Oct 28th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Rush Against the Intellectualoids
One interesting quirk of the current situation is that the Republican Party seems overwhelmingly likely to respond to a John McCain defeat by trying to cocoon itself more deeply in conservative orthodoxy. On some level, that’s pretty well understood, Ross Douthat is right that this Rush Limbaugh monologue laying the groundwork really deserves to be read and savored on its own accord.
The use of the term “intellectualoid” for conservative media figures with whom Rush disagrees is a pretty fascinating development.
52 Responses to “Rush Against the Intellectualoids”
Register
RSSLogin
Advertisement
Visit Our Affiliated Sites
Books By Matthew Yglesias
Topic CloudView topics sorted by popularity
Afghanistan
Basketball
Budget
China
climate
Congress
DC
Denmark
Economics
Economy
education
Energy
Environment
Finance
Gender
Germany
Health Care
History
International Law
International Relations
Iran
Israel
Media
Monetary Policy
National Security
NBA
Pakistan
Palestine
Philosophy
planning
Political Reform
Proliferation
Public Health
Public Opinion
Race
Regulation
Russia
Science
Sports
Stimulus
Sweden
taxes
Technology
Trade
transportation
Featured
Subscribe to the Progress Report
Contact Matthew Yglesias
Use this form to contact blog author Matthew Yglesias.
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
October 28th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
They will become the snake that slowly consumes itself.
October 28th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
The Khmer Douche.
October 28th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Rush Limbaugh isn’t very smart, is he? “We were told that only John McCain could appeal to enough moderate voters to win, but he isn’t winning!” Just because McCain was the only one who *could* didn’t mean he *would*. For instance, McCain could have chosen a vice presidential candidate who had broad appeal. Instead. . .
October 28th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
I’ve been thinking that if Obama’s campaign has any money left after the election, it would be a good investment to hold a convention of moderate intellectual Republicans to create an ethical, coherent form of conservatism. On the one hand, it would suck to pay for the opponents to get their act together. On the other hand, having the opponents be a reasonable loyal opposition would be incredibly helpful for the country.
October 28th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I wish to reach around and pat myself on the back.
October 28th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Rush is right in that McCain was indeed the best opportunity for the GOP to retain the White House in ‘08. But not only because those wacky “intellectualoids”, but because all those primary voters thought so, too.
Which goes to show how weak the GOP brand truly is going into this election cycle. It was going to be an uphill battle regardless of the candidate. All the other choices had some fairly severe flaws. In contrast, McCain had his largely self anointed Maverick reputation, which had served him well up to that time. But this time, he wanted to really win, and he couldn’t afford to maintain some of those Maverick-y ways that so many independents found so appealing.
If Rush and the Kool Aid drinkers prefer to blame the whole clusterfuck on intellectuals, I say more power to him. This will only hasten the marginalization of the wacko right.
October 28th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
It is just delicious that Rush takes his intellectual inspiration from Sarah Palin and J.R. Ewing.
October 28th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Rush is right about one thing: conservative pundits and writers are mostly pseudo-intellectuals.
October 28th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Republican Party was born with the end of slavery, perhaps it will die with the election of the first African-American president.
Question is what will take its place?
Greens or libertarians — small l, please.
October 28th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Rush is so stupid he doesn’t realize that the reason McCain isn’t appealing to moderate voters is because he’s not campaigning as a moderate.
He’s campaigning as a run-of-the-mill wingnut, focusing more on destroying his opponent, ginning up false attacks, stoking fear and resentment, manufacturing outrage at inane things, and just generally avoiding anything and everything of substance rather than addressing the serious issues we face.
What I find most amusing about the right’s soul searching is how Rush and his fellow hard-right cadre think the solution is to double-down on Neoconservativism’s special kind of crazy. If they think yelling even louder about gay marriage, abortion and scary brown people is the way to go, fine.
I just hope some sensible conservatives decide to let them have the Republican party and start a new, more sane right-of-center coalition.
After all, unlike many on the right, most of us on the left realize there needs to be a give and take for a democracy to work properly.
October 28th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Fine by me — it makes further gains in 2010 that much easier.
October 28th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Limbaugh is wrong as usual. Sarah Palin was a sop to the ditto-heads. And she’s what drove the moderates and intellectualoids off.
October 28th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Oi Matt. Jon Chait’s puppet show. Report. ASAP.
