Newt was the darling of the right just a few moments ago, it seemed, but now he's in a battle with the lunatic fringe of his own party.
Rush Limbaugh zeroed in on Newtie today and took out his rage against Gingrich and the "party bosses" because he supported a moderate conservative over the Palin-Beck-Limbaugh teabagger nominee named Doug Hoffman and Hoffman lost. Sarah Palin has as much egg on her face as the rest of them do. When a district like NY-23 comes up for election, a Republican always wins. Their purity test helped lose them a guaranteed seat. Pretty awesome.
LIMBAUGH: Here is -- these are my thoughts on New York-23. In the first place, I'll have to double check this, but I'm reasonably sure that this was the highest percentage of the vote ever won on the Conservative Party line by a House or Senate candidate. I think Hoffman had a higher percentage of the vote than even James Buckley, who won his U.S. Senate race on the -- against or against this Gooddell guy, Charles Gooddell, in the '70s. So, that's one thing.
But, the right message; we cannot forget how this whole thing happened in the first place. There was not a primary. The right message here would indict the way party bosses, Republican Party bosses and these big thinkers like Newt screwed the whole thing up from the get go.
Rush Limbaugh, on his radio show yesterday, via Media Matters:
You -- In 2008, in our presidential election, we had a, a, a war veteran, Vietnam War veteran, John McCain, against an elitist, five-minute career senator of a hundred and fifty days. That senator was running as a Democrat, and had actively sought the defeat of the U.S. military in Iraq -- had actively sought to undermine General Petraeus, who was the author of the surge that led to a turnaround in Iraq and a victory. And now that same man is dithering in Afghanistan while American soldiers -- not Bush soldiers, not Obama soldiers, American soldiers -- are dying. At record numbers.
The threat that people in this country who want to be free face is now within our own borders. That's the stark reality. We'll be back.
Obama and the liberals are, in the land of the Limbaughst, the True Enemies of America.
If only Limbaugh really were "just an entertainer." Then we could dismiss him as a clown. But "entertainers" don't have audiences of "dittohead" acolytes who absorb their every word as gospel truth. "Entertainers" don't make condemnations of half the country as being the "enemy within" and actually stand -- and actually stand a chance of the other half nodding its head in agreement.
This, of course, is how you whip up violence: You scapegoat, you demonize, you dehumanize, and most of all, you paint a target on people's backs and say they're they Enemy. And you can't help but suspect Limbaugh is perfectly aware of this.
I devote a fair amount of space in The Eliminationists to Limbaugh. For a lot of reasons. Obviously, he's been doing this for awhile. But he's also stepping it up quite bit.
Rush Limbaugh, the man who got fired from ESPN for, let's face it, being a racist, now wants so buy the St. Louis Rams. I feel bad for the coach because his defensive schemes helped my NY Giants upset Tom Brady and the Patriots in the 2007 Super Bowl. Steve Spagnuolo now has to rebuild a horrible team and if Rush gets in there then he'll probably have to make sure he NEVER uses a black quarterback.
LIMBAUGH: It's not reasonable that you should understand the insanity that local and state and federal bureaucracies are doing. It's perfectly normal and understandable that none of what they do would make sense to you. My question -- OK, a 1 cent sales tax to fight gang violence. What do you spend the money on to fight gang violence? Afterschool program -- don't we already have afterschool programs? Don't we already have -- what do you call it, extracurricular events? Midnight basketball -- I mean, we've done it all. We've taken the favorite sport of gangs, and we put it at midnight to get them on the basketball court. We had 100,000 new cops with Clinton -- we've done it all. And the problem still is out of control. Liberalism doesn't work.
Much like softball is the favorite sport of lesbians and soccer the preferred choice for illegal immigrants, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh declares basketball "the favorite sport of gangs." I thought it was dominoes?
Rush Limbaugh has never hidden his bigoted beliefs, and on Tuesday he went on a racist rant about a highly disturbing incident on a school bus where a black student attacked a white student while other children cheered on. As Ben Frumin at TPM puts it, Limbaugh acts as though this is all the fault of President Obama:
Rush Limbaugh weighed in today on this video of a 17-year-old white Illinois student beaten up by two black classmates. Shockingly, his analysis doesn't reveal an even-handed understanding of our country's complicated racial history. In fact, not only does Limbaugh imply that this high school scuffle is racially-motivated -- but that somehow, it's the fault of President Obama.
"In Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, 'Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on," Limbaugh said. I wonder if Obama's going to come to come to the defense of the assailants the way he did his friend Skip Gates up there at Harvard." Read on...
At some point, the hatred coming from the right and their mouthpieces on the radio will hit critical mass in this country. I'm all for free speech, but entertainers like Rush and Glenn Beck are walking perilously close to "yelling fire in a movie theater."
