Matt Yglesias

“Some Guy Named Shakir”

Rush Limbaugh takes on ThinkProgress’ Supreme Leader, Faiz Shakir.

For the record, you pronounce “Faiz” like “jazz.”

Hat tip to Media Matters.

Mutiny on the Ditto

Jason Zengerle points out Rush Limbaugh’s rather odd argument against arming the crews of cargo ships sailing in pirate infested waters:

Now, a lot of people ask, “Rush, how come these ships aren’t armed?” Everybody says just give some machine guns to the crew when you see the pirates showing up, wipe ‘em out. You maritime captains out there can back me up on this, but the historical reason why you don’t arm the crew on a cargo vessel is to guard against mutiny against the captain and the ship, ’cause you know how CEOs are hated today, and the captain of the ship is a CEO, and employees resent and they’re being told to resent the boss.

So the boss makes you do some things on board, if you’ve got machine guns ostensibly to gun down the Somali pirates, you could conduct a mutiny. So that’s one of the reasons that they aren’t armed.

I’m not sure I understand why this same fear of class warfare doesn’t also apply to gun control on land. At any rate, arming merchant vessels is probably a bad idea, but this would not be the first reason to occur to me.

Barkley Wants to Punch Rush Limbaugh, Karl Malone Wants to Slap Some Senators

I don’t have much to say about this, but I figure anything that falls at the intersection of pro basketball and American politics is definitely on my beat, so let’s observe that Karl Malone says “Congress and the Senators need to be slapped around” and Charles Barkely is “so close” to “just punching the hell out of” Rush Limbaugh.

For the past couple of years now I’ve been struggling, personally, to try to stop expressing my feelings about other people’s conduct in terms of fantasies of physical violence. Overall, I think it’s an unhealthy way to behave.

Limbaugh v. Gingrich

One thing to note about the latest spat between Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh is that I’ll bet you Newt doesn’t apologize. His conservative credentials aren’t really in doubt, and I think he’s shrewd enough to see how absurd the apologies other conservative politicians have offered make them look. Consequently, Newt—whose ideas are every bit as stupid as Rush’s—will come out of this possessing an entirely undeserved veneer of reasonableness.

Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins vs. Rush Limbaugh

This isn’t exactly profiles in courage material, but it’s good to see that not every Republican is taking her marching orders from talk radio. I do think this is worth peering deeper into, however:

Maine Republican Party Chairman Charles Webster, of Farmington, said Limbaugh has many admirers in Maine because “he speaks for a lot of working-class people” who are struggling to make a living.

Just to be clear, Maine exit polls show that the more money you have, the more likely you were to vote for John McCain:

In education terms, McCain’s best demographic was “some college” (though he lost that, too) and he did equally bad with those possessing a high-school diploma but no college, and those possessing a bachelor’s degree.

Frum Takes on Rush; Conservatives Leap to Condemn Frum

As part of the ongoing conservative civil war, David Frum took some shots at Rush Limbaugh. And for his trouble, he’s now getting set up for some purging.

– Erick Erickson: “Are any of Rush’s critics actual solid conservatives with a record of accomplishment? David Frum worked in the White House for about five minutes and is pro-abortion. Rod Dreher’s writing bursts with contempt for middle America conservatives, Michael Steele is a Christine Todd Whitman Republican, Ross Douthat is busy redefining conservatism, etc.”

– Andy McCarthy: “What takes my breath away, though, is David Frum’s rant. He’s got a point of view about reshaping the conservative movement, and while I often disagree with it, he can be very effective making it. But even allowing that he disagrees with Rush, what is the point of the ugly personal insults?”

– K-Lo: “David Frum writes: ‘Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined.’ First of all, I can’t really remember a time in 20 years now when Rush was sidelined.”

