KNOWLES: Do Right-Wing Podcasters Want To Lose The Midterms?

Editor’s note: this piece was adopted from remarks delivered to the House GOP Members’ Issues Conference in Doral, Florida. 

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With a Right made up of podcasters, who needs the Left?

At a time when conservative new media figures should be rallying the troops to win in November, the podcasters have proven themselves incapable of getting along, intent on clutching defeat from the jaws of victory, and more interested in pursuing petty grievances than advancing the common good.

One hesitates even to call them “new media” at this point. Twitter has been around for twenty years. Facebook is two years older than that. The first podcast launched in 2003 on RSS technology invented in 2001. So podcasts and social media are “new” in the same way the telephone is new — that is, only relatively new compared with radio and TV or the telegraph.

And just as radio and TV developed certain ticks, opportunities, and pitfalls over time, so too have podcasts. One might liken the development of media to the development of a man as he ages. Those who have taken care of an elderly parent or grandparent know that, as people age, their personality traits don’t change so much as they intensify. Whatever the trait or habit, good or bad, grandma seems to exhibit it more and more year after year. The same principle holds true for the media.

As network television matured into cable news, political debates became sharper. Interviews became tighter. Perspectives became more nakedly partisan or even outright factional. Broadcast personalities became more defined.

As the cable news cycle gave rise to conservative talk radio, those inclinations were magnified. As talk radio gave way to podcasting, those traits intensified even further.

This process, like growing up, has produced both benefits and downsides. When you turn 21 you get to drink, but you also need to get a job. When you’re 61, you get to play with your grandkids, but your back hurts.

As old media have matured into new media, conservatives have had marvelous opportunities unthinkable in the days of newspapers, network TV, and the early days of cable news.

But it’s not all upside. As the new media have developed, they have also cultivated particular vices. The on-demand nature of podcasts has created incentives for broadcasters to become more niche, sensational, radical, and insular.

The local grounding of radio and television incentivized broadcasters to appeal to broad swaths of natural political communities. From dawn to dusk, broadcasts had to cater to relatively normal audiences in order to survive. The wacky shows only aired in the middle of the night.

In the new media, those geographic and linear constraints disappear. Every podcast has a potentially global audience that can listen at any time of the day. A podcast that appeals to a niche interest or ideological hobbyhorse will amass a much larger audience than the radio or TV host who appeals to the plurality or majority of any real political community.

Tune into a right-wing podcast today — including and especially the most popular right-wing podcasts — and you notice that the only thing the podcasters want to talk about is other podcasters.

This is all particularly disappointing because, as I mentioned, the new media are no longer new. Podcasts are now the main source of news in the United States. That’s why the 2024 election came to be known as “the podcast election.”

Two years ago, podcasters propelled President Trump back to the White House with the popular vote. Today, podcasters are stoking a “right-wing civil war” six months before already-challenging midterm elections.

I don’t mean to be too harsh to my fellow podcasters. I’ve done my best to avoid counterproductive infighting and frivolous digressions, but I recognize that these are simply facts and foibles of the medium. It’s no use moving to Mississippi and complaining about the heat. If you’re going to survive and thrive in that environment, you need to accept the facts as they are and learn to adapt.

Still, I can’t help but notice that the supposed “conservative civil war” has almost nothing to do with actual politics. Virtually everyone involved in the conflict supports the Trump administration. Virtually everyone agrees on policy — particularly immigration and crime.

Polls show that Americans still care a lot about those issues, and they generally trust Republicans over Democrats on both fronts. If Republicans can offer voters a coherent policy vision grounded on issues where we have a clear record of success. And if conservative podcasters can help tell that story — or at least get out of the way — the GOP may still have a fighting chance come November.