language, he cared about the shape of a sentence. Limbaugh is all over the place. I’ve always been offended by the notion that Limbaugh is particularly articulate or well spoken. Which doesn’t mean he’s without talent. But I cannot stand gas-bags. At the CPAC conference he went on for an hour and a half. Does he think he’s Fidel Castro?

Limbaugh was at his best in his TV show in the early ’90s, in which he would make concise, well-put together points.

Mark Jaws writes:

I like Rush and I listen to him, because when it comes to the mainstream media he and Pat Buchanan and James Pinkerton are the best things we race realists have. However, when he launches into his “We all have great potential to achieve great things” pep talk, he turns me off. As was discussed during our maiden Preserving Western Civilization Conference, there are population groups born with inherently low IQ who are destined to live simple, unproductive lives of domestic and manual labor, and nothing more. We should encourage—no compel—them to perform it faithfully and well, and for that we should justly and adequately compensate them. End of story.

So, when Rush speaks as if these people can amount to anything other than good manual or domestic workers, his rhetoric is long on wind and short on reality.

LA replies:

I also can’t stand his simplistic political philosophy, consisting of one sentence: Freedom makes America great, rah rah. He hasn’t gone beyond that slogan in 20 years.

March 2

James W. writes:

He was a great act until the middle nineties. I assumed his decline was due to great wealth, self-satisfaction, and leaving Manhattan for the isolation of a Florida island mansion. I did not know drug addiction played a large factor.

There was a time he could speak an unwritten essay composed on the fly of first-rate editorial quality. Yes, it is painful to listen to him now.

But, for understandings, for how many of us has that not been a series of one bubble burting after another? More than one impressive conservative of many years left editing National Review after reading Garret Garrett. That is the education of a conservative. Limbaugh stopped looking, and started lecturing.

His IQ is not 115-120, mine is. He is easily 140, and not to see that is to show one’s own prejudice. And so as not to leave an insult half-done, it is, undoubtedly, the favored first issue a liberal will raise about friend or foe—IQ, not accomplishment or performance—he is so smart he is so intelligent, he is so stupid. Because IQ is exactly what they have at the top of their house of cards, and nothing else. I rarely hear conservatives wallow in that vein. I have no doubt Lenin was far more intelligent that Washington.

If we were ruled by people according to the length of their reading list, we would have become Marxist years ago.

LA replies:

What do people think of James’s assertion that Rush Limbaugh’s IQ is 140 or higher? I doubt it very much.

The question of Limbaugh’s IQ is very interesting. It is because in some ways he seems very bright, and, in other ways, not particularly bright at all.

I wonder if Steve Sailer has ever speculated on Limbaugh’s IQ.

March 3

David B. writes:

You ask, “What do people think of James’s assertion that Rush Limbaugh’s IQ is 140 or higher?”

I listened to Rush regularly in the 1990s. After GWB took office I eventually stopped because of his Bush worship. I don’t believe Rush has an IQ of 140. Many times I would note that he didn’t know history all that well. There would be blank spots in his knowledge. If Limbaugh was exceptionally intelligent, I don’t think he would be the Republican shill that he is. Would a brilliant man keep telling listeners that he “didn’t understand it” when George W. Bush took liberal positions? [LA replies: Good point. And would a brilliant man keep repeating himself so boringly as Limbaugh often does?]

A big conceit of liberals is that they are smarter than so-called conservatives. “He’s so stupid he doesn’t have a clue,” was a favorite epithet of my liberal ex-friend Professor F. High intelligence is the hallmark of the liberal, tolerant person according to Professor F. Oddly F. was 100 percent wrong about many historical facts. I don’t mean to pat myself on the back, but he would tell me that I was smarter than he. “You’re too smart to pay attention to that Lawrence Auster,” F. said in our last conversation. He never seemed to ask why someone fairly intelligent would be the hard-line right-winger that I am.

Paul K. writes:

As Mark Jaws mentions, Limbaugh now preaches to blacks that they can achieve the American dream by working hard, etc., but I listened to Limbaugh when he first got a show on WABC in New York, and he was not quite such a Pollyanna. I specifically remember a black caller telling him that whites keep blacks down because they’re afraid of black success. Limbaugh responded, “I’m sorry, sir, but that’s just not the case. If you want to know what whites are really afraid of, it’s this: that blacks can never succeed no matter how much we do for them.”

That stuck with me because you so rarely hear the truth expressed so bluntly. Certainly the caller was dumbstruck. Limbaugh is careful not to come out with things like that these days.

Mark Jaws writes:

Is Rush a drag on the GOP? Of course not. Rush informs and inspires the easily impressed—even including sardonic and cynical me. If I were a GOP strategerist, I would go on the offensive, by pointing out that racial provocateur Numero Uno, Al Sharpton, was wined and dined by the Democrat elite, and even given a platform during the national convention, even though he has far more incendiary and ugly baggage than good ol’ Rushbo. Of course, this would require guts and smarts—two qualities sorely lacking in the GOP leadership.

Clark Coleman writes:

I don’t understand the logic in Mark Jaws’ equation of Rush saying that anyone can “make it” with the idea of equality of outcomes. Rush has talked many times on this subject over the years, and I am pretty certain he never speaks of equality of outcomes as the gold standard of “making it” by your own hard work in America.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 28, 2009 08:32 PM | Send