I think some Democrats were surprised to see how much power Rush Limbaugh has now that the Republicans don’t have the White House or majorities in Congress. We’ve seen one Republican officeholder after another apologize to Limbaugh for making small criticisms of his work. 
But, the real indicator of Rush’s clout isn’t these apologies…it’s the $750,000 the NRSC just plowed into Norm Coleman’s legal coffers. Some people think the Republicans are blocking Franken for procedural reasons (to block a filibuster-proof Senate majority, for example). They’re not. Franken’s vote is unlikely to be all that decisive. They are spending three-quarters of a million dollars for Norm Coleman’s pointless legal challenges for one simple reason.
Al Franken wrote a book about their leader. And it wasn’t a flattering book. It referred to Herr Limbaugh’s weight. It makes no sense to waste money on Norm Coleman that would be better spent on candidates running for the Senate in 2010. But keeping Rush Limbaugh’s giant-sized ego salved is an expensive and (apparently) critical job.
I have no idea how the NRSC chairman Sen. John Cornyn can explain this expense to big-time Republican donors. But I think every dittohead in the country understands it. Anyone that fucks with Limbaugh is going to get fucked with in return. Even if it wastes $750,000 and sets a bad precedent. It’s Rush Limbaugh über alles with these people.
Pass the OxyContin.
Ugh! The mental picture has put me off for supper and will probably give me nightmares tonight.
Forgive me for going Off-Topic… but keep an eye on San Francisco tomorrow. Looks like the CA Supreme Court will rule on whether Prop 8 was constitutional or not.
Seems San Francisco and San Diego Police Departments might have been given some advance warning. See here and here.
Actually .. SF’s mayor asked the Supreme Court to hold off .. and the Supreme Court complied .. $5 goes to the Blue America candidate of your choice .. if you can tell me why Gavin did that … the reason has a solid basis behind it .. and a lot of SF resident I am sure know why(hint: Sean Penn is involed .. as always)
That was a great book. Must read.
I read Al’s “The Truth, with jokes.” (follow-up to “LIES and the lying liars who tell them.”) Also a great book.
We NEED to seat Al as soon as possible.It probably even makes many Democratic Senators nervous, but he’s gonna tell it like it is.
When you can’t win elections you have to have the cash to steal ’em.
Rush gets a bailout from the party. Meanwhile, the party continues to shrink.
Olbermann was great tonight. See it if you haven’t.
F Rush from me too!!
The whole Limbaugh situation is really bizarre. He’s not running (and so far as I can recall, has never run) for elected office and has never served in an appointed position within the government or even the Republican Party, nor has he shown the least inclination to do so in the future. Forget putting country first; this guy isn’t even putting his party first. The kowtowing he’s been getting from wayward GOP officials is purely self-serving: it generates news coverage, and that helps Limbaugh sell advertising, as well as providing the intangible benefit of an ego rub.
And sure, there have been other prominent right-wing leaders who were not politicians. Take James Dobson and Jerry Falwell for example, or any of a dozen other leaders of religious pressure groups and single-issue secular PACs. But those people had causes outside themselves, in addition to their overinflated egos. Limbaugh’s cause is… Limbaugh. He’s become like Hitler in the Third Reich’s last days, perfectly content to take the whole of Germany down with him.
But here’s the vital difference: by the time Hitler retreated to his bunker, there really wasn’t much the Germans could do, especially on the Russian front, but fight and die. The GOP is just a political party that’s had a grand total of two bad election cycles. They don’t have to send old men and children to man the barricades and fight to the bitter end. They just have to pull their heads out of their asses and stop pursuing a course that turns off everyone but Limbaugh’s audience.
While I am perfectly happy to see the GOP self-destruct and isolate the slack-jawed reactionaries that are all that remains of its base, I am quite frankly amazed that GOP politicians — apparently, including even the upper echelons of the party — are just letting it happen so some radio huckster can make millions hawking Oreck vacuums and Gold Bond Medicated Powder.
Is the remaining GOP leadership really that stupid? I mean, come on, these are Republicans. Sure, there have always been a bunch of dumb rabble rousers from the more rural states, but for all of the mind-boggling evil of the GOP leadership, they used to be smart and tenacious — if they weren’t, they wouldn’t have spent the majority of the post-WW2 era beating the snot out of the left. They’ve gone from William F. Buckley to Glenn Beck in a dizzyingly short space of time.
I tell you, folks, if I was a player in the GOP old guard, with all of the resources and total lack of moral restraint that implies, I’d send Limbaugh a message, and failing that, I’d have him whacked. That he’s running amok with no external restraint suggests to me that the party really is moribund, and now is the time for the Democrats to be particularly energetic and ruthless about finishing them off once and for all.
Of course, to do that, we need to get rid of Harry Reid first.
I wonder what the world would be like if we woke up tomorrow and learned Limbaugh was dead. Would the conservative politicians show up to the funeral?
As for Franken, he’s a funny writer. I liked both “The Truth” and “Lies”, but haven’t read the Limbaugh one yet.
Whack him and claim the liberals did it. Hitler did something like that to his right-wing competitors in 1934. It worked for him.
Hm, Rush Limbaugh as Ernst Röhm, eh? And I always thought that was Larry Craig’s role! 😉
Guess Russ Limbaugh is king of the republican hill and his devoted followers are loyal to the end, which in his case can come none too soon.
The thing is that people like Limbaugh certainly can dish it out, but melt like cheese in a cheeseburger when someone like Keith Olbermann calls him out on his stupidity. Limbaugh loves to beat his chest, loves to hear himself spew his racist garbage, and think he is relevant to people’s everyday lives, but he fails to understand one very important issue, he’s a nutjob!!!! Limbaugh is feeling the heat from Olbermann, and can’t take it. Rush is the neighborhood bully, and the only way to stand up to the bully is too look him square in the face, and challenge him. Another Limbaugh line is that he is the harmless victim of liberal smears, and plays this hate card for all it’s worth. Apparently, the first amendment rights, to Rush, only apply to him.
Rush Limbaugh is the victim of his own mouth. He says things that are incredibly stupid, yet when someone has the nuts to call him on it, he rants and raves like a 5 year old. I don’t always agree with Olbermann, but in this case, go to town Keith!! Limbaugh needs to be exposed for the liar, fraud and asshole he truly is.
Limbaugh needs to be exposed for the liar, fraud and asshole he truly is.
It’s already happened, repeatedly, and it hasn’t and won’t help.
Hey, ECM — take a drive through the middle part of the country.
The part of the country where Jesus trumps math, and Rush, yes, trumps Jesus.
Actually, the South part of the country. Here in the North middle, not so much.
Fair enough.
that is truly hilarious.
Interesting take on the motivation. Whatever the “thinking” on this, it would be worth sending mail to the GOP donors list asking if they intended their donations to be used for licking Limbaugh’s boots.
For many of them, the fact that blocking Franken from the Senate pisses off liberals is enough for them to think that their money is well spent. Pissing off generic liberals AND Al Franken is a two-fer.
Yeah, that is true for many of them. But we don’t care about the hardcore idiots. There are still lots of GOP voters who are uncomfortable being in the Limbaugh Party, as the inside-party strife demonstrates. They’re the ones we’re after. Plus, we’re not necessarily looking to convert them. We’re out to stir the pot.