Democratic Overreach Watch

It’s the Republican Party’s ultimate nightmare—an ascendant Democratic Party re-enacts the long dead “fairness doctrine” on radio, which for decades required stations to provide equal amounts of time to liberal and conservative viewpoints. In an interview on Fox News yesterday, Chuck Schumer said, “I think we should all be fair and balanced, don’t you?” and suggested that conservatives who oppose the fairness doctrine while calling for stricter controls on adult content on TV were hypocritical. Since the doctrine was abolished in 1987, right-wing radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage have built broadcasting empires while liberal shows have struggled to stay afloat. A push by Democrats to return to the old days would spark an apocalyptic battle in Congress, potentially slowing an Obama administration’s ambitious legislative agenda to a crawl.