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Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Rush Is No RacistI have been critical of Rush Limbaugh in the past, and I probably will be again. But this claim that Rush has often uttered racist quotes on the air is ridiculous. First, there are sites like Media Muttheads, which transcribe every word Rush utters. Second, Rush would be called out on it by conservative listeners. Update: One bogus quote that is floating around is this one: “Let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: Slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back. I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.” It's a phony quote, but the funny thing is that if you take that last bit out, lots of liberals have said the same thing. Travis Darby, a blogger at Salon: If we can afford to spend nearly a trillion dollars bailing out the predominantly white bankers whose greed got us into this recession, what's another trillion to pay back the people who helped build this country through the blood and sweat of their forced labor? Update: Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts: "I haven't and I don't think I would even go to the point of talking to Tony Dungy, Jim Caldwell, Dwight Freeney, talking to those men and seeing what their positions are. I'm very sensitive to know there are scars out there. I think as a nation we need to stop it. Our words do damage and it's something that we don't need. We need to get to a higher level of humanity and we have." Well, if Irsay did go to the point of talking to Tony Dungy, he might be surprised by his response. You see, Dungy appeared on the Rush Limbaugh show in January of this year: RUSH: I have been looking forward to the next few minutes ever since this interview with Coach Tony Dungy was put together. Recently retired from the Indianapolis Colts, coming off the million copies of his first book Quiet Strength. This book is Uncommon, is the title, Finding Your Path to Significance, the subtitle. Coach Dungy, welcome here. I can't tell you how thrilled and honored I am to be able to speak to you, sir.
COACH DUNGY: Well, thank you, Rush. I feel the same. It's great being on with you and thank you for having me. Labels: Rush Limbaugh
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
In Defense of RushThis is wrong: But, guess what? Even if, as the country veers left, living conservatives gnash their teeth and dead ones spin in their graves, a small class of conservatives will benefit. And who might they be? They might be those whose influence and coffers swell on discontent, and who find attacking a president easier and more sensational than the dreary business of defending one. They rose during the Clinton years. Perhaps they are nostalgic. It isn't worth it, however, for the rest of us. I've been pretty critical of the yakkers over the last couple of months, but I'm willing to take them at their word, that they think McCain will lead the conservative movement over the cliff. They're wrong, of course, but that does not mean they aren't sincere in their beliefs. As I have discussed on several occasions, the problem for the talkers is that all they have is a hammer, and so as a result, everything looks like a nail. Rush speaks (supposedly) for the base of the conservative movement. He believes that only the base matters. It's lunacy, of course, but easier to recognize on the other side of the aisle. Does anybody believe that a candidate who excites the crowd at DailyKos is going to win in the general election? It clearly didn't happen this year even in the primaries; the preferred candidate of the nutbar left was John Edwards. Even the Democrats know better than to listen to their left wing. They know that they've got to nominate a moderate candidate to win. The difference of course is that the Republicans have gotten used to winning and they treat it as a given. Ignore the polls that show John McCain winning; didn't polls show Michael Dukakis way out in front of Poppy Bush in 1988? Yes, they did, so therefore polls this early are meaningless. Well, my friends, that's a load of bull. Polls this far out are NOT meaningless. They are certainly not infallible, but they are at least evidence of something. In 1988 they were evidence of Reagan fatigue. But Bush campaigned a little more to the center, Dukakis proved to be a stiff as a debater, and the GOP won easily. Rush is wrong. But I don't think he's staging his little McCain mutiny to boost his ratings, and indeed, I would be very surprised if they haven't suffered a bit and will decline further unless he gets a clue. Labels: John McCain, Rush Limbaugh
Monday, February 11, 2008
Rush the Ralph Nader of the Right?Not sure how apt the comparison is, but he certainly seems as determined to pull his party to a place from which it cannot be elected. Moreover, Limbaugh’s anti-endorsement could give the Tina Feys enough cover to quietly pull that McCain lever. A CNN poll in 2006 gave Limbaugh an approval/disapproval rating of 26/58. Every evangelical voter who stays home could be more than matched by a secular voter flipping to McCain. Consider Ohio - 25 percent evangelicals in 2004. They put President Bush over the top, but the 75 percent of non-evangelicals went for John Kerry by a margin of 13 points. Forty-seven percent of Ohio voters described themselves as moderates in 2004, and they voted Kerry by 18 points. Only 11 percent of Democrats voted for Bush. McCain could substantially improve on Bush’s numbers in the left and center. The Limbaugh listeners probably aren't all that "evangelical", it's more the social conservatives who aren't terribly religious who are rebelling. Still, terrific writing with an enjoyable flair, so read it all. Labels: John McCain, Rush Limbaugh
