Talk Radio helped defeat the shamnesty immigration bill.

Opposition from key talk radio and cable TV hosts helped kill the immigration bill in Congress, a study out today concludes.

“What listeners of the conservative talk radio media were hearing, in large part, was that the legislation itself was little more than an ‘amnesty bill’ for illegal immigrants, a phrase loaded with political baggage,” it says.

The study by the nonpartisan Project for Excellence in Journalism quantifies what White House and Capitol Hill phone lines and e-mail inboxes already indicated: Talk radio focused on the immigration debate more intensely than the mainstream media did from April to June.

Conservative hosts touched off a brushfire in the Republican base that President Bush and other party leaders were helpless to contain.

"If media attention translates into political pressure, the argument that talk radio helped kill the immigration bill in Congress has some support in the data," the study says. "Thanks to energetic opposition from Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage, immigration was the biggest topic, at 16%, on conservative talk radio in the second quarter."

But I have to question something about this report. Was talk radio leading the way in opposing the legislation, or was it actually reflecting the sentiment that existed. Most folks I know opposed the legislation on principle before ti became a talk radio topic due to the amnesty provisions -- and were already inclined to do so without any prompting for talk radio. It strikes me, therefore, that the real impact of talk radio was not in creating opposition, but was rather in mobilizing that which already existed by providing more information and encouraging action.

H/T Captain Ed