I have known Rush Limbaugh since his old radio days in Sacramento, before he became a GOP god. I've disagreed with him over the years. Last year I took on his bashing of Republican moderates and criticized Limbaugh and other talk-radio hosts when they were too harsh on not-yet GOP nominee John McCain. I've never apologized and we're still friends.
If you've watched cable news in the last week, you've seen how the Limbaugh story is playing. Limbaugh said he hopes Obama "fails." As he explained, "I've been listening to Barack Obama for a year and a half. I know what his politics are. I know what his plans are, as he has stated them. I don't want them to succeed. If I wanted Obama to succeed, I'd be happy the Republicans have laid down."
Because Limbaugh used the f-word, Good Republicans are supposed to distance themselves from him. Thus Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele called Limbaugh "ugly" and "incendiary." Not a smart move. Later Steele called Limbaugh to apologize — adding a new twist to a story concocted by Democrats.
As Politico.com reported last week, Demo gurus James Carville and Stan Greenberg first concocted the idea of making Limbaugh the GOP albatross last year after a poll showed that among younger voters Limbaugh's ratings were in the toilet. White House adviser David Axelrod and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs joined in the get-Limbaugh gambit, while White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel called Limbaugh "the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican party" on CBS' "Face the Nation."
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee jumped into the act and sent out an e-mail instructing recipients to send an "urgent call" for GOP senators "to denounce (t)his shameful rhetoric." Key to the strategy are gullible partisans who fall for the phony umbrage of cynical operatives. Tens of thousands of outraged sheep — I mean, concerned individuals — have signed on, according to the DSCC.
"Shameful rhetoric?" Sorry, but the only thing that would make these operatives more gleeful would be if GOP leaders were caught in hotel rooms with hookers.
This whole brouhaha is designed to get Republicans to snipe at each other and, perhaps more important, to distract voters from what is happening to their 401(k)s — after Democrats have thrown an extra trillion dollars at the economy.
"It's incredibly cynical," former McCain adviser Nicolle Wallace wrote in The Daily Beast. "It assumes that voters are too stupid to know the difference between a talk-radio host and a party's elected leaders."
This week, former Bush speechwriter David Frum foolishly bit. "Limbaugh is kryptonite, weakening the GOP nationally," Frum wrote in a Newsweek cover piece, "Why Rush is Wrong." Frum concluded that while he probably agreed with Limbaugh on most ideological matters, "the issues on which we do disagree are maybe the most important to the future of the conservative movement and the Republican Party: Should conservatives be trying to provoke or persuade? To narrow our coalition or enlarge it? To enflame or govern?"
Of course, the answer is: both. Yes, political parties need to reach beyond their ranks, but you don't win with an alienated base. Witness the Clinton-distancing Al Gore and the pro-Iraq-war voting John Kerry. Witness my guy, John McCain.
And you don't win without people who charge up the base. That's what Limbaugh does better than anyone. (And I say that as a "mushy" moderate conservative.)
While many think Limbaugh is enjoying the Obama-supplied spotlight, he was pretty steamed in e-mails to me. Divided government, he wrote, "is designed to ensure that the president fails when he is wrong. The framers wanted the country to succeed; if they wanted the president to succeed, they would not have saddled him with Congress, courts, a free press, and elections every four years."
"I can think of no pursuit more childish than an Oval-Office-initiated food fight with a talk-radio host," Wallace wrote. Apparently Team Obama sees the Limbaugh feud as an effective use of its time.
E-mail Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@sfchronicle.com. To find out more about Debra J. Saunders, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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6 Comments | Post Comment
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I usually get a great deal from your articles, as a middle of the road independent voter. But this time you've done nothing but put an equally untenable spin on the rhetoric being thrown around as you are accusing the Democrats of doing. (Awkward sentence.) Rush should not have said he hoped Obama would fail. Obama's failure means the failure of all of us, our 401Ks, our jobs, our infrastructure . . . Whether he supports Obama is irrelevant. He should be hoping for the success of the country, of all of us. And as a very popular radio talk person, he does represent/inform a huge number of people, which is probably the only reason he got an apology, to placate his voting base. He has a responsibility. Of course he's unhappy. The Democrat's strategy turned the tables on him, making him the butt for a change. It is also naive to complain about this. It's not illegal, it's politics and both sides play the game equally harshly when they have the opportunity.
