Rush Limbaugh: GOP Court Jester

The Washington Post has a great op-ed that looks at the sorry state of the GOP led now for all practical purposes by its court jester, Rush Limbaugh. True, El Rushbo as he calls himself at times, still has a loyal, bigoted, anti-gay, anti-black, anti-woman, anti-immigrant following and continues to rake in the money. But that is something very different from leading a collapsing political party back from the wilderness. In politics, the goal should be to assembly a working majority of voters not drinking a lace Kool-Aid potion to appeal to a delusional minority. Yet that seems to be where the GOP is headed and at an ever increasing pace as moderates and those able to engage in critical thinking skills flee the GOP ship as if it were the Titanic or Lusitania. As I have comment before, historically, most of my family were Republicans - before the party became the party of religious extremists and the intolerant and the brain dead. Here are some column highlights:

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As someone who spends a lot of time on the road, I used to find Limbaugh to be an obnoxious but entertaining companion, his eruptions more reliable than Old Faithful. But now that Limbaugh has become something else — the face of the Republican Party, by a White House that has played him brilliantly — he has been transformed into car-wreck-quality spectacle, at once scary and sad.

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Behold: The sweaty, swollen man in the black, half-buttoned shirt who ranted for nearly 90 minutes Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference. He reiterated his desire to see the president of his country fail. He misstated the Constitution’s intent while accusing President Obama of “bastardizing” the document. He made fun of one man’s service in Vietnam, to laughter.

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Smarter Republicans know he is not good for them. As the conservative writer David Frum said recently, “If you’re a talk radio host and you have five million who listen and there are 50 million who hate you, you make a nice living. If you’re a Republican party, you’re marginalized.”

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Race is an obsession with Limbaugh, one of the threads I noticed on those long drives on country roads. When Colin Powell endorsed Obama during the campaign, Limbaugh said it was entirely because of race. After the election, Powell said the way for the party, which has been his home, to regain its footing was to say the Republican Party must stop “shouting at the world.”

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It’s little wonder that the thrice-married Limbaugh, who uses “femi-Nazi,” “info-babe” and “PMSNBC” (Get it? The network is full of women suffering pre-menstrual cramps, ha-ha), among his monikers for women, can’t get a date with that demographic. For Democrats, this is all going to plan.

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Limbaugh played his role, ever the fool. A brave Republican could have challenged him, could have had a “have you no shame” moment with him, giving the party some other identity, some spine. Instead, they caved — from Steele, to the leaders in the House, Eric Cantor and Mike Pence, to Gov. Bobby Jindal, who would be ridiculed by Limbaugh for his real first name, Piyush, were he a Democrat.

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But Limbaugh has a fear of his own. If people see him purely as an “entertainer,” as Steele suggested, he will be exposed for what he is: a clown with a very large audience.