I had the misfortune of having to listen to some of Rush Limbaugh’s speech on the radio yesterday. I tried to hang on and listen as long as I could-but there came a point where I just could not stand it anymore. Rush Limbaugh does not care about people-except in how they can line his overstuffed pockets of his over sized trousers. I hit the preset and turned it over to the 80’s channel.
Afterwards though I thought about it some-and marveled at the fact that old Rush was still around and able to be a person of influence. He’s made a career out of being outrageous and has the bank account to prove it.
Rush Limbaugh and the rest of his cohort are outrageous. Yet they get away with it. Voice your opinion strongly on the other side? You get castigated and spat upon.
I went back and googled my nom de guerre as an after thought. Since I comment on a lot of blogs and have written a lot myself, there is a pretty good electronic trail for me. I went back and read some of my comments over the years. Some are pretty damn smart, if do say so my self, others were ill considered and could have been phrased better, and a lot are in between. However I’ve been pretty consistent about the things I feel strongly about. Does not amount to a hill of beans in the grand scheme of things.
I find it interesting that Rush’s kind of outrageousness gets rewarded. What is really sad, to me, is that those within the Republican party who actually recognize that the stridency of the herd at CPAC is driving too many good people away-those folks are branded with derogatory terms like Rino. Jon Huntsman of Utah points out well-what Rush Limbaugh and the rest ignore: “Our moral soap-box was completely taken away from us because of our behavior in the last few years,” he said last week. “For us to now criticize analogous behavior [in excessive spending and borrowing] is hypocrisy.”
But that’s not what Rush wants. Its interesting that he uses the same words he once labeled as traitorous-in that he wants the President to fail. When the other side said it, that was treason. When Rush says it-that’s somehow OK.
Its Ok because Rush needs for the President to fail. As was noted in The Times of London:
Hence the one sliver of Republican hope. They need an epic failure from Obama to give them some chance of regaining power. They need a second Great Depression, intensified by a long-term fiscal failure. It’s just tragic – for both right and left – that the only serious path back from the brink for the Republicans is the implosion of their own country.
When guys like him become the spokesman of the opposition ideas-the ideas never get heard. Which is sad, because there are some important things to be herd from the right, right now. Especially with respect to when spending and taxation goes too far.