Let me repeat that I still have not listened to Rush Limbaugh in more than 15 years.
I think it is time for us to put out of its misery for good this fixation on Rush Limbaugh as “leader of the Republican party”. Sure people will continue to play this game. But we know what they are doing. We have already given our irrefutable and devastating answer. We will waste no more time on it.
I trust I do not have to document or demonstrate that since January and among more liberal and/or Democratic politicians and pundits there has been an obsession with Rush Limbaugh. Almost every time I read something from the left that is not about him – somehow he gets brought up. Frank Schaeffer blasts the Republicans? Mentions Rush Limbaugh. A “debate” (read – staged fight) between Bill Maher and Ann Coulter? Maher keeps bringing up Rush. Huffington Post? Rush Rush and more Rush.
Look – I like Rush. Although their last couple albums not so much. Arguably the best drummer (technically) there is. Amazing what they accomplish with just three people. But this is just over the top.
“We know what you are doing.”
Paul Schlichta at American Thinker brilliantly demonstrates how this fixation puts into practice the “Two Minute Hate” technique one finds in 1984 by George Orwell. The “hate icon” is an individual whose image is show repeatedly in order to shift outrage from Big Brother to the hate icon and to change loathing of Big Brother into adoration. (See 1984 part one chapter one here – starting about 2/3 of the way.)
Do not misunderstand. I am not saying “the Obama administration is just like Big Brother”. We are still some ways from Orwell’s dystopia. The one and only thing I am comparing is the technique.
Using this technique, Democrats so successfully conditioned the public to hate George Bush that even Republicans avoided being associated with him. Irrational Anti-Bush hatred was a major factor in Obama’s campaign strategy. ….
But this is a rather transparent trick that can’t be used for long. With Bush retired from public life, Obama needs a new scapegoat. Evidently, Rush Limbaugh has been chosen. Calling him “the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party,” White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is obviously trying to set up Limbaugh as the next hate icon for the minions of Big Other. Simultaneously, vicious attacks on Limbaugh were launched from several Democratic sources. It has been claimed that Obama’s strategists are making an explicit effort to “turn the [image of the] Republican Party into a Limbaughesque caricature.”
“We have given our answer.”
Take the man out of the picture and it would make almost no difference. Michael Scherer at TIME writes:
First off, let us settle on the facts. The Republican Party is lost and largely leaderless, much as Democrats were in the wake of the 2000 and 2004 elections. Rush Limbaugh, a self described “entertainer,” is probably the most famous and popular spokesman for the conservative cause that has long undergirded the GOP. But he no more runs the Republican Party than Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie run Hollywood. To put it another way, he is a talented pitchman, a powerful communicator, the Clark Gable of his day. But the producers and directors of the Republican cause still reside in Congress, in fundraising networks and in state executive mansions. And while all of these people are terrified of crossing Rush, their biggest brand name, and will apologize profusely to any perceived slight, they are about as beholden to Limbaugh as MGM’s Louis Mayer was beholden to Gable.
How many posts on this website critical of candidate-then-President Obama before a single mention of Rush Limbaugh? Before this recent Two Minute Hate strategy how much did conservative commentators pundits and websites refer to him?
Now – about our answer. Paul Schlichta offers:
Rather than fight among ourselves, let’s toss back a hot potato of our own. Since the White House brought the matter up, how about demanding that they shed some light on the mystery of who is really the “intellectual force and energy” of the present Democratic regime.
(Schlichta then suggests George Soros or Michael Moore. Frankly I do not wish to play the game in reverse.)
Remember when Senator Reid said “the war [in Iraq] is lost”? Remember when James Carville the morning of September 11, 2001 said he did not want the president to succeed? Remember when Democratic pollsters found a percentage of Americans wanted President Bush to “fail”? Remember when on April 28, 2003 Hillary Clinton said “we are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration”?
“We will waste no more time on it.”
I was going to post a link to a clip of Two Minutes of Hate from the movie “1984″ – but no. We will waste no more time on this.