Limbaugh: Folks, this is Mussolini-type stuff. This is the President of the United States -- who cannot deal with opposition, there will not be any, he is going to silence it -- sending his union thugs out to physically assault, and in some cases to, in all cases, intimidate average Americans who just want some answers.
Actually, Limbaugh has historical references exactly reversed. "Mussolini-type stuff" involves organizing gangs of thugs on behalf of established business interests to assault and intimidate union organizers. At least, that was what happened when Mussolini did it.
I'll let Robert O. Paxton, in The Anatomy of Fascism (pp.60-64), explain it more precisely:
Above all Mussolini bested D'Annunzio by serving economic and social interests as well as nationalist sentiment. He made his Blackshirts available for action against socialists as well as against the South Slavs of Fiume and Trieste. War veterans had hated the socialists since 1915 for their "antinational" stance during the war. Big planters in the Po Valley, Tuscany, Apulia, and other regions of large estates hated and feared the socialists for their success at the end of the war in organizing the bracianti, or landless laborers, to press for higher wages and better working conditions. Squadrismo was the conjunction of these two hatreds.
Following their victory in the first postwar election (November 1919) the Italian socialists had used their new power in local government to establish de facto control over the agricultural wage-labor market. In the Po Valley in 1920, every farmer who needed workmen for planting or harvesting had to visit the socialist Labor Exchange. The Labor Exchanges made the most of their new leverage. They forced the farmers to hire workers year-round rather than only seasonally, and with better wages and working conditions. The farmers were financially squeezed. They had invested considerable sums in transforming Po Valley marshlands in cultivable farms; their cash crops earned little money in the difficult conditions of the Italian postwar economy. The socialist unions also undermined the farmers' personal status as masters of their domains.
Frightened and humiliated, the Po Valley landowners looked frantically for help. They did not find it in the Italian state. Local officials were either socialists themselves, or little inclined to do battle with them. Prime Minister Giolitti, a true practitioner of laissez-faire liberalism, declined to use national forces to break strikes. The big farmers felt abandoned by the Italian liberal state.
In the absence of help from the public authorities, the large landowners of the Po Valley turned to the Blackshirts for protection. Glad for an excuse to attack their old pacifist enemies, fascist squadristi invaded the city hall in Bologna, where socialist officials had hung up a red banner, on November 21, 1920. Six were killed. From there, the movement quickly spread through the rich agricultural country in the lower Po River delta. Black-shirted squadristi mounted nightly expeditions to sack and burn Labor Exchanges and local socialist offices, and beat and intimidate socialist organizers. Their favorite forms of humiliation were administering uncontainable doses of castor oil and shaving off half of a proud Latin moustache. In the first six months of 1921, the squads destroyed 17 newspapers and printing works, 59 Peoples' Houses (socialist headquarters), 119 Chambers of Labor (socialist employment offices), 107 cooperatives, 83 Peasants' Leagues, 151 socialist clubs, and 151 cultural organizations. Between January 1 and April 7, 1921, 102 people were killed: 25 fascists, 41 socialists, 20 police, and 16 others.
The same pattern adhered with the Brownshirts and the rise of the Nazis in Germany: The SA regularly attacked socialists and union organizers, and did so in the defense of established capitalist interests.
If Rushbo really wants to start drawing the analogies with fascism, he's going to find it's not exactly a winning proposition. Because we're all starting to see just who's looking like the fascists these days.
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Mark Levin is happy now that he's got a bestseller decrying the tyranny certain to descend upon America under liberal rule, which Sean Hannity touted on his Fox News show last night. The appearance produced some plum bon mots fresh from Planet Wingnuttia:
Levin: What's going on in this country is really anti-liberty. The president is -- you know, they just put Bernie Madoff away for life. The president's policies are Bernie Madoff times a thousand. He is taking a wrecking ball to this society.
Levin evidently seems to have conveniently forgotten that Bernie Madoff was an exemplar of the laissez-faire capitalism practiced by Republicans generally and George W. Bush particularly. This is essentially accusing the person in charge of cleaning up after a demolition with having wielded the wrecking ball in the first place.
Levin also keeps referring throughout to Obama and his policies as "something foreign" and claims that he's undermining the Constitution.
Levin also claims that Obama "wants to destroy the health-care system that most of us like."
I suspect "us" for Levin and Hannity is their little claque of right-wing pundits and wealthy Republicans, as well as Levin's perfervid readers who've been just as eagerly drinking the Limbaugh/Beck Kool Aid.
He wraps up with this classic bit of wingnuttery:
Levin: This president has some very bizarre and alien viewpoints, ah, that were -- that, that were, you know, he was indoctrinated with, and now that I believe that he really believes in, and advances. He is a -- he is about as left wing and about as radical as anybody ever to be in the Oval Office.
