Obama's prez campaign manager David Plouffe is allotted precious column inches in the Washington Post to attack Rush Limbaugh as "The Minority Leader": The 2008 election sent many messages. At the top: Americans wanted to turn the page on the politics of division and partisan pettiness, and they wanted a government -- and country -- that would put the middle class first. Watching the Republicans operate this past month, it would appear that they missed that unmistakable signal. Instead, Rush Limbaugh has become their leader. Limbaugh, of course, told his radio listeners that he's rooting for President Obama to fail -- and hoping the president's ideas for bolstering our economy fail with him. For many Americans, hungry for leadership and cooperation, this sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard. When Limbaugh reiterated the sentiment this weekend, hundreds of Republican conservatives cheered him on. But instead of rebuking the radio personality or charting their own course, Republican leaders in Washington are paralyzed with fear of crossing their leader. Less than 24 hours after committing the unforgivable sin of criticizing Limbaugh, RNC Chairman Michael Steele felt compelled to publicly apologize. He was not the first and will certainly not be the last.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Take Me To Your Leader!
Obama's prez campaign manager David Plouffe is allotted precious column inches in the Washington Post to attack Rush Limbaugh as "The Minority Leader": The 2008 election sent many messages. At the top: Americans wanted to turn the page on the politics of division and partisan pettiness, and they wanted a government -- and country -- that would put the middle class first. Watching the Republicans operate this past month, it would appear that they missed that unmistakable signal. Instead, Rush Limbaugh has become their leader. Limbaugh, of course, told his radio listeners that he's rooting for President Obama to fail -- and hoping the president's ideas for bolstering our economy fail with him. For many Americans, hungry for leadership and cooperation, this sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard. When Limbaugh reiterated the sentiment this weekend, hundreds of Republican conservatives cheered him on. But instead of rebuking the radio personality or charting their own course, Republican leaders in Washington are paralyzed with fear of crossing their leader. Less than 24 hours after committing the unforgivable sin of criticizing Limbaugh, RNC Chairman Michael Steele felt compelled to publicly apologize. He was not the first and will certainly not be the last.
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Limbaugh and Steele merely make manifest the fact that republicans are divided lots of ways: moderates versus conservatives, libertarians versus social conservatives, interventionists versus isolationists, and supply-siders versus balanced budget hawks. When you're winning it's easy to paper over such. When you're not...
ReplyDeleteSo who can tell me how Rush saying he hopes Obama's stimulus package fails is different or worse than Harry Reid and others declaring the Iraq war lost and Bush was flat out incompetent before even the first boot was on the ground during the surge? I really want an answer to this. I wish some talking head would ask the question of some Democrat too.
ReplyDeleteOne is juat as abd as the other.
ReplyDeleteBobcat,
ReplyDeleteEast to do - if the stimulus plan fails, the hope is we won't have to spend any more good money after bad. Doing nothing will do more to correct the ship than spending more. And, lowering tax rates will speed us along the proper path.
If we declared failure in Iraq and pulled out at Harry reid (and Obama's) insistance, good soldiers would have died in vain. Plus, we would eventually have to go back there on a humanitarian mission, and the job would be that much more difficult. Plus, radical muslims would gain a stronger foothold in the muslim community because in the moderate muslim mind, "America let us down AGAIN!"
That's how it is different.
Astute observation, jimbo. I want to disagree but I can't.
ReplyDeleteHad President Bush not abandoned free market principles so there wouldn't have been a banking system collapse on his watch, the fall would have been hard, indeed, but it also would have been short-lived. But billions and billions have been invested to prop-up those that should have failed and we're no farther ahead.
Failed business tactics should be allowed to fail so that the stronger and wiser tactics can sweep in to fill the leftover voids.
What's being done now is little different than what FDR first attempted toward ending the Great Depression, and that effort made things much worse. History repeats. This time, though, it doesn't appear that economic recovery is really the goal of our government's practices and policies.