Poetic justice: Limbaugh tries to tear GOP apart by Eric Boehlert

[Douglas Carpenter]

This is an excellent article that provides a certain amount of bemused schadenfreude. I highly recommend reading the whole article

link: http://mediamatters.org/columns/200802120001

"Rush Limbaugh, the marauding Frankenstein's monster of the Republican Party, is on the loose again, causing all kinds of political damage with his signature off-balance swings. But as has become his custom recently, the pain from Limbaugh's rampage is being felt by his creators -- his enablers -- inside the GOP.

Limbaugh and the rest of his get-John McCain brain trust -- Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin, and campus instigator Ann Coulter -- have been tripping over themselves to get in front of a microphone (preferably a television one) to denounce the Republican Party's presumptive nominee and to suggest that perhaps conservatives should even vote Democratic come November."

snips:

"But this is what Republicans created. They wanted Limbaugh to be an attack dog and to chew up and spit out his/the party's opponents. They wanted him to label Democrats as traitors ("What's good for Al Qaeda is good for the Democratic Party in this country today"), to label them abhorrent and mentally deranged. They wanted Limbaugh to ignore any semblance of decency when demonizing the other side. Indeed, there has been virtually no offensive line that Limbaugh has crossed that Republicans have not dutifully justified or explained away.

Even last year when Limbaugh denigrated members of the U.S. armed forces, calling military men and women who criticized the war in Iraq and advocated withdrawal "phony soldiers," what did the GOP do? It rushed to Limbaugh's defense. "

"Meanwhile, it really was rather sad to watch former Sen. Bob Dole last week write a letter to Limbaugh trying to reason with the talk-show host about whether candidate McCain was sufficiently conservative. Or when McCain himself suggested that the talk show hosts simply "calm down." Or when Bud McFarlane, former national security adviser to President Reagan, took to the pages of The Wall Street Journal over the weekend to urge Rush and his angry pack to "be rational."

Rational? Where have these Republicans been for the last decade? The Noise Machine doesn't do rational. Was Limbaugh being "rational" when he toasted photos of the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib as "good old American pornography"? Was Malkin being rational last year when she attempted to Swift Boat a traumatically injured 12-year-old boy? Was Coulter being rational ... well, ever?

Sorry, GOP grown-ups. If there's one thing the Republican Noise Machine is allergic to, it's reason. And decency, and respect, and rational behavior. "

"Fact is, every time Limbaugh causes a controversy these days, the Democratic Party's political fortunes rise just a little bit -- like when he's treating McCain like a bum, or degrading phony soldiers, or mocking actor Michael J. Fox for allegedly faking the symptoms of his crippling Parkinson's disease while appearing in a Democratic-sponsored campaign ad.

What's so spectacular for the home team is that Limbaugh's crusade to demolish McCain stems from the radical right's fervent desire to cleanse the Republican Party of those who are deemed to be insufficiently pure in their conservative beliefs. And it's not just the candidates. Limbaugh has been clear that his deep disdain for McCain is driven by the fact that he might attract voters in the fall -- the wrong voters -- who do not adhere to the radical right's litmus test of right and wrong. "

"And then there was Laura Ingraham, the oxymoronic thinking person's right-wing radio host, who became so unnerved at the prospect of a McCain nomination that she suggested that some despondent conservatives would turn themselves into "suicide voters" and cast a ballot for a Democrat in November rather than vote for McCain. (Charles Hurt, the D.C. bureau chief for the New York Post, made the same unhinged analogy.)

Suicide voters and anal poisonings, all in the name of destroying the Republican nominee from within. Hey, GOP, that's quite a Noise Machine you've constructed. Now good luck trying to dismantle it.

—E.B."

link to full article:

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200802120001


.

[JNelson6563]

1. The irony....it hurts

:rofl:

[El Pinko]

2. This is what the GOP want us to think. It's an effort to paint McCain as moderate, which he is NOT

I think the GOP are well aware that Bush has done serious damage to the party and to the reputation of the conservative movement. They know that anyone who runs in the GE as a conservative will probably lose to a moderate democrat like Hillary or Obama. The GOP has decided that the only way to sell McCain is to paint him as a "maverick" and a "moderate", despite the fact that his voting record is 97% lockstep GOP right-wing.

It's a cynical ploy and Limbaugh and company are doing this ON ORDERS from the GOP - don't doubt it for a second. The question is will it work well enough to compensate for McCain's awful personality and temperament? Hard to say...

[Cosmocat]

4. Yep ...

That is it in a nutshell ...

The "conservative" brand has been tarnished to the point where their hysterical hyperbole ain't selling anymore ... They know they likely have to take a loss, then operate from the role they like the best, taking pot shots at dems in charge, letting things settle down then prey on the country when people get complacent again ...

