We had one of those great existential crises occur yesterday: Rush Limbaugh showed up to talk about the Evil Federal Government on Glenn Beck's Fox News show.
Normally, this much complete wingnuttery in one location threatens to create a black hole, a tear in the time-space continuum, and thus end all life as we know it. Fortunately, we seem to have been saved by the fact that Limbaugh wasn't actually present in Beck's studio. Who knows what would have happened then.
As it was, it was pretty bad. They devoted the focus of the segment to talking about Beck's theory that the government is going to "nationalize" the states and strip them of their ability to levy taxes, which even Mark Sanford dismisses as a "conspiracy theory". But evidently, Limbaugh believes in Beck's theory, at least in its larger outlines:
The question that we're all asking is: At what point the American people decide they wanted this kind of power grab by government into the private sector or have they decided that? Did they vote for a cult-like figure based on emotion when they voted for Obama? If so, what's it going to take for them to wake up?
I mean, the politics of this is, that with the numbers in Washington, even if the Republican Party was a unified conservative opposition in stark contrast to Obama, even if they were all unified, they don't have the numbers to stop anything that he is doing. It's going to be — it's going to require the American people stopping this and you have to wonder at this stage at — where are they?
Do they want the government owning their house? Do they want the government owning the mortgage company that they deal with and the bank that they deal with? Do they want the government owning the car company that they're going to buy their little putt-putt from?
Of course, no Rush rant would be complete without the usual projection:
LIMBAUGH: Well, what you are describing is somebody who's entirely phony. You are describing someone who cannot rely on who he genuinely is. And I think that's going to eventually lead to the plummet in his popularity ratings, because, you know, the life — the reality of life at some point is going to have to intersect with the words.
And the Hillary-hating sexism:
LIMBAUGH: I don't think there's any reason to be afraid here. There is no reason to be intimidated. He's just a man who puts his pants on one leg at a time like Hillary does. There's no reason to get all intimated and think all is lost.
Yep, so-called resignation notwithstanding, it's clear that Rush is It for the American Right, now and for the foreseeable future.