Hoo boy. Talk about bizarre and alien. It must be quite the interesting view, out there on Planet Wingnuttia.
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Media Matters has put together a nice pastiche of all the Fox talkers and other assorted right-wing pundits writhing in agony and rolling on the ground holding their heads at the very thought of Senator Al Franken assuming office. It's really something to behold.
Besides the Fox crew, headed up by Brian Kilmeade and Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity waxing wroth over Franken's victory, you also had Limbaugh calling him "a genuine lunatic" (no doubt for having penned Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot). Jim Quinn chimed in that he thought the election was stolen. Mike Barnicle on Morning Joe thought it was "kind of a surprise" that Franken "behaved like a responsible adult".
And Bill O'Reilly -- who has, em, a bit of a history with Franken -- has been on vacation all week, so we haven't heard yet from the Hot-Tempered One. We can hardly wait.
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Sen. Arlen Specter gave a press conference to talk about his decision to become a member of the Democratic Party. He says the Limbaugh National Committee moved too far to the right and the Club For Growth was destroying any form of moderation in his old party. He blames Pat Toomey's old group for the fact that thirty four judges were left on the table for Obama because of them and says they cost the GOP the majority in 2006. He still says he opposes EFCA and doesn't support President Obama's choice of Dawn Johnsen for the OLC.
Although this will be a blow to rightists-- when Franken is finally seated Democrats will now have at least a theoretical filibuster-proof majority-- it won't do much for progressives. Remember, as awful as Ben Nelson (NE), Mary Landrieu (LA) and Blanche Lincoln (AR) have been on core issues-- lately joined by reactionary freshmen Kay Hagen (NC), Mark Begich (AK) and Michael Bennet (CO)-- all of them, except Nelson, are significantly better than Specter. This year Nelson and Specter has each scored a 33.33 on the progressive scale when it comes to tough partisan votes that split the parties. And when it comes to selling out to vested interests...
After briefly downplaying the concerns about swine flu, Rush kicked off today's program by noting that Sen. Arlen Specter will announce today his switch from (R-PA) to (D-PA). Rush counseled Specter to take Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and his daughter, Meghan, with him, and then pondered who else in the Senate should make the switch.
Two leading Republicans say Sen. Arlen Specter's decision to become a Democrat highlights the hostility moderates feel from an increasingly conservative GOP.
“You haven't certainly heard warm encouraging words about how [the GOP] views moderates,” said Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, one of the few remaining moderate Republicans in the Senate.
Specter's insistence on being opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act, which he mentioned prominently -- indicating he would vote against cloture -- is going to be problem for anyone running in the Democratic primary in union-heavy Pennsylvania. Since his current position reflects a reversal already, it may take only a month or two of further polling for Specter to begin to see the light again.
Having seen the polls numbers, all good wingnuts appear to have fled to Planet Bizarro, where they can comfort themselves knowing that their stock portfolios are doing 20%, the Cubs won the World Series and George W. Bush enjoys an 80 percent approval rating. Oh, and John McCain is on his way to winning the White House.
Especially Rush Limbaugh, whose rumbling gut tells us that "Obama campaign workers" have been "throwing off the lid" about the real story inside the campaign, and he's been reading their "inside information" over the airwaves. To wit:
"The Bradley Effect. Do not believe these public polls for a second. I just went over our numbers, found that we have next to no chance --" this is regarding Obama, "-- in the following states: Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada. Ohio leans heavily to McCain but it's too close to call it for him. Virginia, Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Mexico, and Iowa are the true toss-up states. The only two of these the Obama campaign feels confident are Iowa and New Mexico, but now Obama's headed back to Iowa on Monday. The reason for such polling discrepancy is the Bradley Effect, and this is a subject of much discussion in the campaign. In general, we in the Obama campaign tend to take a ten-point percentage in allowing for this, a minus ten-point percentage for allowing this and are not comfortable until the polls give us a spread well over this mark."
She goes on to decry the "demonization" of Sarah Palin and concludes that she won't be voting Obama.
Um, right. And of course, Limbaugh assures us that we can know for certain that this is a real "Obama campaign worker" because ...
Now, you might be saying, "Rush, are you sure this is not a setup?" Well, tell me something. I share this stuff with you. I tell you it comes from the Obama campaign, disaffected female members of the Obama campaign. Does it depress you? Does it inspire you not to vote, or does it do the opposite? What could be in it for Obama to have people going on websites putting this stuff out? I can't think of anything. If you can, let me know.
Gee, I dunno. How about if it were another right-wing dittohead nutcase posing as an "Obama campaign worker" and hoping to spread as much disinformation as possible?
I guess that possibility just never crossed Limbaugh's mind. Gee. I wonder why.