The other factor is that McCain will not 100 percent kiss their rings ... It is just bizarre that these freaks got 100 percent behind Rudy, then Romney, guys who have NO history as "conservatives" while doing their mental gymnastics to try to paint a guy who is a life long "conservative" as not being a conservative ...

Rudy and Romney did the obligatory kiss their rear ends all day and all night ...

Mix of ego and self interests ...

[fasttense]

5. I don't think they are capable of such reverse logic.

Vote for McCain because I hate him? No way are they able to even articulate such a sentiment let alone act it out. No, their job is to tell the base what to think. And they don't like McCain plain and simple. But once McCain has secured the repuke nomination, they will fall all over themselves in support of the old geezer. They will certainly attack the Democratic choice with the vigor of rabid dogs.

[El Pinko]

7. I disagree. The people in charge of the GOP are cynical machiavellian geniuses.

Don't confuse them with the vast majority of idiots who actually VOTE GOP...

I do agree with the second part of your post, but I think they will continue the bullshit moderate/maverick meme right up to the election.


Believe me, you would not have all of these wingnuts like Coulter, Limbaugh, etc. trashing McCain & praising Clinton & Obama if it wasn't part of an orchestrated effort.


Of course, it just may be that they've seen the economic writing on the wall and have resigned to let a democrat take the White House this time so that the dems can take the blame for the absolute economic SHITSTORM that is brewing right now....

[pretzel4gore]

6. when your opponent pushes, you pull...

and when she pulls, you push! Judo. Pigpolitics. Simple. ("No one ever went broke over estimating the sneaky trickery of the gopigs' as PT Barnum once said
(notice how the pigmedia pretends it's already working even without any proof that Americans are falling for it? They don't have to: 90 percent of Americans can see mccain as bush lackey but the pigmedia still pretend the 90 percent actually see Our Hero as one of the few who defied junyer etc, thus redeeming the gopig party w/out any effort or expense)

[no_hypocrisy]

3. IMO what we are witnessing are right-wing radio show hosts trying to co-opt

the leadership of the RNC, trying to define what is a conservative, what is a republican, and thereby trying to control the criteria of leadership of this country. It's nothing less than subversive.

[HelenWheels]

8. Publicity ploy

This is Rush's way to insert himself into the lime light. When push comes to shove he will back the Repuke nominee.

[radfringe]

9. after the 2006 midterms

November 15, 2006
Rush Limbaugh, on the results of 2006 election:

The way I feel is this: I feel liberated, and I'm gonna - I'm just gonna tell you as plainly as I can why. I no longer am going to have to carry the water for people who I don't think deserve having their water carried.

Now, you might say, well, why have you been doing it? Because the stakes are high. Even though the Republican Party let us down, to me, they represent a far better future for my beliefs, and therefore the country's, than the Democrat Party does, and liberalism. And I believe my side is worthy of victory. And I believe it's much easier to reform things that are going wrong on my side from a position of strength.

Now, I'm liberated from having to constantly come in here every day and try to buck up a bunch of people who don't deserve it.

[Nay]

10. Well, see, that's the thing about rabid attack dogs--sometimes they

turn around and bite their owners on the leg...yeah, that dog that you loved to walk down the sidewalk, the one you used to menace passersby with? They get rabid and crazy enough to think it's all about them, and that no one owns them. Good luck, pubbies.

But then again, this could only be a ploy of some kind.

[Happyhippychick]

11. I know that this is asking a lot, but can somebody explain to me

why Rush is discouraging people from voting for McCain and then he goes on to say that he wants them to vote for Hillary because she can rally the Republicans to vote for McCain?

And I don't buy that the GOP is engineering this for one single second. The GOP is in tatters over the "I am more conservative than he is" crapola that was happening during the primaries. The GOP is eating their own. This is not (in my opinion) a GOP sponsored event; we are instead witnessing the demise of this dangerous institution.

[tanyev]

12. Time for the GOP to reap what it has sown.

[kevinbgoode]

13. For a political philosophy that constantly wails about "political correctness"

I think we are seeing just who are the REAL "PC" police. . .the fringe nutcases on the Right who monopolize the opinions on broadcast television, talk radio, and in the pages of most newspapers and magazines.

And they all dutifully fall into lock-step on almost every issue, wailing about it on cue every time. I can remember a local newspaper columnist who would always echo whatever the big wingnut columnists said without ever doing any of his own research. I caught his ass misrepresenting facts so blatantly that I protested loudly to the newspaper, including notifying a national organization of his personal smear campaign. He claimed he was only writing his "opinion". . .I claimed he never read the legal case he claimed to have an "opinion" about, but lifted his "opinion" from the wingnut machine. In the end, I wrote a guest column scorching his tactics and reminding readers that someone who always whined about HIS right of freedom of speech was always advocating censorship of other opinions.