For years, Rush Limbaugh’s unchecked power within the greater conservative movement was mystifying. Was the best the GOP had to offer in the early Clinton years really that the president’s daughter was ugly? Were they actually so twisted by ideology that they would question the veracity of Michael J. Fox’s involuntary spasms because he was saying something they disagreed with? Coming from the same party that once welcomed Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley, Jr., Limbaugh’s ascendancy had the feeling of a massive put-on.
But it wasn’t until El RushBo’s controversial keynote address at CPAC, and the Obama White House’s concordant reframing of the narrative to cast the nationally syndicated talk radio host as the de facto leader of the Republican Party, that long-missing pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican Party. They’re running as far away from the presidency of George W. Bush as they can; RNC Chairman Michael Steele is ineffectual (see the emerging consensus among right-leaning politicos that Steele should quit) and servile (see Steele’s dissing of, and consequent apologizing to, Limbaugh); Bobby Jindal’s not-State of the Union rebuttal was a spectacular eruption of fail (if only someone had been monitoring that volcano); for all their post-election posturing, Arizona Senator John McCain and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin did a fine job of giving Barack Obama a wide-margin electoral victory; Joe the Plumber’s main claim to fame is being famous; and Jonathan Krohn is only 14. But here’s the rub about Limbaugh’s leadership: Mr. Hillbilly Heroin is a sleeper agent of the Democratic Party, and having been maneuvered into prominence over a great number of years, is unwittingly on the verge of fulfilling his mission. That mission, which he was brainwashed into unknowingly accepting, is to put the final nail in the coffin of American conservatism.
For a useful idiot like Rush Limbaugh to work, he had to embody the celebrated virtues of the ideology as well as its greatest excesses. On that second count, Rush has exceeded even his programmers greatest expectations. He’s loud and crass and he has self-control issues that make Bill Clinton look like a role model in restraint. He is the Id-driven dark heart of conservative thinking, giving form to every strand of animus, no matter how reprehensible. Congressional Republicans not-so-secretly worship at his alter, so when Limbaugh says he wants Obama to fail or challenges him to thrown down on his show, they’re the one who end up with egg on their faces.
As the last month has shown, to go against Rush Limbaugh in public is to invite political disaster. This hamstrings the opposition party in ways that are equally destructive, but ideologically pure. Forced into an endgame by a radio personality they think is on their side, the GOP’s fresh new idea is to advocate a spending freeze. If Obama’s economic approach recalls FDR, theirs recalls Herbert Hoover’s. With their political foes agitating for policies that would worsen our own great depression, Rush Limbaugh has served his Democratic masters well. If they weren’t planning to eliminate him after he completes his mission, he’d be on the fast track for a well-deserved promotion.
