Conservatives on the Couch

Nov. 8, 2006 — -- Anyone who has ever participated or invested emotionally in a partisan political campaign knows the feeling of defeat, especially if it's a convincing one.

It is a shattering, depressing, numbing experience. And so it is today, that the legions of conservative talk-radio listeners around the nation are feeling the sting of Tuesday night's verdict by American voters in red and blue states alike.

In the venues of both local and national talk radio, they're undergoing a cathartic mass therapy session, with the hosts playing the role of psychologists.

Many are throwing their planned topics out the window and are allowing their listeners to simply vent their emotions.

Of course, there's been the occasional interruption of fast-breaking news developments, like the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Rush Limbaugh's response (spoken like a true political strategist): "Why didn't they do this LAST week?"

As for the big-picture new political landscape they awoke to this morning, there is much introspection.

Some conservative listeners are angry at President Bush for not articulating his stand on Iraq more clearly or with more force. Some offer their share of invective at the winning political side. But more often than not, the reactions have been subdued and stunned.

Rush to Judgement

The granddaddy of the nationally syndicated talkers, Limbaugh is leading the way in striking a self-analytical tone. He says that until conservatives start examining what's wrong with themselves they're never going to fix their problems.

"When things go wrong, you must examine why. It would be foolish to assign blame to the voters and the media and the Democrats," he said.

Limbaugh maintains that Republicans lost on Nov. 7 -- but that conservatism won. He points to a moderate-right field of Democratic candidates recruited by their liberal party leaders and implies a kind of bait-and-switch occurred.

However, he credits the other side for understanding that "conservatism properly applied will triumph nine times out of 10. … It just wasn't utilized in this election [by Republicans]."

So How's the Weather Where You Are?

After ABC Radio commentator and analyst Fred Thompson completed a round of about a dozen morning-drive radio interviews, he concluded that some of the hosts didn't really want to talk too much about the election results.

One host even started the interview by asking Thompson, "So, what do you want to talk about?"

On Washington, D.C.'s conservative talk-radio station, WMAL-AM, the midmorning host, Chris Core, advanced his own theory to help explain to his battle-weary listeners why the events of Election Night occurred they way they did.

Core argued that the predominant issue was Iraq and that if President Bush had had "Candidate X" to run against in 2004 -- anyone other than John Kerry -- Bush would have lost on the Iraq issue two years ago.

On Tuesday night, Core maintained, the president really did have a Candidate X to run against. And Candidate X won.

Core says that's the only way to explain why a man like Lincoln Chafee, with a 62-percent approval rating, could have gone down to defeat in Rhode Island.

Voters were reacting to the choice they weren't really given in 2004.

Just one man's opinion, but an interesting explanation to a loyal audience that is stunned, but still curious to try and make sense of what happened on Nov. 7, 2006.