The thoughtful right

Here is Ross Douthat on the current, endless Limbaugh-palooza going on in the media:

To a non-ideological voter who's uninterested in policy and forms his perceptions of liberalism and conservatism largely through symbolism and sound bites, a conflict between Obama on the one hand and Limbaugh on the other will almost inevitably redound to liberalism's benefit.

Why does a right-winger think that liberals benefit from Rush? Reihan Salam, Douthat's colleague, writes, "any successful political movement is built of both true believers and evangelizers". Here, the true believers are dyed-in-the-wool partisans. Evangelists, on the other hand, seek to convert new followers. Rush's rise in salience essentially means that the work of the right's evangelists is stymied.