AP Photo/Patrick Semansky Rush Limbaugh created modern national talk radio as we now know it. For over three decades he kept at rapt attention — live from noon to 3 p.m. on weekdays — the largest conservative audience in broadcast history. More than 15 million tuned in each week. Last week, 32 years and more than 23,000 hours of on-air commentary after he went national in August 1988, Limbaugh died of lung cancer at age 70. By the 1990s he had become the voice, literally and iconically, of the conservative movement and its hot/cold liaisons with the Republican Party. Limbaugh was hated by the left because he was deadly effective in fighting them, and he was feared at times by the Republican establishment — because he could also be deadly effective in fighting it.