I think it's clear that Maloney and many of the commenters on SaveWRKO want "Republican" talk radio, in the sense that they want a media outlet that's specifically anti-Democrat
Then they should come right out an say it, rather than talk about conspiracies against 'conservatives.' And, if anyone here thinks the Massachusetts Republican party is conservative, they've sniffed one tube too many of airplane glue. I think it was James McGregor Burns who observed that 'on the local level, there is no real philosophical difference between the two major parties." If that observation applies anywhere, it is here.
as a counter to the media outlets (such as the Globe)
The Globe has been the house organ of the Democrats for as long as I can remember (although, ironically, the politician they hated the most, in recent memory, was Finneran); that of the Repubs,the old Herald-Traveler broadsheet The H-T is long gone, the Globe is going down the chute, and the 'conservative' paper, the Herald tabloid, is deteriorating before our eyes into the worst POS ever to come off a printing press. If Maloney & Co. want to 'save' something, how's about starting with something that actually needs saving, the Herald. As it stands now, my wife is embarrassed when I put a Herald on top of the curbside recycling bin.
that are specifically anti-Republican.
It's not the media that is anti-Republican, it is the electorate. There is plenty of partisan opinion in the Boston 'opinion' media, and most of it IS Republican. The "all the media is arrayed against the Repubs" meme just doesn't fly. In all of Boston talk radio, there is only one certified hard-core lefty in a prominent daypart, on either major talk station, Braude. There are only two who, I think, could be definitively identified as Democrats, Finneran and Braude, and it would be difficult for them to be farther apart philosophically.
Maloney and the commenters view the Democrats as a top-to-bottom corrupt party, and thus Finneran, despite his conservatism on certain issues, is intolerable, as he's the representative of what's seen as an institutionally corrupt party.
Then why did they choose to attack Finneran by damning him as an agent of a great conspiracy by Entercom to destroy conservative talk radio on WRKO? No, my friend, Maloney may think that "there is no such thing as an honest politician," but that isn't why he went after Finneran. Nope, he went after Finneran because he was a Democrat and wasn't his buddy Scott A. Miller.
Curiously, he is also a big fan of Peter Blute, who was the Hack-In-Chief at that hackorama-to-end-all-hackaramas, Massport, but thinks Howie Carr is performing a public service by exposing RMV clerks who take overly long lunch breaks. I have no idea what Maloney has for a motivating political philosophy, but I do know that he's never met an inconsistency that he didn't embrace like a winning lottery ticket.
. (My sense is that if 'RKO offered the morning slot to someone like Joe Lieberman, many of these criticisms would still be made by Maloney.
And he'd oppose him because he was a Democrat because, politically, Lieberman and Finneran are close to polar opposites, except on a couple of foreign policy issues like support for Israel, which doesn't have a lot to do with Mass politics.
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I'm not sure if it's about Finneran per se,
My God, the SaveWRKO blog was invented to oppose Finneran, and the conspiracy of which he was supposed to be a part.
so much as it is about preserving talk radio in general and WRKO in particular as a firmly anti-Democrat entity.
Well, why bother? Ever look at the record of accomplishments of those local conservative talk radio hosts he wants to preserve? They've had one success by one talkmaster (who was more of a maverick than a true conservative), Jerry Williams and the roll back of the seat belt law. In hindsight, that accomplishment now looks quaintly naive. The only other talk host who has ever had a telling influence in an election is Finneran, who is credited with sinking Harshbarger with an offhand quip calling him a 'moonbat' and helping elect Celluci. And that was before he was a talk host.
In the twenty years that talk radio has been a Republican preserve, the Republican party has almost ceased to exist in Massachusetts. Republicans in the state legislature are now a hopeless, powerless, minority, and haven't had any clout whatsoever since, ironically, Finneran, with whom they had formed an alliance, left the speakership. Republican state senators are showing up on sides of milk cartons. And in the last election, with a solid wall of talk hosts beating the sh*t out of him no-stop, every day, Deval Patrick and the Democrat drove a stake into the heart of the Republicans without breaking a sweat. Could Repubs have done any worse if both talk stations had played continuous reruns of AM Coast-To-Coast? What does Republican talk radio have left to accomplish in Mass, making it illegal to be a Republican?
The Republicans in Massachusetts, the surviving ones that is, now living under bridges roasting squirrels, have a lot of problems. Tom Finneran on WRKO isn't one of them.
What the Republicans need to do is develop candidates that people will actually vote for, instead of the collection of RINOs and mediocrities they field and expect their friends in talk radio to sell to the public for them. Fulton J. Sheen couldn't have talked people into voting for Muffy, or any of the non-entities they ran for the constitutional offices. Maloney thinks the problem is the salesmen aren't universally Republican and there aren't enough of them. He is in this, as in so many other things, wrong.
Regards,
TSB
