There's an important cliche regarding history that Obama appears to know nothing about: those who ignore history are bound to repeat it. By taking on Rush and making him the target, Obama is expanding Rush's reach and influence. He is making Clinton's mistake:
By one measure, Rush Limbaugh is a clear winner this week: His ratings have nearly doubled since his feud with the White House burst into the media limelight.I'm not sure it's in the best interest of the president to send listeners to hear of all his missteps, lies, and total lack of understanding of what to do when in a recession (i.e., cut corporate and capital gains taxes -- even China get's it). Limbaugh can be very persuasive:[...]
This is not the first time Limbaugh has bedeviled a Democratic president. In 1994, Bill Clinton lashed out at conservative talk show hosts, saying that Limbaugh "has three hours to say whatever he wants" with "no truth detector." Limbaugh helped galvanize support for the Republican takeover of Congress that year.
But, McKinnon said, "whatever you think of Rush, he is one of the most effective political communicators in history. So I don't think turning up his microphone is necessarily a wise way to go." For Obama, he said, "a fistfight with a brawler like Rush only drags him down to the street."
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All I can say is that fortunately the talk radio station I listen to did not renew their contract to have Limbaugh fill the 12:00-3:00PM spot daily. I used to turn off the station during those times as even a minute of him was utterly sickening. He is such a waste of air time. I'd turn it back on after 3:00 to listen again.
Interesting article written by a conservative Republican that is "livid and angry" about Limbaugh being seen as the voice/head of the Republican Party. A small extract:
Why Rush is Wrong By David Frum, Conservative Republican
The party of Buckley and Reagan is now bereft and dominated by the politics of Limbaugh. A conservative's lament.
On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of "responsibility," and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.
And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as "losers." With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence—exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we're cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush's every rancorous word—we'll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.
Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined.
...
Rush Limbaugh is a seriously unpopular figure among the voters that conservatives and Republicans need to reach. Forty-one percent of independents have an unfavorable opinion of him, according to the new NEWSWEEK Poll. Limbaugh is especially off-putting to women: his audience is 72 percent male, according to Pew Research. Limbaugh himself acknowledges his unpopularity among women. On his Feb. 24 broadcast, he said with a chuckle: "Thirty-one-point gender gaps don't come along all that often … Given this massive gender gap in my personal approval numbers … it seems reasonable for me to convene a summit."
Sometimes I get livid and angry … We've got factions now within our own movement seeking power to dominate it, and, worst of all, to redefine it.
http://tinyurl.com/ambo3c
"I continue to ask for civil discourse..."
start by setting an example. and then ask for it from michele.
i believe i read a comment of yours saying that you listen to limbaugh. i guess i'll have to dig it up.
"If President Obama would happen to lead in a more centrist ways, I would hope that he succeeds in putting policies into place that benefit our country."
again, after bush, we have the country leaning farther right than ever before in history, and righties are complaining that they want obama to lead in "more centrist ways." i'm pretty sure i didn't hear them saying that about bush.
obama comes up with a stimulus plan that includes many centrist ideas for helping the economy. but it's not a rightie's dream. it's just not good enough for them. so the paint him as a leftist, or worse... a socialist. *gasp*
Julie, you care too much, I think. Rush Limbaugh is - and has always been, and has never aspired to be more than - a conservative entertainer. He's absolutely tickled at all this fooraw; today he agreed with a caller that his (to regular listeners) clear and absolutely sensible statement that if Obama's going to hew to the giant-government, "never waste a good crisis" line he appears to be starting out on, naturally Rush wants him to fail, was a useful statement, even as it's willfully misinterpreted, because it gets the conversation going. And beyond that, he thinks it's just funny that the President of the United States has set himself up in opposition to a radio talk show host - and not just once!
Don't care so much.
Rush doesn't actually hate, though strenuous criticism does appear to sound like "hate" to many on the Left; he critiques, and he mocks. He critiques based on his observations of liberals over his adult life and based on history, and he mocks from a particular ideological viewpoint. His listeners get it, get him, and generally agree. Those who dislike-to-hate him listen to him a few times, are almost always outraged at what they hear (after all, they disagree - he's not out to convert so much as to confirm his audience's political beliefs, which he shares), and absolutely fail to understand the satire, the pretend-self-aggrandizing humor ("I know liberals like every inch of my glorious naked body" - you think he doesn't know what he looks like?), the verbal shortcuts that the preacher to the choir can easily use.
As for the person who scorned both Limbaugh (whom I often enjoy) and Hannity (whom I never enjoy) for not having been to college, my friend, your argument is classic appeal-to-authority; it's what we college gradgimates call a "logical fallacy." Not having attended college neither means that a person is stupid nor disqualifies that person from speaking on an easily learned-about subject like the obvious and well-documented liberal bias in academia.
dear college gradgimate (aka your name), as i am not a limbaugh listener - let alone a regular - i often wonder what the radio clown had to say about former president bush and his use of the "never waste a good crisis" career plan. after all, it did carry him through the 9.11 crisis (he got a lot of mileage from that one!), and win him enough congressional votes to obliterate iraq, allow him to spy illegally, carry out torture, and to squeeze off a second term. and what most people aren't aware of, he actually was able to cash in on the crisis caused by katrina, as well.
so, mon ami, did limbaugh share with his loyal flock his hope that bush would fail during the eight years that he was hewing to the giant-government, as you would say? and know that it's not that i care so much about limbaugh, but i care about his audience, those whose political beliefs he shares.
academia has a liberal bias, you say? well, i can't argue with that one.
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