October 28th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
I love the idea that there was supposed to be something in McCain, independent of his stated ideas, that would appeal to moderate voters. Some kind of pheromone. McCain’s been going around race-baiting and Red-baiting and re-fighting the Vietnam War. All things that moderate voters would just ignore while they were lured by his moderate-attracting scent.
October 28th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
I don’t want to get all new-age here, but the Republican party has to go through the stages in this process: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. The colossal echo-chamber that Rush helped to build won’t help them get past “Denial” any quicker: just as they built a narrative after the 2006 election that said America was angry with them because they weren’t right-wing _enough_, so they are drafting today the saga of McCain the Limp-Wristed Liberal. And that myth will serve them just as well in another two years.
What sane future can conservatism find in this country? It’s a hell of a good question. We’d like to imagine a revitalized live-and-let-live, good-fences-make-good-neighbors party of prudence and restraint, but the hordes of evangelical bigots who can’t cheer loudly enough for Sarah Palin aren’t going anywhere, either. And the fabled live-and-let-live sentiment may always have been something of a myth, while the intolerance and bigotry are anything but.
October 28th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
“Ditto” what Mark D and Brett said.
October 28th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
I’ve been thinking that if Obama’s campaign has any money left after the election, it would be a good investment to hold a convention of moderate intellectual Republicans to create an ethical, coherent form of conservatism. On the one hand, it would suck to pay for the opponents to get their act together. On the other hand, having the opponents be a reasonable loyal opposition would be incredibly helpful for the country.
Actually, if I was Obama, I’d probably start funding Palin’s 2012 campaign.
October 28th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
What Mark D. and Brett said.
And Mark D. said,
I just hope some sensible conservatives decide to let them have the Republican party and start a new, more sane right-of-center coalition.
The serious response would be that this new party, were it to call itself the Conservative Party, might in fact be politically salutary–not just for the right-of-center generally but also for the Democrats. But when I read what he wrote, I couldn’t help but think: They wanted to call themselves the Republicans, but when they found out there was already a party by that name, they called themselves the New Republicans.
October 28th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
And the fabled live-and-let-live sentiment may always have been something of a myth, while the intolerance and bigotry are anything but.
The sensible GOP of song-and-story is pretty much bunk. For every Nelson Rockefeller or John Sherman Cooper there were 500 Bob Tafts.
October 28th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Rush doesn’t care about rebuilding the conservative movement. All he cares about is market share. He knows who his audience is, and he is buttering them up by talking about how the new movement they’re all going to be reubuilding together will think – wait for it – exactly like they do! He talks about how the rebuilding will happen whether McCain wins or loses. That’s because his target audience will be the same whether McCain wins or loses. He bashes moderate Republicans for acting out of self-interest (as opposed to Saint Sarah.) That’s all he’s doing.
October 28th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
I just hope some sensible conservatives decide to let them have the Republican party and start a new, more sane right-of-center coalition.
No, the only way out is for one small sliver of “sensible conservatives” to join the Democrats, and for the other group of “sensible conservatives” to continue to attempt to control the rampaging beast of right-wing lunatics in exchange for tax cuts.
The Republican party in its current form isn’t going away: Rush Limbaugh listeners and apocalyptic fundamentalist evangelicals deserve political representation as much as anyone else. And the “Bill Weld Republicans” are vastly outnumbered by the other groups.
October 28th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Another fun word re: Limbaugh. A commentator on Rod Dreher’s site calls Limbaugh “His Adiposity,” which seems to me to perfectly capture his unique blend of preening self-adulation..love it.
October 28th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Bonus points to Rush for using “bourgeoisie” as an epithet. And they call us “socialists”….
October 28th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
The nature of conservativism is to resist change, so when the conservative party fails totally, the answer isn’t to change views, because that’s impossible. The answer is that they just weren’t pure enough.
October 28th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
No, Rush isn’t stupid at all. A PoS, yes, stupid, no. He’s protecting his market. Blowing partisan hot air is much easier when your party isn’t in power.
October 28th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
What amuses me the most is that Ross Douthat seems to have lived the last 8 years without realising that the party he was frequently supporting to the hilt, on the weirdest issues, is driven at it’s core by this Limbaughian philosophy.
October 28th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Yes! Yes!
Go Rush!
Not one step back! Not one step back!
October 28th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
In the ultimate demonstration of “you can’t fire me, I quit,” the republican party attempts to commit suicide before the election.
October 28th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
As long as there is home schooling, there will always be a Republican party
October 28th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
I think Rush is a pretty smart guy, actually, because he knows his audience. His audience are a raging pack of moronoids.