Comment: #1
Posted by: julia
Tue Mar 10, 2009 5:32 AM
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Ma'am;.... I got a picture of Rush naked...How much will you give me for it??? Just kidding... That is the kind of stuff we used to say to each other when we found out some punk was getting married... Oh! I got a picture of HER naked... Wanna see it??? It's great to say to some kid while he's standing in the middle of a wobbly old joist wearing a welding hood that keeps flopping down on its own.... Dangerous too...I really do have a picture of Rush naked... It cost me way too much since some one morphed a beached albino whale onto his face.... That is probably a future picture... Rush of the future: Heavier still, and all washed up... Thanks...Sweeney
Comment: #2
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Tue Mar 10, 2009 8:54 PM
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Re: julia;...Ma'am, throwing a bunch of paper with numbers on it isn't going to fix any problems.... These rich people, the ones who ended up with all of the wealth don't want to be saved... Everything else is beyond saving.... Pat your self all over... Body and soul are still at the same address... Okay, let's save ourselves... We don't need that stinking economy that is always making everyone poorer and poorer still... WE don't need the government if it cannot protect us from the money grubbers and the bean counters... Instead of standing up that beast, so it gets another shot at us; let's take it apart and start over... Some body wrote the last constitution... They put on their sun screen just like you...They did not fly about on gossamer wings... They had a problem, and they fixed it...They didn't fix it better than it had to be fixed... They were not building for the ages... We can do better knowing our own needs than those people could do for us not knowing our needs... It has failed...Party politics has failed...Lack of democracy has failed...The economy has failed... Freedom has failed,, and equality too since we have never had enough of them...Rush does not want to reform the government and the economy because to him, it is working great....Well that makes one.... Who else is it working for??? Thanks...Sweeney
Comment: #3
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Tue Mar 10, 2009 9:16 PM
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Obama and his cohorts are always trying to marginalize thoughts and ideas that shine the light on the murky, ill-conceived, and flat out wrong ideas that democrats have. The saddest and most frightening thing about the step by step destruction of the country as we know it is that the destroyers know what they are doing, know what is needed to avert the crisis they are herding us toward, and refuse to do these things because their idealogy demands that government, heretofore the problem, be considered the solution. In other words, they are not destroying the country in good faith, they are doing so with malice aforethought.
Comment: #4
Posted by: Jobe
Wed Mar 11, 2009 11:17 AM
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Re: Jobe;...I'll agree that the democrats have some murky, ill conceived ideas; like supporting the war in Iraq by giving some Nabob the ability to go there, and then funding the nonsense....Giving billions of dollars to the financial sector of the country when that is not in the least a goal of our constitution, is ill conceived, and criminal.... How do we go from murky, ill conceived ideas to malice aforthought??? Isn't that sort a big step to take??? Because I do not see government doing its job as the problem.... Every goal it has set for itself. Liberty, defense, welfare, unity, tranquity are good goals and worth support...As far as I can tell, capitalism is not mentioned once in the constitution by name.... Yet, government puts the needs of business first and the needs of people last... And I will tell you how it is... If those bankers went out of business tomorrow there would be as many in line tomorrow....There is not a want in this world for people who wish to sit on their butts while others slave....So all the malice amounts to in my opinion is a single class helping itself to the proceeds of another class... That is what government does, and what government facilitates...It has had its way...Its way is poison for the whole society...Thanks...Sweeney
Comment: #5
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Wed Mar 11, 2009 2:14 PM
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Oh the hypocrisy is just delicious, Saunders. No one dares get into a pissing match with Jabba the drug addict, because we know who will win. That, of course, is why you don't dare to either. You're both just a couple of big fat bags of words.
Comment: #6
Posted by: Masako
Sat Mar 14, 2009 10:02 AM
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