That which has been is that which shall be; and that which has been done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there a thing of which it may be said, "Behold, this is new?" It has been long ago, in the ages which were before us.

— Ecclesiastes 1:9-10

Rush Limbaugh is creating quite a stir these days and I must say I don't know why.

To be clear, I don't know why people are so stirred up. I know exactly why Limbaugh wants to create a stir — to make money. That is not a criticism. I want to sell newspapers, too. Limbaugh and I are in the same kind of business.

Except he makes a bit more money.

By Limbaugh's own estimation, some 22 million people listen to his radio show five days a week. That is a bunch of people, not much less than 10 percent of the total U.S. population.

I would have to assume that almost all of those people agree with Limbaugh. Otherwise, why would you listen? Perhaps a couple of percent are people who just want to hear what outrageous thing he will say next, but no more than that.

And some listeners may not agree with everything he has to say, but I'd wager the vast majority of them do, probably at least 90 percent. Even if only 80 percent agree with Limbaugh, he is preaching his political gospel to about 20 million true believers every weekday.

That is some political power, folks.

Still, Limbaugh is nothing if not consistent, so I'm wondering why all the fuss just now. I read his speech before the Conservative Political Action Conference last week. All several thousand words of it. The things I do for this job.

I guess you had to be there to get all charged up because it just seemed more of the same to me. Limbaugh saying what he always says. Rush Limbaugh is no flip-flopper, which is probably why he will never actually run for office. Politicians, regardless of their philosophy, are rarely so concrete.

Rush is the same and Rush is powerful, but Rush also is not new. In fact, you don't even have to go back 100 years to find someone who said much of the same and did much of the same.

Except the first Rush Limbaugh was even bigger than Limbaugh himself. Much bigger, and I'm not talking waistline, either.

In fact, compared to Father Charles Edward Coughlin, Rush Limbaugh is a piker.

Father Coughlin, who was actually born in Canada but served as a priest in Michigan for most of his adult life, latched onto the radio in the 1930s to get his political message out.

And did he ever.

During the 1930s, more than 40 million people a week tuned in to hear Father Coughlin on nationwide radio. Limbaugh may get 22 million listeners a day, but they are the same 22 million, you can't add them up.

But if Coughlin's radio audience was twice as large, what is more remarkable is that he had many fewer potential listeners. Limbaugh reaches something less than 10 percent of the population of the U.S. with his radio program.

But in 1932, the population of the United States was only 124 million. Think of that 40 million listeners.

One-third of the entire country was tuned into Father Coughlin and, again, most of them were true believers.

What did Father Coughlin say? You can listen to a number of his radio programs yourself and read from his magazine Social Justice. Just look for it on the Internet.

Here is some that is representative, however. See if any of it sounds familiar, even though Coughlin's manner of speaking was quite different.

• "Oh, capitalism shall never again flourish as once it did. Capitalism has been almost taxed out of existence in an effort to meet the coupons and the bonds, in an effort to meet the dole system that is absolutely unnecessary in a country of our wealth."

• "Somebody must be blamed, of course. But those in power always forget to blame themselves. They always forget to read the Constitution of the United States of America that says, "Congress has the power to issue and regulate the value of money. And blinding their eyes to that as they protect the private issuance of money and the private fixation of money, we are going merrily on our way."

• "I believe in the simplification of government, and the further lifting of crushing taxation from the slender revenues of the laboring class."

• "Any jackass can spend money. Any crackpot with money at his disposal can build for himself a dictatorial crown. It takes no brains to be liberal with other people's money."

• "It is time for the American public to perform a sit-down strike - not on industry, not on men of commerce, but on politicians. They are sitting down on you, waiting for the government executioner, waiting for the last chapter of the Bill of Rights to be burned at the stake like a witch, waiting for the Supreme Court to put its head on the chopping block."

• "You're either with me or against me. There is no middle ground in this battle between Christ and the anti-Christ. If you step out of (the battle), you're worse than those boys who ran off to Norway, Sweden, those boys who deserted the government. You're deserters, rotten deserters."

You may be wondering what happened to Father Coughlin. His popularity lost considerable steam around 1940, when he began to show admiration for that fiery German leader, one Adolf Hitler. He was also a fan of Mussolini who, after all, made the trains run on time.

The final blow was his association with an outfit called the Christian Front, of which he was the de facto leader. The feds raided the group's New York offices and found a large cache of guns and explosives.

I don't expect Rush to go the same path, but he'll go some way we least expect. The one thing I know is, it won't be anything new.