Limbaugh is still the conservative beacon in this campaign

Zev Chafets:

If John McCain is elected president, he will have a lot of people to thank. Improbably, first on the list will be the man who didn't want him in the White House, Rush Limbaugh.

Limbaugh vociferously campaigned against McCain throughout the primary season. He accused the Arizona senator of being a closet liberal and a collaborator with Democratic enemies such as Sens. Russ Feingold and Teddy Kennedy. This caused a lot of glee in Democratic circles. Some optimists even predicted a devastating split in the GOP.

This was a false hope. Limbaugh never had any intention of breaking with his party. When he saw that he couldn't stop McCain, he swallowed hard and began trying to push McCain to the right. Limbaugh made it clear that he wanted a vice presidential candidate from the Republican wing of the Republican Party.

He got his way with the choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Limbaugh now believes, with more than a little justification, that the pick was an effort by McCain to satisfy him and fellow conservatives. And he is indeed satisfied. In an e-mail last week, Limbaugh informed me that, post-Palin, his support for the McCain ticket was "balls to the wall."

This is a very big deal. A satisfied Limbaugh means an enthusiastic Limbaugh, and an enthusiastic Limbaugh could be the difference in a close race. Between 14 million and 20 million people listen to him every week, by far the largest audience in talk radio. His show energizes the Republican base, but, even more important, it appeals to a great many conservative Democrats and independents of the kind McCain needs to win swing states.

Senior Republican strategists have seen Limbaugh do this before, especially in the 1994 congressional races that gave the House to the GOP for the first time in decades. Limbaugh was so important to that victory that the GOP declared him an honorary member of the Republican House of Representatives' freshman class.

Fourteen years later, Limbaugh's influence is greater than ever. No single Republican -- not Karl Rove or Roger Ailes, James Dobson or Sean Hannity -- has his reach and clout. Certainly President Bush doesn't. Limbaugh is, very simply, the single most influential conservative voice in America.

A lot of Limbaugh's critics dismiss him as a buffoon or a fanatic. These are people who don't listen to his show. Limbaugh is not only a brilliant communicator, he is a smart political strategist. Other radio hosts and TV commentators (on both sides) take their talking points from campaign central -- but the people who write the Republican talking points are getting their ideas, often as not, from Limbaugh. Listen to him on a daily basis and you know what Republican candidates are likely to be saying in a day or two.

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"Rush emboldens Republicans," Rove says, and that is certainly true in this campaign. Limbaugh says the things that McCain can't or won't say, and pushes both McCain and Palin to ever-tougher rhetoric by raising the bar of acceptable campaign discourse. He also gives permission to his audience to laugh out loud at the Democratic standard-bearer. These are not small gifts to the Republican ticket. Especially not from a man who started out the year as John McCain's great nemesis.

Rush also has his fingers on the pulse of the conservative movement and spots important points in the old and new media that he brings to the attention of the country in an entertaining way. One of the most important aspects of Limbaugh's influence is in thwarting liberal media memes that used to become conventional wisdom in the face of little Republican resistance.

He has his work cut out for him this week. ACORN's role and that of community organizers in causing the financial debacle needs to be exposed and used to hammer that famous community organizer Barack Obama. The latest media spin on Sarah Palin is that she is in over her head. He needs to find a clever way of attacking this and probably the best is to start the same meme about Obama who clearly has no clue about Iraq or the current economic mess his party has caused.