Citadel Media talker  Mark Levin’s  sometimes over-the-top rhetoric is a drag on efforts to revive conservatism, according to Atlantic magazine blogger Conor Friedersdorf.  In a post entitled “When Talk Radio Rants Go Wrong, “  he contends that Levin’s failure to offer detailed, measured, point-by-point support for his opposition to President Obama leaves his listeners less-than-prepared to make a convincing anti-Obama case. Friedersdorf, who describes himself as right-of-center, focuses on a May 18th segment in which Levin charges that Obama wants to crash the U.S. economy so he can remake it in his own image.  The monologue offers no evidence to support that charge.

Friedersdorf concludes:  “Effective opposition requires a clear-eyed, unsentimental assessment of reality, not paranoid, uncharitable rants. The right understood this very well when they talked about The Angry Left, and how its visceral hatred for George W. Bush distorted its judgment. Too many seem to have forgotten this lesson, and aren’t the least bit skeptical at analysis offered by a man assuming of his opponent the most awful motivations imaginable. This is merely one small example from a radio show that traffics in rhetoric of this very kind five days each week.”

To quote Sean Hannity quoting Ronald Reagan: There you go again.  Friedersdorf, like most journalists, doesn’t really understand talk radio.  Talk show hosts aren’t employed to run on-air education and organizing efforts; they are paid to attract and hold the largest possible audience.  Showmanship plays a big part in achieving that objective.  Talk  pioneer Willis Duff once said that talk radio is like bullfighting.  People appreciate the cape work — but they come to see the bull get killed. 

And no one kills the bull like Mark Levin.