Time‘s Michael Scherer reads Jonathan Martin’s piece in Politico on how happy the Dems are to let the GOP brand themselves as the party of Rush and concludes, incredibly, “this entire controversy has been cooked up and force fed to the American people by Obama’s advisers.”
I’ll let Greg Sargent do the honors of taking down this nonsense.
DC Madame scandal vet Sen. Vitter (R-LA) pushing to take family planning money out of the omnibus budget bill.
These are trying times. So I appreciate the right wing media’s efforts to keep me rolling in laughs. I happened over to Drudge’s site to see “Enemies List: White House Plots Limbaugh Coverage”. That links through to Jonathan Martin’s piece in The Politico. And Michael Scherer picks it up in Time in a sort of broad-ranging homage to the greatness of David Broder.
It seems the Obama White House is mobilizing the vast power of the federal government to make Rush really popular among GOP nutball dead-enders, then coax various Republican officials to criticize Rush and then compel these same officials to issue craven and humiliating recantations of those criticisms.
The right’s capacity for gonzo victimhood really knows no end. Let’s focus on the realities here. Most people don’t like Rush Limbaugh. But for whatever reason he remains a redeemer-like figure for the rump of the Republican party. Politically that’s a very bad place for the GOP to be. They’re unable to criticize him. And their need to kowtow to him marginalizes them. But enough of the structural ins and outs of it. Fundamentally, it’s bad for Republicans because Rush is really where the GOP is right now. That’s all that’s left. And most Americans really don’t like that.
Via Ezra Klein, when David Frum nails it, the guy nails it …
Here’s the duel that Obama and Limbaugh are jointly arranging:
On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of “responsibility,” and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.
And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word – we’ll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.
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.
From TPM Reader LF …
During the campaign, McCain hammered away on earmarks as if it were the end-all, be-all of reform. Obama basically humored him, but pointed out that there were much more important things. Now that Obama won, McCain is blasting Obama for not keeping McCain’s campaign promises.
Deep Thought:
Did anyone mention to McCain that he lost?
The White House has apparently brokered a deal between the House Judiciary Committee and former President Bush that will require Karl Rove and Harriet Miers to testify about the politicization of the Justice Department.
How can we believe in Obama now that Democrats have made fun of Rush?
To explain the Michael Steele trainwreck former Bush spokesperson and now talking head Nicolle Wallace compares him to the freakshow singers in the early auditions on American Idol …