In fairness to Limbaugh, I doubt he’d back out. His ego wouldn’t allow it.
Erm, maybe I am not following what you are saying but how about Bush and Bush as Republican presidents since Reagan?
Maybe it’s because I’m suffering from a really bad cold, but I do not understand a damn word in the OP’s article.
Maybe Cantor was so reflexively voting no that he didn’t notice that major programs dealing with the mess his party made are coming out one after another. It is true that the Press Secretary is wasting his time listening to crap, but maybe he has the time since he doesn’t have to hold meetings to figure out how to tell the press what the president really meant all the time.
Hush! They’re trying to make us forget that there was a Republican president for the last 8 years. Either that, or pretend that Bush was a secret Democrat.
Should have put in a smiley, but I thought the joke was obvious. Bush is the traditional leader of the Republican party, but I doubt he’ll get invited out much.
That’s what the “Bush-Obama” line Gingrich has been trying is supposed to accomplish - convince Republicans that this mess o’ crap isn’t their fault, and they don’t really have to change, because Bush did it all and he wasn’t really a Republican anyway.
No doubt it works on some folks.
At 67% approval rating, if there’s a national debate it will be held on The Obama Show.
I thought this article was interesting. It basically states that Obama’s approval ratings at this point in the new Presidency are really nothing out of the ordinary. Even compared with GWB…and that was following a hotly contested election in 2000 with the Florida chads and all.
The only President that was a significant outlier to the downside was the Gipper. And we know how his re-election campaign turned out.
I think what he was trying to say was that there have been no conservative presidents since Reagan, which sadly is true.
Party support for Bush never seemed to wane until public opinion made it clear that the former President was a serious liability. It doesn’t matter who they throw under the bus, the Republican Party is still the Party of Bush and Limbaugh. The policies and tactics are the same. With a few exceptions in the Senate, every Republican in Congress is tethered to the Heritage Foundation, just like Bush.
The new strategy involves Gingrich publicly disagreeing with Limbaugh to hopefully convince the public that the Republican Party is rational. I am sure Limbaugh and Gingrich hashed out the strategy together.
Nope. Bush is as conservative as they come, and I say this as a former card carrying member of the Conservative Party of NY and a subscriber to National Review before the lunatics took over. If the so-called true conservatives had been making this much noise before Bush’s poll numbers dropped, then you might have been right. But when conservative principles get applied in the real world and lead to disaster, you can’t say it wasn’t true conservatism . If true conservatism requires an impossible degree of purity to work, it is a fantasy.
I sometimes worry about things being manufactured. If you can only get good quality and good yields if all process parameters are perfect, you don’t have a product. If conservatism only works with no earmarks, say, it is as much a practical political philosophy as pure communism - that is, none at all.
What I was really doing, as some people got, was making a joke about how Bush, who is traditionally the leader of the party, is now an unperson.
Does Limbaugh care, or does he have the luxury of saying whatever he wants? Does he really care what happens? I bet he’ll have an easier time inspiring the rabble if there are Dems in charge.
You’re right. Newt probably paid Limbaugh off.
The thing I don’t understand about his need to engage Rush is how Obama and his staff can fail to realize that all of Rush’s power is derived from having an audience. Engaging him just enlarges his audience. There are people who have never tuned into his show who now know some of the things that he thinks about now that Obama’s staff making remarks about him is considered news. It seems like a counter-intuitive strategy to me, if the goal is to reduce Rush’s influence.
Oh yeah, the next episode should be sometime this week, right? Given he’s on TV every other week, the networks should give him his own timeslot.
That’s why it seems counter-intuitive, the goal is to reduce Republican influence by reducing the number of moderate conservatives who are unwilling to sign on to Rush. Of course the trade off is better ratings for Limbaugh which for the Democrats is a bangup deal.
There was a very intriguing commentary in Newsweek - “Why Rush is Wrong” by David Frum, conservative pundit - that may help to illustrate why the Obama camp have spotlighted Limbaugh.
Rush’s audience is not who the Democrats are after. They know they can’t win over ultra conservatives and they don’t care if more people who are ultra conservative start listening to him.
They are strictly after the Republican moderates who hate the ultra conservative wing of their party. If these moderates don’t hear politicians denounce Rush they might not vote for them in the future.
What you might be worried about is a scenario where Republican moderates listen to Rush and become influenced by his ideas. This has little chance of happening. The Democrats have done their homework and know that Rush is extremely unpopular. Just read the link posted by ShibbOleth. Rush is not going to influence anyone to believing something new. His audience just wants to reinforce whatever views they already have. His audience might increase, but the influence of his message will go nowhere new.
When has Limbaugh ever engaged in a debate? He rarely appears in any forum other than his own radio show. The time he appeared on David Letterman’s show, he got his ass handed to him and hasn’t been back. I get the distinct impression that he’d be a total bath toy in any situation where he doesn’t have pre-screened callers and control of the microphones.
President Obama would utterly wipe the floor with him if he ever bothered to engage in a debate.
The goal wasn’t to reduce Rush’s influence. The goal was to emphasize his influence over elected Republicans. The mission was accomplished.
He is the President, and the U.S. is in a serious crisis.
I can’t find a clip of this, and my google fu shows that Limbaugh only appeared on Letterman back in 1993. Is this the show you were referring to? I’ll keep looking for a clip posted online.
ETA: I did find this transcript.