Left to right: Mike Gallagher, Neal Boortz, Laura Ingraham, Bush,
Sean Hannity and Michael Medved.

This New York Times article describes a White House meeting last month between Bush and the heads of the right-wing talk radio families. They also invited Rush Limbaugh to provide megadittos, but he did not attend.

According to the article:

The meeting, which was not announced on the president’s public schedule, was part of an intensive Republican Party campaign to reclaim and re-energize a crucial army of supporters that is not as likely to walk in lockstep with the White House as it has in the past.

Conservative radio hosts are breaking with the Republican leadership in ways not seen in at least a decade, and certainly not since Rush Limbaugh’s forceful advocacy of the party in 1994 spawned a new generation of stars, said Michael Harrison, publisher of the industry’s lead trade publication, Talkers.

[..]

Such questions, coming from such quarters, have created yet another challenge for the White House and the central party leadership as they work to steer Republicans to victory next month in the face of low approval ratings and dissatisfaction among the party faithful.

Strategists on both sides agree that the party’s greatest hope for holding control of Congress now rests with its ability to get core Republicans to vote, and that talk radio, which reaches millions of them, is crucial to the task.

You would think that the millions of people who listen to this stuff would be insulted by the Republican Party's overt attempts to manipulate them. Instead, they will probably be impressed, and feel like they have personal access to the president. At least some conservative Christians are starting to wise up to how they have been used by the GOP.