Beck and Co.: Just Little Men With Big Voices

Once again the right-wing radio guys have managed to convince everyone that they are a great and powerful force to be reckoned with. David Brooks revisits the 2007 Republican primaries, when Rush, Hannity, Beck and company were all weak-kneed over Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney, but bashed “unreliable deviationists” John McCain and Mike Huckabee. What happened? Huckabee emerged as a star and McCain won.

These jokers couldn’t even deliver primary voters in South Carolina! So why is the GOP doing it again? Brooks asks. The lesson is one of “remarkable volume and utter weakness,” he writes in the New York Times. "It is the story of media mavens who claim to represent a hidden majority but who in fact represent a mere niche. It’s a story as old as the Wizard of Oz, of grand illusions and small men.”  The saddest thing, he says, is that Republican politicians seem actually to believe them. "They pre-emptively surrender to armies that don’t exist.” (More David Brooks stories.)