I think the sidelining point is clear enough. When conservative movement guys like George W. Bush and Tom DeLay were running the government there was a limited level of interest in what Rush Limbaugh thought about this or that. And if the Republicans were to retake the House in 2010 then, again, the main political story of any given week would be John Boehner’s clashes with Democrats. But with the current configuration of power, the main actors are the swing senators. What hard-core conservatives think is of limited relevance, since there are no hard-core conservatives in control of policy veto points. So when people are interested in a rock-ribbed right point of view, they may as well turn to Rush—he has just as much legislative influence, and a much higher level of name recognition, as an Eric Cantor or a Jim DeMint.

But the sad thing, if you actually care about the country, is how tepid this conservative civil war really is. David Brooks is one of the highest-profile reformists. And so he has a lot of notional disagreements with Rush Limbaugh. But though he used more restrained rhetoric about the stimulus bill, he ultimately agreed with the operational Rush agenda—vote no. And now he’s back with more restrained rhetoric than Rush’s about the budget, but he ultimately agrees with the operational Rush agenda—vote no.

Even in victory, by contrast, progressives are having intramural arguments about actual stuff—strategy in Afghanistan, carbon emissions policy, bank nationalization—not whether or not people should watch Rachel Maddow.

Michael Steele Apologizes to Rush

Rahm Emmanuel observed on Sunday that one measure of Rush Limbaugh’s hold over the Republican Party is that “whenever a Republican criticizes him, they have to run back and apologize to him, and say they were misunderstood.” Today’s RNC Chair Michael Steele becomes the latest to cross Rush, get slammed by Rush, and then need to issue a groveling apology explaining that he was misunderstood:

“I went back at that tape and I realized words that I said weren’t what I was thinking,” Steele said. “It was one of those things where I thinking I was saying one thing, and it came out differently. What I was trying to say was a lot of people … want to make Rush the scapegoat, the bogeyman, and he’s not.”

Satyam Khanna observes that he’s merely following in the footsteps of Governor Mark Sanford and Rep. Phil Gingrey.

The Revolution Devours Its Children

In my post on the right’s civil war, I saw Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh as in the same camp—a group of hyper-orthodox “ultras” so blind to reality that they not only saw Bobby Jindal as correct in his extreme opposition to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, but actually wanted to pretend that Jindal’s speech last week was effective. On the other side were governors like Jon Huntsman and Charlie Crist and columnist David Brooks, all hoping to move the right in a more constructive direction. But Ali Frick reports that during his hour-long address to the Conservative Political Action Committee, Limbaugh went beyond that to condemn Newt Gingrich as too soft and too substantive. He argued that the right has “got to stamp out” all efforts at criticism on the merits:

Everybody asks me — and I’m sure it’s been a focal point of your convention — well, what do we do, as conservatives? What do we do? How do we overcome this? … One thing we can all do is stop assuming that the way to beat them is with better policy ideas. […]

Our own movement has members trying to throw Reagan out while the Democrats know they can’t accomplish what they want unless they appeal to Reagan voters. We have got to stamp this out within this movement because it will tear us apart. It will guarantee we lose elections.

Gingrich has managed to get himself branded as an innovative policy thinker. In reality, the agenda he’s offering is mostly just a rehash of tax cuts and “drill baby drill” with little sign of innovative thinking.

Of course it’s not clear why you would expect innovative thinking from a man who first entered the House of Representative in 1978, who first entered the leadership in 1989 and who managed to have an entire dramatic narrative arc with a rise and fall from power all 10-15 years ago. But the fact that among people who congressional Republicans take seriously, the debate is between a “reformer” like Gingrich and an opponent like Limbaugh merely goes to show that on Capitol Hill there’s really no debate at all. You’ve got those who like the current gimmicks and those who want slightly different, slicker gimmicks. Only in the states where it’s difficult to avoid grappling with reality to some extent do you see Republicans actually stepping outside the Gingrich-Limbaugh box.

Still, the rise of personal antagonism between the two key unofficial leaders of the congressional Republicans is interesting, especially given their partnership during the 1993-94 heyday of conservative rejectionism. At his trial, during the French Revolution, the Jacobin (former) leader Danton remarked that “like Saturn, the revolution devours its children” and I suppose that’s what we’re seeing here.

