I have long believed that talk radio in the U.S. is the achilles heal of our political system. At first glance, talk radio is democratic and consistent with the First Amendment because people call in and speak their mind to a host who engages them in dialogue. If you like reading letters to the editor, talk radio is like a national letters page.

But the ideal of an enlightened talk radio community will never come to pass. That why one of the few efforts to create a liberal talk radio empire is stumbling. Talk radio as it exists in the United States consists of a series of phone calls from listeners, each speaking for about 20 seconds before the host responds and throws out some pious opinion that may or may not bear some relationship with the caller's statements. Then the host takes another call.

These links will give the uninitiated a sense of the drivel that passes for informed political discussion on American talk radio. Click here for the most popular host of them all, Rush Limbaugh, a blowhard whose booming voice is part of the AM radio landscape the way that Pink Floyd is synonmous with FM radio. In turn, the shallowest of them all, Sean Hannity, dominates Fox News at night and has the drive-time slot on WABC radio in New York and hundreds of other markets. Michael Savage is simply emotionally disturbed. These guys owe a debt to the now-retired Bob Grant, who poisoned the New York airwaves for decades with racially-charged nonsense. The people sway millions of voters. If you want to know why Bush and co. keep winning elections, listen to these guys, or at least click the links to see what they're saying.

I listen to right-wing talk radio the way that other people slow down to see a car accident. It is impossible to resist the garbage that passes for political debate these days. The callers are dumb. The hosts are dumber. But what's important is these people vote and certainly are the reason why conservative Republican candidates prevail in tight races. If you know nothing about current events other than what you hear on talk radio, you'd vote Republican, too, in the belief that the opposition party and liberals/leftists are evil and dangerous.

Nearly all the popular and profitable talk radio hosts in the U.S. are conservative. There is a reason for this. Sloganeering and flag-waving is much easier to articulate in this format than serious discussion about structural problems with our system of government and historical analyses. That's what books and magazine articles are for. These ideas simply cannot be squeezed into a 10 to 20 second phone call. Rational thought cannot be compressed this way.

What got me thinking about this was a recent blog piece on the use of Republican Party talking points on talk radio. Read the piece here. Anyone listening to talk radio knows this must be true. I hear the same Republican-based arguments over and over on talk radio, the facts be damned. These shows are emotional and angry. As Thomas Frank pointed out in his book, What's the Matter with Kansas, the arc of discontent in this country leans right. Much of the dialogue on these shows consists of attacks on the opposition, i.e., liberals, the Democratic Party and leftists who want to destroy the country, are weak on terror and hate George W. Bush. In a country that largely rejects Bush and his policies the few remaining supporters are speed-dialing to speak with Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and other blowhards who re-assure them that they are right and that the opposition hates America and is intellectual dishonest.

Here is the blog entry from Prospect.org (links in the original entry):

TALK RADIO HOSTS AND CALLERS GETTING THEIR TALKING POINTS STRAIGHT FROM GOP. This is on the light side, but it's fun and worth a quick note. If you've ever wondered why right-wing talk radio is so often devoid of any real dialogue, this might help explain why: It turns out that the hosts and the listeners who call in and speak are getting their talking points straight from the GOP.

Seriously. If you go to the Republican National Committee's Web site and click where it says "call talk radio," you'll find yourself on this page. It lists the phone numbers of many major talk show hosts, but that's not all: It also offers a list of "talking points" for callers to use when they call the shows. Among them: "Stand with President Bush on increased defense spending that better prepares and protects our military," and "stand with President Bush in his efforts to protect the homeland by controlling the borders." You can see a screen grab of the page below.

The RNC's site also offers these helpful tips for callers:

Plan What You Are Going to Say: Print or write out your talking points to help you plan what you are going to say before you are on the air...
Be Clear and Concise: When you get on the air, sound upbeat and excited to be on the program.

What about the hosts? Well, they're getting their talking points from the same place the callers are -- the Republican National Committee. From the Washington Post:

The RNC is shipping reams of information to conservative radio hosts, television commentators and bloggers. Those GOP talking points detail the Democratic connections of groups including the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and American Family Voices, which are working to turn the scandal into an issue with national implications. And this is by no means an isolated case. So both hosts and callers are at least in some cases repeating lines fed to them by the RNC. Talk about an echo-chamber.

One reason this is interesting is that there isn't anything really comparable on the other side. Yes, Dem party officials, organizers and other liberal groups constantly urge supporters to write letters to newspapers, and even in some cases supply actual language. But the Democratic National Committee simply can't ship its talking points straight to editors of newspapers, secure in the knowledge that those talking points will faithfully and regularly be echoed in editorials and in letters to the editor.