Is Rush Limbaugh a Secret Operative for the Democrats?

There’s a lot of talk right now about liberals and Democrats giving porn-king lookalike, Rush Limbaugh, too much attention and far too much airtime, and thereby, affording him undeserved credibility.

I disagree.

For one thing, how do we know Rush isn’t a hard-core, left-wing, liberal, mole whose mission it is to lead his Dittoheads over the cliff of their own fear-based ideology, lemming-like into irrelevant oblivion? Judging from the firestorm of modern-day Peters, denying Rush in the more moderate ranks of the Republican Party, one would think that he’s not acting in the best interest of his party, but to the great benefit of the Democrats. If this is the case, then Rush needs the support of those who would see Obama succeed, not their disregard.

Okay, maybe not, but I’m one of those people who believes that if you give crazy a megaphone, everyone will eventually come to realize that it’s just crazy talking his crazy talk again. So if the Rush-effect is already taking a toll on the right, Dems and liberals shining a spotlight on the strident words and regressive ideas of Limbaugh and his conservative cohorts can only be beneficial to any group from right-of-center to the far left.

With the exception of the Republican Party itself, of course.

In the same way fiscal conservatives cringed with every new hundred-billion squandered during the Bush years,  so moderate Republicans are mortified by the extremist rhetoric voiced by the loudest (albeit not the wisest) orators of their party.

The GOP is already having trouble trying to find their footing in the ever-darkening shadow of the Bush years and the emergence of Limbaugh as their mouthpiece isn’t helping. Other “entertainers,” like Hannity and Coulter, who likely perceive that Limbaugh is gaining some sort of positive traction, are engaging in a sort of conservative onupsmanship, driving the center mad in the process. Let’s face it, identifying only the most extreme on the right as “real” conservatives, contrary to their myopic viewpoint, leaves out a lot of Republicans and most Independents.

If the mainstream of the Republican party can’t find a common ground with these people, it will splinter, and in that splintering, lose any leverage it might have in the federal government now and in the future. Once that leverage is gone, the party will eventually slip from irrelevance to nonexistence. This is not an unprecedented event in US history. If it happened to the Whigs it can happen to the GOP. The Whig Party fractured on the slavery question and never recovered. “The Republican Party,” the history books may one day say, “fractured on the issue of conservatism and never recovered.”

Once the Republican Party either ceases to exist or is so marginalized that it carries no influence in the country, a viable third party will arise. Or maybe two. Or three. One of them might be a party of megaphone-toting crazies led by Rush himself, screaming at the top of their lungs that everyone is out of step except them. We’ll just shake our heads and smile benevolently.

It’s just the crazy talking.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 08:58 and is filed under Politics, Blogroll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.