How Talk Radio is Kicking O'Bunny's Ass

Of course, the AGA Obamatron Contingent has no idea
what's happening outside the MSM; as long as they get
their daily dose of O'Bunny worship from the usual suspects,
they're copacetic. Try not to spit Kool-Aid (we all know
which flavor) on your Che T-shirt as you read on; even
the LA Times is becoming clueful...

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The GOP's real go-to guy

What Rush Limbaugh wants, he gets,
when it comes to McCain's campaign.

By Zev Chafets
September 29, 2008
LA Times

If John McCain is elected president, he will have a lot
of people to thank. Improbably, first on the list will
be the man who didn't want him in the White House, Rush
Limbaugh.

Limbaugh vociferously campaigned against McCain throughout
the primary season. He accused the Arizona senator of
being a closet liberal and a collaborator with Democratic
enemies such as Sens. Russ Feingold and Teddy Kennedy.
This caused a lot of glee in Democratic circles. Some
optimists even predicted a devastating split in the GOP.


This was a false hope. Limbaugh never had any intention
of breaking with his party. When he saw that he couldn't
stop McCain, he swallowed hard and began trying to push
McCain to the right. Limbaugh made it clear that he wanted
a vice presidential candidate from the Republican wing of
the Republican Party.

He got his way with the choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
Limbaugh now believes, with more than a little justification,
that the pick was an effort by McCain to satisfy him and
fellow conservatives. And he is indeed satisfied. In an
e-mail last week, Limbaugh informed me that, post-Palin,
his support for the McCain ticket was "balls to the wall."

This is a very big deal. A satisfied Limbaugh means an
enthusiastic Limbaugh, and an enthusiastic Limbaugh could
be the difference in a close race. Between 14 million and
20 million people listen to him every week, by far the
largest audience in talk radio. His show energizes the
Republican base, but, even more important, it appeals to
a great many conservative Democrats and independents of
the kind McCain needs to win swing states.


Senior Republican strategists have seen Limbaugh do this
before, especially in the 1994 congressional races that
gave the House to the GOP for the first time in decades.
Limbaugh was so important to that victory that the GOP
declared him an honorary member of the Republican House
of Representatives' freshman class.

Fourteen years later, Limbaugh's influence is greater than
ever. No single Republican -- not Karl Rove or Roger Ailes,
James Dobson or Sean Hannity -- has his reach and clout.
Certainly President Bush doesn't. Limbaugh is, very simply,
the single most influential conservative voice in America.

A lot of Limbaugh's critics dismiss him as a buffoon or a
fanatic. These are people who don't listen to his show.
Limbaugh is not only a brilliant communicator, he is a
smart political strategist. Other radio hosts and TV
commentators (on both sides) take their talking points
from campaign central -- but the people who write the
Republican talking points are getting their ideas, often
as not, from Limbaugh. Listen to him on a daily basis and
you know what Republican candidates are likely to be saying
in a day or two.

Early last spring, Limbaugh puzzled over the question of how
to campaign against the first black presidential candidate.
His decision, as he told me at the time, was to treat Barack
Obama with the same contempt and politically incorrect satire
he has trained on every Democratic candidate for the last 20
years. He began referring to the Illinois senator as "the
messiah," a nickname that mocks both Obama's ethereal
rhetoric and the adulatory coverage he receives from the
"drive-by media." Limbaugh began playing wicked musical
parodies, including "Jeremiah was My Pastor" (to the tune
of "Jeremiah was a Bullfrog"), in which an Obama sound-alike
warns that linking him to the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.
could get you labeled a racist.

Limbaugh's own approach to that charge has been to laugh
at it and turn it back on his critics. During the primary
season, he appointed his black call screener, Bo Snerdly,
as the Official Obama Criticizer, to point out the
absurdity of race-based censorship.

Another tactic has been to frame jabs at Obama by quoting
from Hillary Rodham Clinton's primary campaign. On Sept.
19, for example, while discussing race with a caller,
Limbaugh asked, rhetorically, "All the racism that has
been injected into this campaign's come from which side?"

Caller: "The Obama camp."

Limbaugh: "That's exactly right. Or the Hillary camp,
the Democratic Party."

Last week, the Obama campaign fell into a trap when it
tried, in Spanish-language ads, to link McCain to Limbaugh
and his supposed disdain for Latinos. The ads sought to
make their point with two Limbaugh quotes taken completely
out of context. Limbaugh turned this into political jujitsu,
branding it, with high drama, as a lie intended to sow
ethnic discord.

"Rush emboldens Republicans," Rove says, and that is
certainly true in this campaign. Limbaugh says the things
that McCain can't or won't say, and pushes both McCain and
Palin to ever-tougher rhetoric by raising the bar of
acceptable campaign discourse. He also gives permission
to his audience to laugh out loud at the Democratic
standard-bearer. These are not small gifts to the
Republican ticket. Especially not from a man who started
out the year as John McCain's great nemesis

.

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