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Pantsuit Pachyderm of the Week Our first pantsuit pachyderm is the big one, El Rushbo, who announced on his program this week that he may not endorse the Republican candidate for president this year. Maybe all those folks who say his show profited from a Clinton in the White House were right. Rush has been a terrific asset to the Republican party over the years, but he's behaving like a spoiled brat, and his show has become unlistenable as he's racheted up his attacks on fine men like John McCain and Mike Huckabee. Hillary's reaction?  Labels: Hillary Clinton, Rush Limbaugh
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Hugh Hewitt: If McCain's Against Partial-Birth Abortion, I'm For It, And Here's Why It Helps Romney....Okay, just kidding about partial-birth abortion, but Hewitt's search for the pony continues: Taking a page from his Michigan strategy, John McCain lets Florida homeowners know he won't be there for them the next time an Andrew comes ashore.... The issue is federal bailouts for people who build homes in areas prone to natural disasters; hurricanes in Florida and earthquakes in California. Hewitt is so in love with Mitt Romney, that he embraces the concept of a National Catastrophe Insurance scheme. Or does he? God only knows what he really thinks, he's just letting his antipathy for McCain go over the edge. If McCain had come out yesterday in favor of such a plan, you know that Hewitt would have decried it as a pander to the voters. How exactly is a National Catastrophic Insurance plan different conceptually from National Health Insurance? Let me say here that I have found almost all my favorite talk show hosts virtually unlistenable for the last couple months. Rush Limbaugh said the other day that he didn't know if he'd be supporting the Republican candidate this year, to which I say, that's more likely to hurt Rush than it is the GOP nominee. We all know that most of us, whether we're Fredheads or Smitten With Mittens, or Rudy fans or McCainiacs or Hucksters, are going to vote for the Republican in the fall. Some may stay home and feel noble about it, but they'll either suffer the same fate as Naderites in 2000, seeing themselves blamed for a tough loss, or they'll be exposed as irrelevant. Note that there is some rays of hope among the radio gods: Michael Medved has declined to join his SRN network buddies in McCain bashing, and he's won me as a daily listener. And while my friend Andrea Shea-King's sympathies lie elsewhere, she's not using McCain as a pinata. See also my longtime blog-buddy, BDP over at the Ankle-Biters: Make no mistake, this stance hurts McCain in Florida, a state that if he wins makes it much easier for him to get the nomination. But as he did in Michigan - where he rightly said “the jobs (the blue-collar auto industry jobs) aren’t coming back” - he didn’t say something just because the voters wanted to hear it. Labels: Hugh Hewitt, John McCain, Rush Limbaugh
Friday, January 18, 2008
Philosopher Kings and the 40-20-40 NationThe famed Greek philosopher Plato, wrote in the Republic: "Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophise, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide, while the many natures who at present pursue either one exclusively are forcibly prevented from doing so, cities will have no rest from evils,... nor, I think, will the human race." Of course, the philosophers have not become kings, nor have the cities had rest from evils, but I think most of us understand that perhaps Plato was indulging himself in a little occupational bias. He was a philosopher and so he felt that philosophers were best equipped to govern; it's a quite natural conceit. There is a longstanding theory about presidential elections in the United States. The theory is that no matter whom the Democrats nominate they will get 40% of the people to vote for them, and no matter whom the Republicans nominate they will get 40% of the people to vote for them, and so the real election comes down to who can win that 20% slice in the middle who are capable of going either way. And indeed, this 40-20-40 theory seems pretty well borne out by recent history. Here is the percentage of the overall vote gained by the second-place finisher in the last 10 elections: John Kerry: 48.3% Al Gore: 48.4% Bob Dole: 40.7% George Bush, Sr.: 37.4% (Perot factor) Michael Dukakis: 45.6% Walter Mondale: 40.6% Jimmy Carter: 41.0% Gerald Ford: 48.0% George McGovern: 37.5% Hubert Humphrey: 42.7% Other than 1992, when Perot mixed things up by getting about 19% of the vote, and 1972 when George McGovern imploded, the loser almost always ended up getting 40%. If the Democrats pulled Jimmy Carter out of mothballs this November, he's still get 40. If the Republicans asked Bush Sr to run again, he'd