National Review trashes Rush Limbaugh

Liberals spent much of the last 2 days trashing Rush Limbaugh, so it was no surprise that National Review would join in. NR now stands for Never Rush.

Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote what his fellow NR-er Jim Geraghty said was a tribute to Mister Limbaugh.

They are really weird over there.

Dougherty's column -- "Rush’s Place" -- was subtitled, "Rush’s program, beamed into cars sitting in traffic across the nation, was a beacon telling millions of people, ‘You are not alone.’ It was also a turnoff for millions of others."

Fact check: OF COURSE.

Limbaugh turned off every freaking liberal in America. That was one of the things his listeners liked about him. He drew flak, which meant he was over the target.

And make no mistake, National Review knew what it was doing by running this column. If his first paragraph did not inform the editor of Dougherty's belly full of bile for Limbaugh, the second one did.

The Never Rusher wrote, "Many conservatives who have loathed the Donald Trump era will look back on Limbaugh’s success with regret, realizing that the talk-radio revolution was the giant leap from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump."

No conservative loathes the Trump era. Real conservatives took a chance on the dude and hit the jackpot. He made America great again by bringing the working class back to the movement.

That is his sin. The Republican Establishment could tolerate Reagan's appeal to the riff-raff, but Donald Trump was the last straw.

Paragraph 3 was so smug that it could have been written by a Prius driver.

Dougherty wrote, "For millions of other people, Rush Limbaugh was the largest impediment to embracing conservatism. I count myself in this group. I’m not Rush Limbaugh’s target audience and never was. At 14 years old, I bought and enjoyed Al Franken’s book Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations. I don’t think I would enjoy it now because I simply don’t care about mass-media figures the way I did then. I vividly remembered the controversy when Rush Limbaugh called Chelsea Clinton a dog. She was about my age. And I was a child! How evil could a guy be?"

Calling a man evil is a tribute?

In his very next sentence, Dougherty said, "I had to overcome Rush Limbaugh to become a conservative."

That's like saying you had to overcome Lincoln to free the slaves.

The column was a display of elitism, which is to say it was a display of ignorance.

He wrote, "It is obvious that voting blocs of 70 or 80 million Americans cannot be adequately represented by one face or one type of character." 

And yet 75 million people lined up behind Donald Trump on Election Day. They were so adequately represented for 4 years that they wanted 4 more.

That is what really bugs the elitists. We realize we do not need them. National Review has never earned a nickel in its life. It lives on subsidies from rich folk. Its writers have day jobs with think tanks. Dougherty is with the American Enterprise Institute.

Rush Limbaugh brought in millions of bucks from advertisers because he had a show that 30 million people tuned into. He saved an entire medium -- AM radio -- along the way. Millions mourn his passing because he gave them hope in some pretty depressing times. 

What has NR ever done for us except attack conservatives? Never Patrick Buchanan! Never Newt Gingrich! Never Donald Trump!

Now Never Rush.

But the trashing of Limbaugh and his fans was a set-up for Dougherty's pitch for National Review's podcasts.

He ended his column, "If anything, considering the place of Rush Limbaugh in his nation’s political life is to realize that conservatism has been late to develop a voice that cuts in somewhere between its aloof intellectuals and aggro broadcasters. Conservatism is still searching for a middlebrow voice. Perhaps it is starting to emerge on the podcasts like those hosted by Ricochet and National Review. The effort to conserve, Limbaugh well knew, was an effort to build something new."

Dougherty was unfit to shine Limbaugh's shoes.