By BRAEDEN COOK
I am going to be honest. I did not expect to even mention Rush Limbaugh in our first op-ed in the NWOSU newspaper. We are a new club to the students on campus, and starting off by writing about one of the most polarizing figures in the conservative movement could be advised against.
However, with his death, I have recently looked into and heard about how important he was to conservatism throughout his radio career, and I can say this: I probably am not the conservative I am today without Rush Limbaugh, and my drive to bring the College Republicans to campus would not exist without him, either. I did not even listen to him, but most conservative media hosts I watch, read and listen to, did.
Before there was Fox News, or any number of conservative media outlets, there was Rush Limbaugh on AM radio. He started his career on AM when it was a dead medium and brought it back to life with his daily three-hour conservative talk show. His audience quickly grew and eventually reached 26 million people.
With his success, he showed there was a huge market for conservative media. Many popular conservative show and podcast hosts of today attribute Rush with inspiring them with bravery to go and speak up for what they believed in – not least among them Ben Shapiro, Glenn Beck and Steven Crowder.
Each has influenced millions of people throughout the nation. They say themselves that, without Rush, their own shows would probably not exist.
Finally, Rush brought diversity of thought to the nation, when national media was overwhelmingly left-leaning. By doing so, he helped revive the conservative movement. His influence was so large he was made an honorary Congressmen in 1994 when Republicans took the majority in the House of Representatives for the first time in 42 years.
He continued his show up until last December, and remained loyal to his conservative principles through it all. In 2009, Rush spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference and said this about conservatives: “Let me tell who we conservatives are – we love people.
When we look out over the United States of America, when we are anywhere, when we see a group of people such as this or anywhere, we see Americans; we see human beings. We don’t see groups; we don’t see victims; we don’t see people we want to exploit. … (W)hat we see is potential.”
Potential for people to strive to be the best they can be. He would go on to talk about how conservatives defend our founding documents, the Declaration of Impendence and the U.S. Constitution. We defend them and do not seek to overtly try and reinterpret them.
These views are what we hope to promote both within the Republican Party and on campus as a College Republicans chapter.
— Cook is the chairman of the College Republicans club.