Many conservatives take umbrage at the charge that Fox “personalities” have any real power over the Republican Party. They should take a look at a new Salon piece by Gabriel Winant and Tim Bella laying out a timeline of attacks on the Obama administration by Glenn Beck that quickly made their way into the utterances of GOP politicians. They include the sudden obsession with policy “czars;” the demonization of Cass Sunstein and Van Jones; the suggestion that the president is seeking to indoctrinate young people into some sort of Hitler Youth style totalitarian shock force; the claim that the National Endowment for the Arts is heavily funding leftists; and the particularly bizarre argument that the U.S. Treasury is trying to create a global currency that would replace the dollar.
If conservatives want to dismiss Beck as nothing more than an entertainer with no practical impact on politics, they might want to tell their pols to stop dancing to his loony tunes.