The difference between O'Reilly and Limbaugh

Regarding the recent headbutt conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh delivered to Fox News's Bill O'Reilly on same-sex marriage, The Daily Beast's Peter Beinart explains the difference between the two on social issues...

Beinart writes:

The person who did more than anyone else to make birth-control an issue in 2012, of course, was Rush Limbaugh who called Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” after she testified in support of requiring insurance companies to cover contraception. O’Reilly would never have done that, not because he refrains from savaging obscure individuals with whom he disagrees but because he never goes after a sympathetic target. Limbaugh and O’Reilly both see themselves as four-star generals in America’s culture war. The difference is that Limbaugh launches kamikaze missions. O’Reilly never yells charge unless he has the infantry massed on his side. ...

O’Reilly and Limbaugh are both conservative; they both idealize an older, pre-lapsarian America that they believe leftists want to destroy in the name of progress. The difference is that Limbaugh’s conservative vision is more static and more personal. For O’Reilly, traditional morality is not an abstract, coherent set of beliefs; it’s the folk wisdom of ordinary people at any given moment, and it can change.

O'Reilly's apparent shift on same-sex marriage over the years is consistent with something Fox News CEO Roger Ailes said in 2011. In an interview, he said O'Reilly had "moderated" his own views in reaction to Glenn Beck, who during his time at Fox had become more popular with right-wing conservatives.

@eScarry