break two score. So the 40-20-40 theory looks pretty good to me. Richard Nixon, who appeared on more Republican tickets than anybody in history, summarized his political advice as "run to the center as soon as you lock up the nomination". So whence comes the notion that candidates who appeal to independents, who make up the overwhelming amount of that crucial 20% slice, are bad for either party? Answer: From the philosopher kingmakers. Rush Limbaugh has been known to pooh-pooh the notion that we are a 40-20-40 nation. His theory is that elections are won by whichever party's base shows up. But this is simply wrong, and it's dangerous for Republicans at the current time to listen to this nonsense. George McGovern is the perfect illustration of this. You could not have a more perfect candidate for the Democratic base. McGovern was going to end the war in Vietnam, which was the issue that animate liberals of that generation like no other. He was the perfect candidate for the new left, running on a platform that was easily if somewhat unfairly satirized as "Acid, Amnesty and Abortion". And he got crushed. McGovern became the first major party presidential candidate to not even carry his home state. He lost New York by 17 percentage points. Candidates that fire up the base can win, but only in the right times and right circumstances. Ronald Reagan would have lost and lost badly in 1964; that was a horrible election for the Republican Party. FDR would have gotten crushed by Reagan had he come along in 1984, or by Hoover in 1928. So why does Rush Limbaugh not understand this? Well, as Orwell observed, it is awfully hard to get a man to believe something if his paycheck depends on him not believing it. Rush and Laura and Hugh and all those guys make a living revving up the base. That is a valuable part of the team effort, and we've needed them in 2000 and 2004. But the guys whose job it is to rev the base are prone to the same occupational bias that Plato was. Naturally they see their job as the most important. But elections are not won by energizing the base. And the notion that the radioheads won't have anything to energize the base with is absurd to begin with. For the Donkeys it's either Hill or Obama in the fall; you don't think the base is going to show up to prevent that? Labels: Hugh Hewitt, Plato, Political Philosophy, Rush Limbaugh
Friday, September 28, 2007
Limbaugh Controversy Over "Real" SoldiersI'm a little late to this party, but there's still some punch in the bowl. The Media Mutters crowd are trying to raise a stink over a Limbaugh comment on yesterday's show: CALLER 2: No, it’s not, and what’s really funny is, they never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media.
LIMBAUGH: The phony soldiers.
CALLER 2: The phony soldiers. If you talk to a real soldier, they are proud to serve. They want to be over in Iraq. They understand their sacrifice, and they’re willing to sacrifice for their country. You can guess the take; "Rush is saying that if you don't support the war, you're a phony soldier." Except that's not what he's saying. Read the exchange again, and see what Rush was responding to: ...they never talk to real soldiers. (Italics added). Well, if they're not talking to "real" soldiers, who are they talking to? Well, fake soldiers, and Rush goes on to elucidate: Here is a Morning Update that we did recently, talking about fake soldiers. This is a story of who the left props up as heroes. They have their celebrities and one of them was Army Ranger Jesse Macbeth. Now, he was a "corporal." I say in quotes. Twenty-three years old. What made Jesse Macbeth a hero to the anti-war crowd wasn't his Purple Heart; it wasn't his being affiliated with post-traumatic stress disorder from tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. No. What made Jesse Macbeth, Army Ranger, a hero to the left was his courage, in their view, off the battlefield, without regard to consequences. He told the world the abuses he had witnessed in Iraq, American soldiers killing unarmed civilians, hundreds of men, women, even children. In one gruesome account, translated into Arabic and spread widely across the Internet, Army Ranger Jesse Macbeth describes the horrors this way: "We would burn their bodies. We would hang their bodies from the rafters in the mosque." So Rush even brings up an example of a phony soldier. But of course the Left isn't really interested in what Rush meant; this is just a convenient club for the folks who want to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. Rush was not criticizing soldiers who are against the war. He's criticizing phony soldiers who are against the war and the media who accept their claims uncritically. Sadly, a couple otherwise sane people seem to agree with the cranks on this one. Labels: Phony Soldiers, Rush Limbaugh
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Kudos to Pam!Our longtime blog-buddy Pam Meister's piece in the American Thinker gets cited as backup material on Rush Limbaugh!  You know, I used to think that I was complimenting Pam when I said that her blogging style reminded me of my own. Now I realize that I was complimenting myself. Hat Tip: Andrea Shea-King. Labels: American Thinker, Pam Meister, Rush Limbaugh
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