By Joe Saunders February 17, 2026 at 5:30pm
Five years after his death from lung cancer, conservatives on Tuesday remembered the greatest influencer of them all.
Rush Limbaugh, the radio host and author who built a political movement and a media empire from behind his golden microphone died Feb. 17, 2021, at the age of 70.
And the reverberations of his life and career are still being felt.
Remembering Rush: Five Years On https://t.co/xYml8sQfaV
— Bo Snerdley (@BoSnerdley) February 17, 2026
“He broke wide open – the media ‘dam’ that suppressed the voices and values of almost half the country,” longtime Limbaugh producer James Golden, known professionally as “Bo Snerdley,” wrote in a tribute on Tuesday.
“The ‘silent majority’ through Rush Limbaugh, found its voice.”
That’s putting it mildly.
From the closing months of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, to the election of the first Republican House of Representatives in almost a half a century during the midterms of 1994, to the election of Donald Trump in 2016, Limbaugh was in the vanguard of conservative politics in the United States, leading a cultural revolution that continues to this day.
During his State of the Union address in 2020, President Donald Trump saluted Limbaugh as “the greatest fighter and winner that you will ever meet” before honoring Limbaugh with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
It was a moment Limbaugh fans cheered and leftists loathed. Just note then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s studied nonchalance in the video below. Beneath the hauteur, you can almost feel her skin is crawling.
Thank you Rush Limbaugh pic.twitter.com/sS5t4WxwHm
— miguelifornia (@miguelifornia) February 17, 2026
Five years on, the American right views Limbaugh with reverence.
I started listening to Rush in High School and remember all my family and even coworkers at my job during my early college years jokingly calling me “Rush.” I was the first registered Republican in my family and now they have all changed their registration from D to R. RIP
— J D (@FearTheSpearS) February 17, 2026
To this day, the conservative media world is STILL trying to fill the void left by Rush Limbaugh, who passed away five years ago today (02/17/2021).
Rush is irreplaceable.
Rest in peace pic.twitter.com/oA6q5SRgP3
— Brenden Dilley (@WarlordDilley) February 17, 2026
This isn’t the hero-worshipping hagiography of the left, who build dewy-eyed, do-no-wrong cults of personality around their favorites — JFK, Bill Clinton in his sexual-predator prime (if not so much lately), both wretched Obamas.
It’s the respect of adults who’ve seen and heard their worldviews explained and propagated in ways only an extraordinary intellect and equally extraordinary broadcasting talent can achieve.
I started listening in college. It was a relief to hear actual facts, logic, and sense presented so straighforwardly. Such a relief to hear someone else thinking, rather than just emoting and being led by those emotional appeals.
I miss him and his show.
— Holly Chism (@HollyChism) February 17, 2026
Limbaugh’s was the bare-knuckled conservativism of educated common sense. It was combined with an unfailing sense of humor that could make even the most outrageous behaviors of ideological opponents laughably funny, without undermining in the least the idea of how dangerous those opponents really are.
(That danger just keeps getting more evident, as the September assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk proved. Limbaugh was a huge supporter of the much-younger Kirk. Here’s hoping they’ve had some good talks lately.)
What Limbaugh did with unflagging success for decades is exactly what a stable of late-night “comedians” have been trying to do to the right. But they fail for two reasons: Conservative ideas aren’t dangerous to sane people, and the “comedians” aren’t half as funny as they think they are.
There are countless social media posts published marking the anniversary of Limbaugh’s death (along with some predictably malevolent leftists publishing what they probably think are clever comments), but one sums it all up as well as any of them.
There will never be another Rush Limbaugh. An American treasure.
— Debra (@DebD266) February 17, 2026
“There will never be another Rush Limbaugh,” the user wrote. “An American treasure.”
Perfectly put.
Rush Limbaugh, RIP.
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