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Beck a PoMo Conservative— and It's Working Well for Him

By Harry Kimball,  Newser Staff

Posted Sep 23, 2009 9:54 AM CDT
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(Newser) – Glenn Beck’s popularity as compared to the more “traditional American conservatism” of, say, Rush Limbaugh heralds the advent of a new archetype, Nate Silver writes on FiveThirtyEight: “Beck is a PoMoCon—a postmodern conservative.” A recent poll shows Beck and Limbaugh equally popular while Limbaugh’s negatives dwarf Beck’s. Silver sees Beck’s anti-establishment leanings as a plus in a country that “seems to be becoming more anti-establishment, too.”

Beck’s anti-establishment rhetoric, which reserves equal distrust for big government, non-governmental institutions, elites, and political parties, seems to have struck a nerve. And it is blissfully unconcerned with history or a continuum. PoMoCons are “skeptical (sometimes to the point of paranoid),” and their movement a “relatively spontaneous reaction to the here-and-now,” Silver writes. “There is no future, no past—there is only today. And today is a pretty good day to be Glenn Beck.”

Glenn Beck.
Glenn Beck.   (AP Photo)
Rush Limbaugh.
Rush Limbaugh.   (AP Photo)
Glenn Beck.
Glenn Beck.   (Getty Images)
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The PoMoCons are not so much less self-consistent as they are less concerned with consistency, as compared with traditional conservatives.
- Nate Silver

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COMMENTS
Showing 3 of 42 comments
Spudsy
Sep 25, 2009 12:54 PM CDT
godawgs, how about his reporting on the teabaggers march in Washington being so spontaneous when footage exists of Fox producers orchestrating the crowd?
riffran
Sep 24, 2009 2:44 AM CDT
amen brother....and it seems that the "won't listen" crowd is not getting any bigger, and the "listening" crowd is growing by leaps and bounds
riffran
Sep 24, 2009 2:42 AM CDT
yuck...lol

 
Rush Limbaugh • Glenn Beck • conservatism • opinion polls • Nate Silver • conservative movement • big government • post-modern • skepticism

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