Restitutor Orbis

The war between Rush Limbaugh and President Obama seems to be heating up and it is possible there is more to it than meets the eye. Our new president is clearly no intellectual slouch and he has already shown a great capacity to plan ahead, to be prepared for every contingency. We may be seeing more of that now. I just saw this in the Huffington Post:
Media critic Michael Wolff thinks Limbaugh is just being played by Obama:

Right now Rush is being played. The Obama dinner with conservative columnists, shortly before his inauguration, was as much about excluding Rush as coddling the columnists. Not only did the conservatives fawn, but Rush fumed. It got under his skin. Indeed, the rumor that he might in fact be there (likely coming from the Obama camp), and then his evident lack of an invitation, highlighted the slight. He's tried to make it out to be a political point ever since, but mostly he sounds like a guy who's hurt he didn't get invited to the hot party.

HuffPo also reports that Politico reports (why do they do this, it drives me mad) that "Republican House member Phil Gingrey has a message for Limbaugh: back off.

"I think that our leadership, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, are taking the right approach," Gingrey said. "I mean, it's easy if you're Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or even sometimes Newt Gingrich to stand back and throw bricks. You don't have to try to do what's best for your people and your party. You know you're just on these talk shows and you're living well and plus you stir up a bit of controversy and gin the base and that sort of that thing. But when it comes to true leadership, not that these people couldn't be or wouldn't be good leaders, they're not in that position of John Boehner or Mitch McConnell."

This seems to be a shared sentiment. On the radio Monday, Limbaugh said Obama wished the same for him (to fail).

"He's obviously more frightened of me than he is Mitch McConnell. He's more frightened of me, then he is of say, John Boehner, which doesn't say much about our party," Limbaugh said.

The HuffPo headline Obama Allies use Limbaugh to Hammer GOP on Stimulus seems to be right on and it would appear that Rush has Obama right where Obama wants him. He has certainly played into Democrat hands. While some liberals oppose giving Rush any air-time at all (even to refute him) I applaud the strategy (along with the petition hosted by the Democratic National Committee). If you let the other party control the terms of the debate, you also let them control its outcome. Rush has gone unanswered for too many years, spreading too much propaganda, for it to go unanswered. This is what HuffPo had to say yesterday:

Key Democratic groups are launching a series of radio advertisements on Friday designed to tie Republicans to Rush Limbaugh and put pressure on GOP Senators to support the stimulus package.

MoveOn, Americans United for Change, AFSCME and SEIU are releasing the spots in three states with Senate Republicans who could potentially switch party lines on the stimulus vote: George Voinovich in Ohio, John Ensign in Nevada, and Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania. The ads are designed to drum up support for the president's economic recovery package. But they do so in somewhat of a round-about manner, not just touting the jobs that could be created from the bill but tying Republicans to some of Limbaugh's most caustic and controversial anti-Obama comments.

Finally, I'd like to point to a great Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, by Paul Krugman, Health Care Now. Krugman asks a very critical question, one for which there is no answer at this point:

Why has the Obama administration been silent, at least so far, about one of President Obama’s key promises during last year’s campaign — the promise of guaranteed health care for all Americans?

If anything ever proves the old adage that a picture is worth 10,000 words it is this piece, by PunditKitchen.com:


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Who doesn't want a president with an inner Samuel L. Jackson?