October 9, 2007: Limbaugh Derails Immigration Bill, Touts Influence

A bipartisan immigration bill fails in the Senate, largely because of opposition mounted by conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, who mobilizes public opinion against it. Senator Trent Lott (R-MS) later explains: “We came out and said, ‘We have a grand compromise.‘… Republicans and Democrats, moderates, conservatives, liberals. ‘We got a deal.’ And then we went home to celebrate, but we didn’t bother to say what was in it. Rush Limbaugh said, ‘This is amnesty’ [for illegal immigrants]. We were dead at that moment because they had a one-word bumper sticker, ‘amnesty,’ and we had a six-paragraph explanation. We got killed. So talk radio has a real impact.” Authors Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph N. Cappella will later write that Limbaugh “trumpet[s] his influence” by playing the audio clip of Lott’s statement in his radio broadcast. [Jamieson and Cappella, 2008, pp. 58]