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Ravnsborg Gasps for Air on Blustery Internet Radio Ego Show

Last updated on 2018.06.29

Pat Powers posts possible GOP U.S. Senate candidate Jason Ravnsborg's appearance on Arizona blogger Josh Bernstein's Internet radio show. Because there's not enough pain and suffering in my life, I listen.

I've never listened to Bernstein's program. The opening makes me feel like I'm tuned in to the Two Minutes Hate.

Bernstein is a crappy interviewer. He seems less interested in asking questions and more interested in flogging his pet talking points of the day. He spends the first half of his interview dragging Ravnsborg through a re-recitation of Bernstein's own topics for the day: guns, ICANN, and Ukraine/Crimea. Bernstein's own continued pronouncements take up as much airtime as his guest's responses. Bernstein doesn't probe his guest's thoughts or follow up on his responses. He plows along with his agenda, more interested in proving his own passion, ideology, and vocabulary than in spotlighting a fellow conservative who is doing the hard work of running for office.

Not that Ravnsborg says much anyway. He recites various predictable responses, and recites them poorly. Ravnsborg sounds nervous, strained, and short of breath, as if the mere business of keeping up with an arrogant radio host wears him out. Ravnsborg does not inspire confidence.

Ravnsborg says very little about South Dakota. Of course, Bernstein doesn't ask much about South Dakota, even though he mouths the formula, "Politics is mostly local." Neither is investing energy or intellect in specific, practical South Dakota issues; à la Bosworth, both are crutching along on the pre-fab national conservative punditry, playing to a national audience of distant and gullible listeners and donors rather than focusing on the people whom Ravnsborg would represent.

Reaching for something, anything worth mentioning, I note that Ravnsborg criticizes opponent Stace Nelson (coyly, "not going to mention names") for saying he would not support Marion Michael Rounds if Rounds wins the nomination. Ravnsborg frets that if Republicans dissatisfied with Rounds stay home or vote for newly Independent Larry Pressler in protest, South Dakota will end up with a "liberal liberal Democrat" who will hold the Senate seat for three terms, just like McGovern and Daschle... which thought-provoking observation Bernstein follows up with his own general discourse in support of term limits. Ravnsborg and Bernstein thus show themselves as RINOHINOs—RINO-Hunters In Name Only who say they can't stand "moderate" Republicans like Mike Rounds and John McCain but who will still roll over and bark/vote for them.

Candidate Rounds, carry on—you have nothing to worry about from Ravnsborg or conservative squawkers like Bernstein.

p.s.: Ravnsborg frets that President Obama wants to shrink government by reducing military spending on things like the A-10 Warthog that he loves to pose in front of. Ravnsborg, like too many pretend conservatives, says he opposes big government, but really loves big government when it carries big guns.

7 Comments

  1. Deb Geelsdottir 2014.03.25

    Bernstein sounds like Limbaugh. Although I haven't listened to L in several years. I don't have the intestinal fortitude you do Cory.

  2. Roger Cornelius 2014.03.25

    If that is the best Ravnsborg has to give, he is in serious trouble. What he says is nothing new and mostly not relevant to South Dakota.

    I forced myself to listen to the interview, or whatever the hell that was and like Cory, got nothing out of it except irritation because of their mindlessness.

  3. Lynn G. 2014.03.25

    I checked out this Bernstein show early this morning and could only take so much. This guy has a following? It's like a make believe, pretend you have your own show similar to we did as kids but the content was just bad!

  4. caheidelberger Post author | 2014.03.25

    I know that feeling, Lynn! It's just karaoke, people singing along to the stuff they've imbibed from other talk radio heads.

    By the way, Bernstein said gun control in Connecticut is following what he called the historical pattern of "registration, confiscation, extermination." Ravnsborg did not challenge that assertion.

  5. Paul 2014.03.26

    I know Jason personally, and, unlike Obama and the rest of the socialists that you seem to support, he has good ideas-sure, he is new to politics and will tell the truth, unlike people on your (left) side of the spectrum. I look at what the people have to say, not how they say it.

  6. larry kurtz 2014.03.26

    Earth haters like Roundsberg are national socialists.

  7. Disgusted Dakotan 2014.03.26

    Paul,
    Maybe you can confirm the comments that Ravensborg made to people that Joel Arends and Dan Lederman were two instrumental people in talking him into running?

    Maybe you can have Mr. Ravensborg explain why he thinks Mike Rounds, Larry Rhoden, Annette Bosworth, and Stace Nelson are so different to his positions that he cannot support them now, but can support one of them if they beat him?

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