Breitbart declares Limbaugh “hit the ball out of the park” in CPAC speech while “the netroots,” such as Media Matters, “opined as if they had witnessed a hate crime”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
It was an address that could have altered the election had it been delivered early last fall by any Republican presidential candidate.
About midway through Mr. Limbaugh's clear-headed, timely and sometimes rambunctious call to ideological arms, my BlackBerry began buzzing with elated text messages from across the Omni and across the nation.
A friend in Los Angeles e-mailed a one-liner: “Best speech I have ever seen.”
My urbane father-in-law, the first person I knew who copped to listening to Mr. Limbaugh and who has been witness to most of the big events of the modern age, called it the “most thrilling thing [he's] seen on TV.”
Hugh Hewitt simply titled his post-speech blog post “The Speech, 2009” and wrote: “Rush gave a speech ... that will be talked about for years and even decades.”
Spokespeople for CPAC said it was the best-received speech in the conference's 36 years. And that included Ronald Reagan, who, by the way, was no rhetorical slouch.
By any measure, Mr. Limbaugh hit the ball out of the park. He may have done so for the team that, these days, many people are rooting against. But the ball did land over the fence.
On the other hand, the “drive-by media” - as Mr. Limbaugh aptly refers to his business competition and ideological foes - portrayed a completely different event.
Clearly taking their cues from Mr. Obama - as well as Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid - the Fourth Estate, without the benefit of a Frank Luntz focus group or an instant poll, immediately labeled the speech as “angry” and alienating to “moderate voters.”
The netroots, the mainstream media's devious protector from its left flank (e.g., the Huffington Post, Media Matters and the Daily Kos) also opined as if they had witnessed a hate crime.
Anonymous liberal commentators, the rabid pests of the new media, sought out the most popular conservative blogs to flood the zone with familiar Rush Limbaugh slanders. Their goal: To demoralize the right with layer upon layer of media domination. Only talk radio with its emphasis on Socratic debate over raw emotionalism and with Mr. Limbaugh in the driver's seat has escaped the left's clutches of pure media dominance.