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election. If there were a viable third party in the 2010 election, it would almost certainly be a Tea Party—and not one that represents the radical center. Many foreign countries with strong multiparty democracies, like Austria, Switzerland, and Israel, have had significant problems with powerful xenophobic right-wing parties. Though such parties rarely win national elections, they have been able to take control of regional governments and to play kingmakers to the national governments, which gives them power to impose their demands. There is no reason to think that the United States is immune to such effects. Once again, persecution politics is a societal problem, and if we elevate third parties without having solved it, we risk further empowering the very people that we are trying to stop.

Thus, while America’s electoral system is imperfect, and it’s worth trying experiments like California’s Proposition 14, such structural changes are no substitute for addressing the social phenomenon of persecution politics. Though the “jackass quotient” is certainly a problem, the real leaders of the social phenomenon are not the jackasses in Congress like Michele Bachmann and Steve King but the jackasses on television and talk radio like Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Pat Buchanan, and Rush Limbaugh.

“Nuances Don’t Work on the Radio”

In order to combat the deleterious effects of the right-wing media, some Democratic legislators have proposed reinstating the Fairness Doctrine.9 The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) established the doctrine in 1949 to address concerns that the three main television networks—NBC, ABC, and CBS—could abuse their near total control of broadcast television. The doctrine required broadcasters to cover controversial topics of public importance and to provide a reasonable opportunity for the presentation of opposing views. It remained in effect until the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan’s FCC chief stopped enforcing it, and an FCC panel repealed it altogether in 1987.

Reagan’s motives were most likely antiregulatory rather than partisan, and some conservatives even opposed the move out of concern that the media would refuse to air conservative views.10 But the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine turned out to be a boon for conservative talk radio. Without the expense of offering competing viewpoints and the risk of losing their radio licenses for airing one-sided opinions, conservative talk radio stations thrived and almost singlehandedly revived the dying AM spectrum in the 1980s.11 WABC in New York hired Rush Limbaugh in 1988, right after the Fairness Doctrine was repealed, and he skyrocketed into history with a horde of hate jockeys swarming in his wake.

Limbaugh’s success raises a difficult question: why did conservatives take over talk radio rather than liberals? Liberals have radios with AM buttons, but conservative talk radio listeners outnumber liberals by 45 percent to 18 percent, and liberal attempts to replicate conservative talk shows have mostly failed miserably.12 Air America, for example, declared bankruptcy in 2010 after stumbling through its six years of existence.

One reason may be demographics. Talk radio listeners are mostly middle-aged males, a big conservative constituency. But it’s not clear whether the demographic of the audience is a cause or an effect of the popularity of right-wing radio.

I propose an alternative hypothesis: the provocative chunks of rage and fear that fit neatly into the talk radio format offer an ideal delivery mechanism for persecution politics, over which the right-wing reigns supreme. As Richard Viguerie explained:

Talk radio is an emotional medium. It’s something that people evaluate very quickly. You come to a conclusion about how you feel on something very quickly. It’s a populist medium, and most of these gut populist issues are conservative issues, not entirely, but mostly . . . And also, liberals deal with a lot of nuances. They say well on the one hand there’s this, then we must consider this. And nuances don’t work on the radio. Radio works