Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Votes for Obama: The Real Limbaugh Effect?   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

An e-mail:

K-Lo, I can only give you anecdotal evidence, but conservative talk radio listeners also made other choices yesterday besides voting more for Huckabee than McCain.  A proper understanding (which you have) of Limbaugh and others is that neither McCain nor Huckabee are conservative.  This realization coupled with the fact that the race is already strongly leaning to McCain, pushed me in the direction of voting in the democratic primary for Barack Obama to stop Hillary.  There were others like me who I talked to.  There were also people who were like me, but made the "Machiavellian" argument of voting for Hillary.  Others still, like a coworker and my wife (both reliable voters), opted to stay home and not vote at all since they were in deep disgust.  My point is, there really isn't a way I know of to fully quantify the depth of the full effect of talk radio and other conservative media voices on the process.  Your point is quite valid and appreciated, but I think the impact is much deeper than can be known.

02/13 10:34 AMShare