President Obama is throwing a bipartisan Super Bowl party Sunday at the White House. But one leading conservative football fan won’t be in attendance: Rush Limbaugh. The much-heralded new era of outreach and cooperation in Washington does not extend to the Right’s most powerful voice on talk radio. With his explicit attack on Limbaugh during a Capitol Hill meeting last week, Obama has signaled the end of Bush Derangement Syndrome – the defining mental illness of the Democrats for eight years – and ushered in the age of Rush Derangement Syndrome.
You would think that victories in the presidential race and Congress would be enough for the Left. But no. Like Captain Ahab, Sen. Lindsay Graham still bristles at the “loud folks” in conservative talk radio. Democrats even drafted a petition denouncing Limbaugh last week, showing that trying to save the economy doesn’t wait for petty personal attacks.
Too bad Obama hasn’t learned the lessons of his predecessors. Limbaugh not only has survived countless protests, boycotts, media smears and political attempts to kick him off the airwaves. He has emerged each time with a higher profile, greater influence, and a strengthened hand.
In a repeat of anti-Rush history (see “vast right wing conspiracy,” et al), the White House broadside backfired – disseminating his biting critiques of the trillion-dollar omnibus spending bill to a wider audience. Rather than dividing the GOP, it united them. Not a single Republican voted for the Obama plan after unprecedented wooing, courting, and cajoling. The Rush Effect is incontestable.
Which begs the question: Why did Obama – who told House GOP leaders “you can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done” – even bring him up?
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It could have been unscripted, one of the president’s first political misspeaks. Or it could have been calculated (rather miscalculated), an effort to drive a wedge between Beltway Republicans and the outside-the-beltway king.
I think it points to a neurosis on the part of Democrats. By defining themselves more by who they oppose rather than who they are, they find themselves lost without an enemy.
The stimulus bill is a prime example – a collection of pet projects connected by no coherent ideological strategy except spending. Do Democrats really support it because it’s a good bill? Or is it simply because Republicans oppose it?
Either way, picking a fight with Rush was disastrous for the White House. Obama’s criticism of Limbaugh – and by extension, the broader influence of conservative talk radio and grass-roots activism – galvanized the base. Let’s face it – there’s been a little bit of moping since the November losses. Conservatives retreated into think tanks and blogs, trying to figure out what went wrong, sure that the public mood for empty promises would sour soon enough.
It didn’t take long. My colleagues here at the New York Post tell me after the newspaper ran its story about Obama calling out Rush, the article vaulted to No. 1 on its Web site for three consecutive days – and garnered more than 4,200 comments.
I asked Limbaugh this week why his enemies on the Left repeatedly fall into the trap of distorting his words and overreaching in their anti-talk radio demagoguery. Why, after 20 years, don’t they learn?
“On the contrary,” he said, “I think they believe all of these campaigns to have been profoundly successful. Their objective is to use their brethren in the drive-by media to echo their charges against me for the purpose of ensuring that I do not become ‘mainstream’ in the popular and political cultures. They strive to have the general population, particularly those who do not listen to the radio, hate me (and by association, all of conservatism). This happens for one reason: I am effective and thus have to be marginalized as an extremist, fringe figure.” Invoking Obama intellectual mentor Saul Alinsky’s “Rule for Radicals,” Limbaugh has reminded his audience of Rule No. 13 to explain the White House strategy: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Indeed, outraged that conservative talk radio has succeeded in the marketplace while liberals have bombed, and unnerved that new media outlets have upended mainstream journalism’s monopoly apple cart, liberals have long targeted, personalized, and polarized the medium. Bill Clinton blamed the Oklahoma City bombing on the “many loud and angry voices” in conservative talk radio that “spread hate.” Democrats continue to deride “Republican noise machines” and have long worked in Congress to marginalize, regulate and stifle influential talkers – most notably by pressing for the Armed Forces Radio Network to drop Limbaugh (Sen. Tom Harkin’s failed hobby horse in 2004) and by threatening to reinstitute the Orwellian Fairness Doctrine (as Sen. Jeff Bingaman did last fall when he hailed a return to the equal-time mandate as a way to force radio to reach its “higher calling.”) It’s all part of a recurring pattern. Conservative dissent cannot stand. Two years ago, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid picked a fight with Limbaugh over comment he made on his show about soldiers who had falsified their records. Indignant Democrats, looking to bolster damaged credibility over their failure to support the Surge, accused Limbaugh of calling all troops “phony soldiers.” Senate Democrats sent a letter of condemnation to Limbaugh. The radio host pulled a jujitsu move, calling out the distortion and auctioning off the letter on eBay for $2.1 million – which he donated to the children of fallen Marines and law enforcement officers. Limbaugh, 1; Reid, 0.
During the election season, meanwhile, Team Obama personalized the campaign fight with a ridiculous Spanish-language smear ad tying Limbaugh to McCain.
The spot so egregiously distorted Limbaugh’s monologues on immigration and the North American Free Trade Agreement that even ABC News jumped into the fray to debunk it. Wrote Jake Tapper: “There are some real factual problems with this ad, which is titled ‘Dos Caras,’ or two faces First of all, tying Sen. McCain – especially on the issue of immigration reform – to Limbaugh is unfair. Limbaugh opposed McCain on that issue. Vociferously. And in a larger sense, it’s unfair to link McCain to Limbaugh on a host of issues since Limbaugh, as any even occasional listener of his knows, doesn’t particularly care for McCain. Second, the quotes of Limbaugh’s are out of context.” Again, par for the course. And now with Obama in the Oval Office, the cycle continues. Right on cue (or rather, Left on cue), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launched a petition drive against Limbaugh over his hope that Obama’s expansive government policies fail (What he actually said: “I do not want the government in charge of all of these things. I don’t want this to work.”) Next, the George Soros-funded MoveOn rolled out a Limbaugh-bashing ad to scare up votes for the increasingly unpopular stimulus bill. To borrow Obama’s frequent explanation, it’s all a grand distraction.
As Limbaugh told me: “I am being used to distract from the polls [Rasmussen] showing falling support for the Porkulus bill. Senate Republicans need to understand that this is also about intimidating them, especially after the show of unity in the House. It is about the 2010 and 2012 elections. This is an opportunity for Republicans to redefine themselves after a few years of wandering aimlessly looking for a ‘brand’ and identity.” “Remember, the Left needs a villain, a demon, to advance their agenda. They cannot win a single argument in the arena of ideas, so they have to try and destroy the credibility and reputation of the person they feel most threatened by. In that sense I guess I have taken the place of President Bush.” And so the torch has been passed. What was once all Bush’s fault is now all Rush’s. The difference this time? The conservative talk radio bogeyman of the unhinged relishes fighting back, poking his enemies in the eye – and winning.
Michelle Malkin blogs at michellemalkin.com; [email protected]