The president gets a boost with his base and may win over some independents by tying his political opponents to 2 of the nation's most polarizing figures.
Barack Obama’s tongue-lashing of conservative talk-show titans Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck this week could prove a winner for both sides.
In an interview that aired on CBS’s "Early Show" Friday, Obama said the rhetoric employed by the chief chatterers of the conservative movement is “troublesome” — and they cast Limbaugh and Beck as demagogues who money in on the fears of Americans struggling through a rough economy.
But the conservative talkers get presidential confirmation that they are at the center of the political debate — together with a collection of sound bytes that will fuel their shows for days to come.
Limbaugh fired back in an email to POLITICO, arguing that his ratings are fine in nice time and bad — and accusing Obama of "purposely" governing "against the will of the people."
It is not the first time a president has gone after conservative talk radio; in the days after the Oklahoma City bombing, President Bill Clinton said that "promoters of paranoia" on the airwaves "must know that their bitter words can have consequences."
And it is not Obama's first round in the ring, either.
The president's shots at Limbaugh and Beck are the latest sequel in what is becoming a franchise of attacks on conservative media outlets and personalities deemed hostile – and five in which a nice portion of the box office returns are definite to accrue to the president’s hand-picked villains.
A small over a year ago, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel called Limbaugh “the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party." Then, in October, POLITICO reported on a concerted White House strategy to undermine institutions that are influential in the Republican coalition, including Limbaugh, Fox News and the Chamber of Commerce, touching off a backlash from moderate Democratic lawmakers who worried about alienating conservatives who pulled the lever for Democrats in 2006 and 2008.
The White House seemed to move on; the president made nice with the Chamber and sat down recently for an interview with Fox's Bret Baier.
"Well, I think that when you listen to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, it is apparent, and it is troublesome, but keep in mind that there's been periods in American history where this kind of vitriol comes out," Obama said. "It happens often when you have got an economy that is making people more anxious and people are feeling like there is a lot of change that needs to take place. But that is not the vast majority of Americans. I think the vast majority of Americans know that we are trying hard, that I need what is best for the country."
But when CBS's Harry Smith asked Obama this week about accusations from critics that they is everything from a socialist to a Nazi — and about the “level of enmity that crosses the airwaves” on talk radio — Obama picked up where he'd left off with Limbaugh and Beck.
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