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What Happened to Glenn Beck?

As mediabistro.com reported, Glenn Beck’s February ratings show a year-over-year audience decline of 26 percent after a 38 percent fall in January. The New Republic’s James Downie muses that the fault for Beck’s audience shrinkage could be pegged to his increasingly cockamamie commentary—in order to maintain his followers’ interest, Beck had to keep amping up […]

As mediabistro.com reported, Glenn Beck’s February ratings show a year-over-year audience decline of 26 percent after a 38 percent fall in January.

The New Republic’s James Downie muses that the fault for Beck’s audience shrinkage could be pegged to his increasingly cockamamie commentary—in order to maintain his followers’ interest, Beck had to keep amping up the levels of crazy, finally leading to conspiracy fatigue among his fans.

Also note that Beck’s ratings fade, perhaps not coincidentally, began around the time of his “Restoring Honor Rally” in August, which saw hundreds of thousands of fired-up protestors flock across the country to see their hero speak at the Lincoln Memorial, only to be bored to tears by hours of pointless sermonizing and vacuous, sentimental history lessons.

To be sure, the GOP takeover of the House in November may have more to do with Beck’s sinking numbers. Sending a few Republican hacks to help preside over the Leviathan state has a way of cooling the passions of erstwhile right-wing revolutionaries.

But could Beck’s decline also signal that disaffected Tea Partiers, economically insecure and alarmed at mounting government debt, are increasingly frustrated at the irrelevance of his weepy religiosity, conspiracy theories, and ego-stroking identity politics?

Glenn Beck isn’t the only public figure proselytizing to the Tea Party. In the wake of his father’s second consecutive win in the CPAC straw poll comes the release of Rand Paul’s book “The Tea Party Comes to Washington,” which both reflects and prescribes a different kind of Tea Party by advocating a rollback of spending, the reestablishment of federalism and limited government, and a noninterventionist foreign policy.

Any kind of restoration of the nation’s constitutional moorings will be not be easy. In the short term, mad-as-hell heartlanders may find it more satisfying to project their anger and fears onto the Muslim Brotherhood, the international Communist conspiracy, martians, or the Antichrist. But by fixating on Glenn Beck’s obsessions, the Tea Party would only have succeeded in neutering itself. Hopefully, Beck’s fade in the ratings indicates that the right-wing masses are more receptive to the Pauls’ reality-based radicalism.

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