McConnell: Hanging Out With Rush Limbaugh is Awesome

Sarah Posner reports from CPAC:

In his CPAC speech, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell insisted that conservatives are more “interesting” and “fun” than liberals. Here’s his proof: “who wants to hang out with guys like Paul Krugman and Robert Reich when you can be with Rush Limbaugh?”

The extent to which the formal political leaders of the Republican Party are eager to go this far out of their way to embrace Rush Limbaugh is interesting. But there are more Rush fans than Mitch fans:

Just yesterday, Rush once again reiterated his hope that the economy continues to tank because that would be bad for Barack Obama’s reelection prospects.

The Right’s Civil War

Predictions of a “conservative crack-up” tend to be a dime a dozen in American politics, and it rarely happens. But this month, I really do get the sense that we’re witnessing the opening rounds in a significant battle inside the conservative movement. The difference, it seems to me, is that you’re increasingly seeing actual politicians and people who are very close to the political arena getting into the fray. That’s difference from a question of a handful of disaffected conservative intellectuals or an intramural squabble between pundits. Here, for example, Utah Governor Jon Huntsman basically calls the congressional GOP a “very narrow party of angry people”:

Q: In December you talked about people 40 and under having a very different view on the environment. Is there a similar generational gap on gay rights?

A: You hit on the two issues that I think carry more of a generational component than anything else. And I would liken it a bit to the transformation of the Tory Party in the UK…They went two or three election cycles without recognizing the issues that the younger citizens in the UK really felt strongly about. They were a very narrow party of angry people. And they started branching out through, maybe, taking a second look at the issues of the day, much like we’re going to have to do for the Republican Party, to reconnect with the youth, to reconnect with people of color, to reconnect with different geographies that we have lost.

On Huntsman’s side, roughly speaking, I think you can also see Governor Charlie Crist of Florida and New York Times columnist David Brooks along with his merry band of reformist conservative pundits. Anchoring the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got Bobby Jindal of Louisiana leading a weird band of stimulus rejectionists. He’s being backed up by the House GOP’s quasi-official leaders Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich both of whom have taken the reality-defying view that Jindal’s speech yesterday was secretly brilliant. Guys like Eric Cantor and Mike Pence in the House and Jim DeMint and Mitch McConnell in the Senate have, likewise, really been digging in their heels on the idea that blanket oppositionism is the way to go. Thus far, though, you haven’t seen anyone on the Hill really take up the reformist banner. There’s the Senate’s troika of northeastern moderates, of course, but I think everyone agrees that they’re not the future of the American right. For the infighting to really become significant in a policy sense, you’d need some members of the House and Senate to try to put what Crist and Huntsman are talking about into practice.

Marijuana Legalization More Popular than Key Conservative Leaders

Inspired by this Chris Bowers post, here’s a chart I made comparing public support for legalizing marijuana to the approval ratings for Rush Limbaugh and various Republican Party leaders that I found on PollingReport:

Needless to say, support for marijuana legalization is pretty much a “fringe” view in national politics. And it certainly doesn’t have majority support. And yet put it in perspective and this is what you get.

Limbaugh Reiterates Desire for Economy to Tank

Back during 2004, 2005, and 2006 it was pretty clearly the case that substantive setbacks for the United States in Iraq brought political benefits for Democratic Party candidates. And it was also the case that increasing numbers of administration critics were becoming convinced during that period that the administration’s policies were doomed to fail. During this time it became commonplace for conservatives to claim that progressives were actively hoping for substantive setbacks in Iraq. That was pretty scummy of them. So I hesitate to turn around and make a parallel claim about today’s conservatives and the economy. But Rush Limbaugh keeps on doing it:

“I want everything he’s doing to fail . . . I want everything he’s doing to fail.”

I suppose I don’t have high expectations for crank radio hosts, but it’s really remarkable how conservative elected officials have repeatedly decided to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Rush, hail his genius, defend his indefensible remarks, etc.

