In the Daily News, Stanley Crouch weighs in on the leaked comments of GOP strategist Frank Luntz, who said that right-wing radio is keeping moderate Republicans from achieving a compromise on immigration. It's about time the party recognized the problem.
When things are especially harrowing, we hope that our leaders can lead us to the truth. If we are unlucky, they will instead feed us paranoia and lies. Only in retrospect do we usually know the difference.
It was not so long ago that J. Edgar Hoover held sway, when Richard Nixon sat in the White House. They fed on fear. America became a land of conspiracy.
Then again, there have always been Americans to push back against rampant hysteria — Abraham Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson. They knew that truth could not always be simplified or made comfortable.
Last week, a little truth came the way of the elephants when GOP strategist Frank Luntz was secretly taped as he spoke to students at Penn.
Speaking of right-wing fire-breathers like Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin, Luntz said, "And they get great ratings, and they drive the message, and it's really problematic." He suggested that right-wing radio was keeping moderate Republicans from achieving a compromise on immigration, saying of GOP darling Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida: "Talk radio is killing him."
Read Stanley Crouch's entire piece at the Daily News.
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