November 8th is Pearl Harbor for the Culture War.

This morning I turned on the AM shock jock because like don Corleone says, I have to keep my enemies closer than my friends. But the real reason I tuned into this guy’s opening dialog is because today marks the beginning of the real election season, and this guy will spend his entire show saying what the RNC tells him to say.

The RNC has been providing the AM talk radio noisemakers with talking points since Newt Gingrich ran the ‘Contract with America’ mid-term campaign in 1994. Actually, Newt got the idea of creating and promoting one, national political narrative from Rush Limbaugh who put together a national network for his radio show in 1988.

Now we have the internet, so I’m not so sure that radio exerts the degree of influence over politics and political narratives that it did when Rush was alive. But there’s no question that all the Limbaugh wannabees still get daily messaging from the RNC.

And what is the mid-term messaging that the GOP is going to try and deliver over the next two months? The election is not just going to be a contest but is going to be a war. And what kind of war is it going to be? A culture war! In the first five minutes of his opening dialog, this morning’s AM loudmouth, the redoubtable Glenn Beck, must have mentioned the phrase at least ten times.