As we saw yesterday, RNC Chairman Michael Steele quailed before the Great and Powerful Gasbag, meekly offering a Maoist recantation before being shipped off to the reeducation camp. The pundits are discussing Rush’s grip on the GOP’s nads as if it were a new development -- as if Limbaugh filled a power vacuum created by McCain’s defeat at the polls this November.
It goes back a lot further than that. Limbaugh is the bully who shoved McCain rightward in this election cycle, thus destroying McCain’s only advantage: his so-called maverick cred. Every boneheaded choice McCain made after that -- alienating the once-love struck media, picking empty-headed troglodyte pin-up girl Palin to round out the ticket, etc. -- all of it was a direct consequence of McCain's ill-advised decision to suck up to the Limbaughs of his party. And it cost him the election.
Once upon a time (2002, to be exact), McCain had the balls to call Limbaugh out:
After comparing Mr. Limbaugh to a "circus clown," the Arizona Republican apologized. "I regret that statement," he told an interviewer on Fox News the other night, "because my office has been flooded with angry phone calls from circus clowns all over America. They resent that comparison, and so I would like to extend my apologies to Bozo, Chuckles and Krusty."Limbaugh declared war on McCain for this apostasy, relentlessly denigrating McCain’s conservative cred even after McCain secured the GOP nomination in 2008. And as he demonstrated after his short-lived courage in confronting the "agents of intolerance" of the religious right, McCain has always been about political expediency over principles, despite his undeserved reputation to the contrary. He quickly caved to the wingnuts.
The irony is, the McCain of 2000 might have been able to differentiate himself from Bush and have a shot in 2008. But Limbaugh made sure he went the other direction. As his bombastic rhetoric makes clear, Limbaugh believes McCain lost because he wasn’t rightwing enough. That view seems to have been internalized by the entire party, and it’s the exact opposite of reality.
Limbaugh probably does not have the pull he thinks he does in terms of actual numbers of listeners and ability to make them do his bidding. Operation Chaos was a flop in the final analysis. But the GOP leadership evidently believes Limbaugh wields great power, and that perception is just as good as reality at the moment. Until the GOP leadership is willing to stand up to Limbaugh, he’ll continue to lead them further into the wilderness. Long live Captain Wilderness!
[Cross-posted at Rumproast]
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