For the sin of supporting Trump, some conservative thinkers devoutly wish for a way of purging talk radio from the “official” conservative club. That’s going to be difficult or impossible. Conservative elites need populist radio in order to move product. If a conservative writer wants to sell a few thousand copies of his latest book — enough to be a bankable mid-list author — a series of talk-radio hits is one of the most powerful and reliable methods of doing so.
Talk-radio hosts sometimes like to hit grumbling conservative writers back by boasting of the size of their audience, which they describe in terms of influence. The truth is that bragging about nine or 19 million listeners is really a way of bragging about success and money. A writer with an audience of 500 dedicated readers can have decisively more influence than a radio-gabber with five million, so long as they are the right 500 readers.
But these large talk-radio audiences do give their hosts a real advantage when it comes to detecting a change in the mass of Republican voters. Their call screeners, producers, and the staff that handles email comments can sense almost immediately when a topic is really hot, or when a candidate is beloved. And clearly, they saw Trump’s power early. The very fact that so many talk-radio hosts began to rally to Trump should have sent a strong indicator to anti-Trump activists and writers that Trump had real and enduring popular support.
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