For Rush Limbaugh fans of any age—I first heard him in 1989—the denouement in the NBC/Ronna McDaniel fiasco was the most foregone of foregone conclusions. The former RNC chair was ousted after on-air “talent” at the virulent anti-Republican network revolted. For Rushies, it’s not even a matter of seeing it coming. It’s a matter of knowing that the hire, ostensibly to provide “balance,” was meaningless from inception.
McDaniel, a textbook RINO as far as MAGA Nation is concerned, made the mistake of initially questioning the results of the 2020 presidential election. She ultimately renounced her suspicions and turned to more pressing tasks: raising dwindling RNC funds and assigning the seating arrangements at establishment GOP gatherings.
When left-wing propagandists like Rachel Maddow and Joe Scarborough raised an on-air stink, McDaniel, not a hard-rightist, was canned after her first on-air appearance as a contributor. The kerfuffle was a hoot from start to finish, especially since every Reagan Republican still above room temperature understood the inconsequentiality of bringing McDaniel aboard.
Limbaugh consistently reminded listeners that the only Republicans Democrats are interested in platforming are those that weaken the core mission of the GOP. In the Trump era, that mission is America First, a concept anathema to the legacy media. McDaniel might’ve been the perfect choice to reflect the “conservative Republican” position but for her lapse in questioning the election. Never mentioned by the leftist media is the strident way that Hillary Clinton and Stacey Abrams questioned their losses.
It won’t matter. Conservatives interested in the strength of a Republican Party beset on all sides by Marxist, Biden-enabled, America Last revolutionaries would rather sit through a dozen My Pillow commercials than waste seconds of their lives on the rabid offerings of the existing one-party media apparatus. It’s so bad that viewers of Trump-supporting entities like Newsmax can barely abide the parade of liars and obfuscators profiled on conservative outlets to show how stomach-churningly awful they are. It’s the price that has to be paid to get encouraging, celebratory coverage of information they believe constitutes the nation’s last best hope.
Starkly illustrated by the McDaniel fiasco is another truth that Limbaugh’s fans grasped decades ago: any nominee or candidate even peripherally associated with staunch conservatism will receive vilification. George W. Bush was a Nazi. Liz Cheney’s father Dick was the devil. Recall the “high-tech lynching” referenced by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and the treatment of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Even Mitt Romney, with Chamber of Commerce written all over his enervated 2012 campaign, was gratuitously harpooned for once tying the family dog to the top of a car.
Top-down, media-driven Trump derangement syndrome has lent the Limbaugh axioms a fundamental resonance. The extra-legal and illegal persecution of the former president threatens the very democracy that people who seek a one-world government and borderless nation, and act to disqualify front-running opposition from the ballot, claim to protect.