October 28th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Translation: We have to dumb down the Republican party to the level of our dumbest followers.
Rise up with dunce caps!
October 28th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
I couldn’t make it all the way through the transcript. It was too much BS. I stopped when Rush was doing role play with a caller and saying ‘Imagine you are Harry Reid and somebody says to you ‘I’m a moderate liberal who is pro-life, is there a place for me in the Democratic Party? NOOOOO!’.
Last I checked Harry Reid, Democrat, Majority Leader of the US Senate, is pro-life.
October 28th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Mistake me if I am wrong but Bob Casey spoke at the convention? So despite what Rush says we did allow a pro-life senator to speak at our convention.
October 28th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Suppose you wanted to win the 2012 elections for the Republicans-you need approximately 50 million votes to do so. Which would be your strategy: to appeal to Rush Limbaugh, who has a weekly audience of 20 million? Or to appeal to…..Ross Douthat….
What ole’ Ross (and Peggy Noonan, and even John McCain) don’t realize is that Rush, and small town America, and those bitter folks with guns and religion, are what keeps the Republican Party viable. Without them, the Republican Party is just a thin slice of East Coast snobs who believe in slightly fewer taxes than the other, Democrat East Coast snobs with whom they share cocktails. But that thin slice won’t be winning any elections any time soon.
If the Republican Party has a future, Ross Douthat is expendible. Rush is not.
Sk
October 28th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
The GOP, as we know it, is screwed. Whether McSpin gets the blame for not being radical enough, or Bible Spice for being too radical, the Reichwing base and the moderates won’t find any common ground coming out of the election. It’s even conceivable that the neocons will cut loose the Psychochristians.
It couldn’t happen to a more deserving group.
October 28th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Re: What ole’ Ross (and Peggy Noonan, and even John McCain) don’t realize is that Rush, and small town America, and those bitter folks with guns and religion, are what keeps the Republican Party viable.
Problem is, though, there’s just not enough of these types of folks, and there’s fewer of them evey election cycle. So while Ross Douthat alone is not going to win the GOP any great victories, the GOP’s only hope lies in reaching out beyond the wingnut base. Reagan did that (hence: Reagan Democrats), George HW Bush did this, and even George W made a feint in that direction with “Compassionate Conservatism” (and in 2004 was able to corral enough non-winnut voters with lingering 9-11 passions). For that matter the great conressional victories of 1994 were of the asme piece since the Contract with America was mainly about sensible Good Government ideas (conservative edition) not red meat social and economic proposals dear to the far Right. Yes, some wingnuts might be left cold by that strategy. But they have no where else to go, politically. They hate the Democrats and the Libertarians are too, well, libertarian for the sort of Christianist who wants the government to impose Christian morality on the populace. The shrinking Limbaugh base will continue to vote Republican as long as the GOP throws them a few stray bones (by staying pro-Life on abortion for example).
October 28th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
This is the best news I’ve heard all week. Rush clearly has a plan to make the GOP irrelevant for the next two decades. Let’s help him out.
October 28th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
I agree with Rush: good riddance to moderate Republicans. The biggest problem with Republicans is that there are too many of them. My only wish is that they would’ve awakened BEFORE answering the question, “how bad do things have to get?” instead of after.
October 28th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
The only thing missing was, “I am Barack Obama and I approve this message.”
October 28th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
There’s a real need for an “oid” word to describe the likes of Limbaugh. Fortunately “hemorrhoid” is already in the dictionary.
October 29th, 2008 at 6:54 am
Napoleon said “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” Fortunately Rush doesn’t listen to anyone else about anything, so no-one is likely to interrupt him.
December 3rd, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Saint Mary’s Patrick Mills and Omar Samhan scored 15 points each to lead the team to an 86-55 win over Seattle Pacific Friday night. MORAGA, Calif. — Saint Mary’s Patrick Mills and Omar Samhan scored 15 points each
March 2nd, 2009 at 4:41 am
levitraIt is the coolest site,keep so!
March 11th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
That
March 12th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
Very interesting site. Hope it will always be alive!
March 14th, 2009 at 5:07 am
If you have to do it, you might as well do it right
xanax
March 17th, 2009 at 2:22 am
Very interesting site. Hope it will always be alive!
tramadol
March 22nd, 2009 at 6:01 am
tramadol
I want to say – thank you for this!
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:04 am
Excellent site. It was pleasant to me.
buy cheap viagra