Dave Elswick could suck a lot less if he really tried.

Like many of my fellow Arkansans I listen to Dave Elswick many afternoons. Unlike (or maybe like, I don't have a clue) many of them though, I'm usually frustrated by his show. Frustrated because he has shown glimpses of being slightly more libertarian in his thinking than a standard issue conservative talk radio host but that's usually only ten percent of the time.

This is the Elswick who had Wendell Griffen on quite awhile back to chat about whether or not judges should be free to speak their opinions when not on the bench. The Elswick who has had on Michal Graves, singer for the Misfits for many years (even though he was still no Danzig), to talk about the West Memphis 3 case. The Elswick who recently made marijuana legalization the topic of his show. The Elswick who had on a guest who questioned the need for a tax to raise money the Garland County Jail project and who advocated more varied (and inexpensive) degrees of punishment for crimes.

And then you have the other 90 percent represented by the Dave Elswick heard today who spent much of his show yukking it up with two fellow conservatives whose names I didn't catch. One of whom basically gave a water carrying endorsement of any Republican who would run against Obama (thankfully Dave was slightly more principled and stuck to his guns against Romney).  There was also mountains of praise heaped on Sarah Palin from one of the guests and a comment form Dave that she "looked good wearing leather." The cherry on top of all this was Dave saying he thought Satan would do a better job as president than Obama. Hyperbole for sure, but jeez.

When Dave talks about liberty issues he's at his finest, when he's railing against liberals like they were spawned from Hell's anus he loses me big time. All he's doing is playing to the simplest elements in his audience when he could be trying to elevate the dialogue a little bit. There is an opening in media markets both local and nationwide for a larger embrace of truly libertarian thinking. It would be nice if someone with a built in audience took that full on plunge and spent less time comparing our president to Lucifer.