John McCain, Dittohead

That Rush Limbaugh is loathesome can, I think, be taken for granted. But as we’ve been having occasion to note recently, to a really striking extent conservative politicians everywhere are taking their marching orders on policy and legislative strategy from a boorish and occasionally drug-addled talk radio host. Even John McCain, who a lot of people thought would go back to his maverick schtick of 2001-2003 vintage after losing the election, is standing firmly behind Rush:

I don’t know why he would do that. Mr. Limbaugh is a voice of a significant portion of our conservative movement in America. He has a very wide viewing audience. He is entitled to his views, and he has a lot of people who listen very carefully to him. I don’t know why that the President would take him on. He’s part of the political landscape, and he plays a role.

Needless to say, it’s precisely because Limbaugh is a part of the political landscape that people feel compelled to take him on. Meanwhile, Obama’s point wasn’t that Limbaugh isn’t entitled to his views. His point was that if Republicans want to be constructive partners in dealing with the economic crisis, they need to go beyond their current posture of slavish adherence to Rushism. After all, this is a guy who’s said he’s actively hoping for the administration to fail.

Grayson on Rush

This is a bit old, but I thought I’d share with everyone the views of Rep. Alan Grayson (a Democrat from the Orlando area) on Rush Limbaugh:

Alan Grayson, the outspoken member from Orlando, as usual, wasn’t mincing words: “Rush Limbaugh is a has-been hypocrite loser, who craves attention. His right-wing lunacy sounds like Mikhail Gorbachev, extolling the virtues of communism. Limbaugh actually was more lucid when he was a drug addict. If America ever did 1% of what he wanted us to do, then we’d all need pain killers.”

Arguably, the interests of any given progressive politician are better served by trying to appease the right-wing media apparatus than by trying to take it on. But the movement as a whole vitally needs leaders who are willing to try to diminish the influence of those centers of power.

Mike Pence’s Ode to Rush Limbaugh

Here’s some video of Mike Pence being an idiot and talking about the joys of Rush Limbaugh:

The most egregious thing here, and I guess this will be the new conservative approach, is that in response to a substantive criticism of Rush, Pence turns around and denies that Rush is a racist. That, however, isn’t the issue. The issue is that Rush has taken the view that his loyal followers in congress ought to be hoping that the Obama administration’s policies fail.

The larger issue, however, is that Mike Pence is a moron, and any movement that would hold the guy up as a hero is bankrupt. You can see my colleague Amanda Terkel for more of the specifics on this, but I would refer you to this post from September about the earth-shattering ignorance and stupidity of Mike Pence. He has no grasp, whatsoever, of public policy issues. And yet I can only gather from the fact that his colleagues have elevated him to a leadership post, that a large faction of them are actually so much stupider than Pence that they don’t realize how dumb he is. But it’s really staggering. In my admittedly brief experience talking to him, his inability to grasp the basic contours of policy question was obvious and overwhelming.

The Wrath of Rush

This morning, Matt Corley flagged Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) pushing back against Rush Limbaugh’s far-right, dead-ender ideology and tactics. Could a new day be dawning? Nope, Gingrey was just forced into a humiliating climb-down:

Turns out that Gingrey’s measured remarks provoked such a violent outcry that he has now been forced to apologize.

“Because of the high volume of phone calls and correspondence received by my office since the Politico article ran, I wanted to take a moment to speak directly to grassroots conservatives,” Gingrey said in a new statement released by his office. “Let me assure you, I am one of you.”

“I never told Rush to back off,” Gingrey continued. “I regret and apologize for the fact that my comments have offended and upset my fellow conservatives — that was not my intent … Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich, and other conservative giants are the voices of the conservative movement’s conscience.”

Steve Benen observes “The Republican Party is suffering something of a leadership vacuum. It’s pretty obvious who’s calling the shots.” It’s quite remarkable how much power right-wing talk radio has over conservative politicians’ approach to legislation.