I speculate that Limbaugh and Beck is the fuse between the Republican Party and the extreme far right (who are properly seen as sort of a co-belligerent along with the corporatists and fundies that make up the real Republican Party). They come as close to telling people "hate hate kill kill communists" as anyone in the mainstream can without being forcibly thrown out of the mainstream. So they're actually speaking a language that the far right loonie types can understand (because it contains the words "hate," "kill," and "communist")... but in code that allows them to stay inside the Republicans' main tent.Liberty wrote:I think you're pretty right here. I mean, the Republican Party may be glad that people are finally upset about the things the Democrats are doing, but they definitely want deniability. Glenn Beck spends months telling people that Obama is a communist, and the country is descending into socialism, etc, but then says oh no, he never promoted violence. It's an odd relationship.
But meanwhile, the Republican core is patting them on the back for their efforts in mobilizing the base while quietly looking for a place to stick the knife in, in the event that a major far-right uprising that cites Beck or Limbaugh as a founding figure crops up. By serving as a focal point for the far right's view of what the Republican Party really is, those figures form a cutout between them and the real Party, one that the Party can sacrifice if need be and still retain credibility outside the far right.
They can say "Oh, we aren't the lunatics! That's Limbaugh! Get him, boys!"