The stop-Rush campaign

Republicans love to complain that they don't get a fair shake from the elites running the nation's airwaves and newspapers. Which has us wondering why they're helping their political opponents muzzle the likes of Rush Limbaugh.

Ever since the Federal Communications Commission's June decision to allow broadcast TV owners to own a few more stations, liberals have been channeling George Orwell -- claiming Big Brother broadcasters are a "threat to democracy" that will stifle "diversity of view." With the aid of many Republicans, they've already blocked the new rules in the House and may pass a resolution this week to do the same in the Senate.

We've addressed the substance of this issue several times, but the truth is that this crusade has little to do with the merits. Anyone who channel surfs or roams the Internet knows America isn't suffering from any lack of news sources. What's really driving the politicians is the desire for revenge against their media enemies.

On the left, this means returning to the days before deregulation opened the airwaves to the populist political right. Liberals know what has happened since the FCC abandoned the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. That rule required radio and TV stations to provide "balanced" news coverage. In practice, it discouraged stations from touching controversial subjects, so that in 1980 there were a mere 75 talk radio stations.

Today, thanks to the end of that doctrine, there are 1,300 talk radio stations. But to the horror of the political left, the hosts who have prospered on radio are the likes of Don Imus, Laura Schlessinger and Sean Hannity. The most popular of them all is Rush Limbaugh, no doubt because of his humor and optimism, with 20 million listeners a week.

Meanwhile, because cable and satellite aren't overregulated the way broadcasters are, we've seen successes like Rupert Murdoch's Fox News. The cable channel has blown past CNN in the ratings in just seven years, and its different take on the news drives liberals up the wall. So obsessed are they with Fox that Al Gore and friends are trying to finance their own liberal cable network.

The only reason these new media voices have succeeded is because people want to hear them. There's no public clamor for the top-down regulation Congress wants, beyond the crowd that donates during National Public Radio pledge week. Americans like their media choices and would rather not go back to the days when Walter Cronkite was their main, scintillating news source.

Liberals, on the other hand, are almost transparent in their aim to do precisely that. During July's House floor debate, Michigan Democrat John Dingell explained that once they roll back the FCC ownership expansion liberals can then move to reverse another recent FCC decision to allow companies to own TV stations and newspapers in the same market. They may then go to town on New York Rep. Maurice Hinchey's proposal to revive the Fairness Doctrine and complicate life for both Fox and Rush.

What's amazing is how oblivious Republicans are to this stop-Rush game. So eager are Sen. Trent Lott and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison to paste a defeat on their local media enemies that they're willing to punish all media companies. For their part, House Republicans have fallen for the lobbying of local TV and newspapers that want congressional protection from takeover bids. Members are too frightened by what kind of coverage they'll get next election to just say no.

At least the White House seems to understand the stakes, and President Bush has suggested he'll veto any bill that rolls back the FCC rules. But House Republicans are said to be about 40 votes short of the 146 or so needed to sustain a veto. If Republicans can't rally behind their president on something so clearly in their own interest, they deserve to suffer the bias of Dan Rather and Katie Couric.

And, hopeless as this point might be, they might also consider that standing up for free-market principles and deregulation is one reason they came to Washington in the first place.

-- From The Wall Street Journal