At its core, populism in the United States remains what it has always been: a protest by ordinary people who want the system to live up to its stated ideals – fair and honest treatment in the marketplace and a government tilted in favor of the unwealthy masses, writes Michael Kazin in an essay in the current issue of Newsweek. “The best way for big men, and big women, to respond to such protests is to try to do what is moral, as well as popular — and treat Americans as partners in the grand enterprise of governance.”

Conservative David Frum writes in the current Newsweek that radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh is a seriously unpopular figure among the voters that conservatives and Republicans need to reach. Forty-one percent of independents have an unfavourable opinion of him, according to the new Newsweek Poll. “Limbaugh is especially off-putting to women: his audience is 72 percent male, according to Pew Research. Limbaugh himself acknowledges his unpopularity among women. On his Feb. 24 broadcast, he said with a chuckle: ‘Thirty-one-point gender gaps don’t come along all that often … Given this massive gender gap in my personal approval numbers … it seems reasonable for me to convene a summit’.”