QOTD2, Krugman: I think Rush and company have yet to face reality; which means that one day they’ll wake up and discover that, as that socialist Dwight Eisenhower put it, “their number is negligible and they are stupid.”
How embarrassing. Sad little Time Magazine reporter/blogger Michael Scherer concern trolling Team Obama's Petty Limbaugh Strategy
... But here's the rub: If you believed what Obama said during the campaign, then Carville is dead wrong. Republicans in Congress are not the only losers. The American people also lose. At a time of unprecedented threats to the United States, a time of financial collapse, bank failures and record layoffs, at a time when the credit crisis has not been solved, and the stock market is in free fall, at a time of stagnating wars, rising terrorism in Pakistan and growing nuclear potential in Iran, the White House has done the easy thing. It has asked the American people to focus their attention not on solving the problems, but on a big-mouthed entertainer in Florida. This may be smart politics. But it is also the same petty strategy that John McCain employed during the presidential campaign, the one that our new president promised to rise above.
from the Swampland comments, which have been brutal:
TPM: Leading House GOPer Agrees With Rush Limbaugh, Wants Obama To Fail
Comment by DaddyD: Shorter Rush/Pence: We only want America to succeed when the Republicans are in charge. Simple. March 4, 2009 9:35 AM
Benen: THEY BELIEVE THEIR OWN PROPAGANDA?....
It's the subject of perennial debate: when Republican officials repeat obvious falsehoods, are they deliberately trying to deceive, or are they just woefully confused? While there are compelling cases to be made for each side, once in a while we get strong evidence for the latter. For example, Dick Spotswood, a California-based columnist, ...... imagine how much better the political system would function if Republicans simply stopped believing their own misguided propaganda?"Met with Republican Rep. Mary Bono Mack from Riverside County's Coachella Valley. While a social moderate, Sonny Bono's widow is a solid conservative. Talked to her about Obama's $780 billion stimulus legislation. She's outraged that the plan has "$1 billion wasted on a magnetic-levitation train from L.A. to Sin City" -- all at Nevada Sen. Harry Reid's doing.
After expressing my doubt that the Las Vegas line was actually in the bill's language, Bono Mack directs her staff to "get him the bill, it's right there, show him." A few minutes later, a staffer emerges with a copy and quietly says "it's not in the bill."
C&L's Neiwert: Wingnut Wunderkind Jonathan Krohn seems like a natural phenomenon
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Everyone is either amazed and surprised or quietly appalled by young Jonathan Krohn, the then-13-year-old (he turned 14 on Sunday) who wowed the folks at the CPAC convention this weekend with his precocious-wingnut routine. He is indeed a startlingly poised young man.
But honestly, it seemed perfectly natural to me. After all, conservative thought (as it were) has always reflected the way a 13-year-old would view the world: like a highly dualistic, light-and-darkness morality fable, filled with heroic patriots and defenders of freedom contending against the slithering forces of puling liberal evil. Just ask Jonah Goldberg. ...
digby on The Smoking Wreckage Of Limbaugh Nation
Limbaugh is now calling people "butt boys." This is on top of his adorable comments that Republicans are being asked to "bend over and grab their ankles" because Obama is black. I realize that the term "butt boy" is fairly common in junior high locker rooms as a synonym for sycophant, but when did it become ok to say this on radio? Does the FCC know that it literally means submissive, teenage anal sex (with a strong implication of coercion?)Yglesias: Frum Takes on Rush; Conservatives Leap to Condemn Frum
I suppose this new frankness about gay sex could be seen as some sort of breakthrough for the right but ....
I've written many posts about Rush over the years so all this new interest in him as a leader of the Republican Party is old news to me. I think this one, from 2006, may the most pertinent:Notice how Limbaugh and the preachers pander to the depraved imagination? It's not religious values these people are selling. They are selling a brutal, domineering, degenerate culture, making their listeners and viewers wallow in it, plumbing the depths of the subconscious, drawing forth Goyaesque images of bestiality and violence and death. That's a feature of some religions, to be sure, but it's not the nice upright Christian morality everybody's pretending it is.That was written three years ago and things have changed. And I think it's pretty clear that it changed because people finally realized that this nihilistic, juvenile form of politics was incredibly destructive. After all, George W. Bush was the perfect Limbaugh president: a sophomoric, violently aggressive, anti-intellectual, macho, phony cowboy. He was the man Limbaugh always wished he could be and ....
.... And it is hard for liberals to counter this because our bedrock values include tolerance, free expression and personal autonomy and that unwittingly enables this decadent turn in some ways. But let's make no mistake, it is only on the right that purveyors of brutal, sadistic, depraved political discourse are welcomed into the houses, offices and beds of the nation's political leadership...
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The problem is that the Republican Party went all in with the conservative movement over the past 25 years. George W. Bush's America was Limbaugh Nation and Limbaugh Nation was George W. Bush's America --- they have nothing else. They are nothing else....Media Matters has created a Rush web site for easy access to some of his greatest hits.
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As part of the ongoing conservative civil war, David Frum took some shots at Rush Limbaugh. And for his trouble, he’s now getting set up for some purging.
– Erick Erickson: “Are any of Rush’s critics actual solid conservatives with a record of accomplishment? David Frum worked in the White House for about five minutes and is pro-abortion. Rod Dreher’s writing bursts with contempt for middle America conservatives, Michael Steele is a Christine Todd Whitman Republican, Ross Douthat is busy redefining conservatism, etc.”
– Andy McCarthy: “What takes my breath away, though, is David Frum’s rant. He’s got a point of view about reshaping the conservative movement, and while I often disagree with it, ...."
– K-Lo: “David Frum writes: ‘Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined.’ First of all, I can’t really remember a time in 20 years now when Rush was sidelined.”
I think the sidelining point is clear enough. When conservative movement guys like George W. Bush and Tom DeLay were running the government there was a limited level of interest in what Rush Limbaugh thought about this or that. ... But with the current configuration of power, the main actors are the swing senators. ... So when people are interested in a rock-ribbed right point of view, they may as well turn to Rush—he has ....
But the sad thing, if you actually care about the country, is how tepid this conservative civil war really is. ...
Even in victory, by contrast, progressives are having intramural arguments about actual stuff—strategy in Afghanistan, carbon emissions policy, bank nationalization—not whether or not people should watch Rachel Maddow.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009 at 12:27 pm
So, the strategists figured, why not turn the turn Republican Party into a Limbaughesque caricature.
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Micheal, I hate to break this to you but the strategists had nothing to do with it. As long as the Republican strategy includes bowing to the lowest common denominator, allowing Rush Limbaugh and Newsmax and Anne Coulter and Michelle Malkin to set their agenda, then they deserve every iota of ridicule and marginalization they get.
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Part of the process of solving our real problems includes getting the idiots out of the way so they don't do any more real damage. If your feelings get hurt in the process, I'd suggest a little more self reflection is in order. You might just be part of the problem!!!
Wednesday, March 4, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Hahahahaha!
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That tears it - Michael Scherer is an old woman. He drinks weak tea, and dresses little dogs in sweaters, and doesn't understand what everyone saw in that Elvis fellow.
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The pearls have been clutched. The couch has been fainted upon.