Democrat Rush bashing starting to backfire

jimpeel

jimpeel

Well-Known Member
It seems that even Liberal Democrats like Jim Cramer are taking Rush's side as they have buyer's remorse after voting or stumping for Obama.

http://www.mainstreet.com/article/moneyinvesting/news/cramer-my-response-white-house?page=2

Posted March 05, 2009

Cramer: My Response To The White House
By Jim Cramer

When I come to work each day, whether as a commentator for TheStreet.com or a host of Mad Money With Jim Cramer, I have only one thought in mind: helping people with their money.

I fight to help viewers and readers make and preserve capital. I fight for their 401(k)s, for their 529s and their IRAs. I fight for their annuities and for their life insurance policies. I fight for their profits, trading and investing. And in this horrible market, I fight to keep their losses to a minimum by having some good dividend-yielding stocks from different sectors, some bonds, some gold and some cash.

The lines are drawn pretty clearly: If you can help people make money to be able to retire, enjoy life, pay for college, pay down debt, etc., you are a "good guy," so to speak. If you take the other side of the trade, you are, well, let's say, a less favored fellow. And if you gun for the gigantic investor class that is out there that includes 90 million people in one form or another, whether it be 401(k)s or individual stocks or pension plans, then you are on my enemies list.

Now some, including Rush Limbaugh, would say I am on another enemies list: that of the White House. Limbaugh says there are only a handful of us on it, and if I am on it for defending all of the shareholders out there, then I am in good company. Limbaugh -- whom I do not know personally, but having been in radio myself, know professionally as a genius of the medium -- says, "They're going to shut Cramer up pretty soon, too, but he'll go down with a fight."

Limbaugh's dead right. I am a fight-not-flight guy, so I was on my hackles when I heard White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' answer to a question about my pointed criticism of the president on multiple venues, including the Today Show.

"I'm not entirely sure what he's pointing to to make some of the statements," Gibbs said about my point that President Obama's budget may be one of the great wealth destroyers of all time. "And you can go back and look at any number of statements he's made in the past about the economy and wonder where some of the backup for those are, too."

Huh? Backup? Look at the incredible decline in the stock market, in all indices, since the inauguration of the president, with the drop accelerating when the budget plan came to light because of the massive fear and indecision the document sowed: Raising taxes on the eve of what could be a second Great Depression, destroying the profits in healthcare companies (one of the few areas still robust in the economy), tinkering with the mortgage deduction at a time when U.S. house price depreciation is behind much of the world's morass and certainly the devastation affecting our banks, and pushing an aggressive cap and trade program that could raise the price of energy for millions of people.

The market's the effect; much of what the president is fighting for is the cause. The market's signal can't be ignored. It's too palpable, too predictive to be ignored, despite the prattle that the market's predicted far more recessions than we have.

Gibbs went on to say, "If you turn on a certain program, it's geared to a very small audience. No offense to my good friends or friend at CNBC, but the president has to look out for the broader economy and the broader population."

How much I wish it were true right now that stocks played less of a role in peoples' lives. But stocks, along with housing, are our principal forms of wealth in this country. Only the people who have lifetime tenure, insured solid pensions and rent homes but own no stocks personally are unaffected. Sure that's a lot of people, but believe me, they aspire to have homes and portfolios. If we only want to help those who have no wealth to destroy, we are not helping the majority of Americans; we are not helping the broader population.

You can argue, of course, that Obama inherited one of the worst hands in the world. I had been a relentless critic of the Bush administration's "stewardship" of the economy, calling repeatedly for changes to avert the disaster that I saw coming, although perhaps Gibbs hasn't seen my CNBC meltdown. Seemed pretty prescient to me.

I, like everyone else, have made less authoritative and wrong statements in the past, but that rant still stands as something that I am sure everyone in the Bush administrations' Treasury and Fed listened to. My calls to sell 20% of your stocks in September at Dow 11,000 and then all of your stock if you need the money for the next five years at Dow 10,000 in October, might have eluded Gibbs, too.

But Obama has undeniably made things worse by creating an atmosphere of fear and panic rather than an atmosphere of calm and hope. He's done it by pushing a huge amount of change at a very perilous moment, by seeking to demonize the entire banking system and by raising taxes for those making more than $250,000 at the exact time when we need them to spend and build new businesses, and by revoking deductions for funds to charity that help eliminate the excess supply of homes.

We had a banking crisis coming into this regime, but now every area is in crisis. Each day is worse than the previous one for this miserable economy and while Obama's champions cite the stimulus plan, it's really just a hodgepodge of old Democratic pork and will not create nearly as many manufacturing or service jobs as we hoped. China's stimulus plan is the model; ours is the parody.

Sure there's going to be some mortgage relief, but the way to approach that problem is to eliminate the overhang, which a $15,000 tax credit for existing home sales could have dented if not consumed. I have offered a comprehensive plan of 4% refinanced mortgages for all by the government, not just those many considered deadbeats, to eliminate moral hazard. I have come up with a novel plan to cut the principal and spare the banks regulatory problems by offering them a certificate of equity, making them whole over time when the house appreciates in value, which will happen if demand is stoked and supply is shrunk.

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Others who have written on the Rush bashing and Obama's Nixonian enemies list.

Victor Davis Hanson

More on Rush
[Victor Davis Hanson]

All these highbrow conservative attacks on Limbaugh keep missing the point.

1) There is a certain sort of genius there that can do 15 hours of talk per week, ad hoc, and hold an audience of 20 million plus for over 20 years. There are about one or two others out of some 300 million who can do it. It may not be the same as digesting Reinhold Niebuhr or rereading the Federalist papers, but it is an uncanny talent and for over twenty years it has energized conservatives and reflected a certain populism that was lacking in its Wall Street/silk-stocking past. One could give Air America 1 trillion dollars in subsidy and it still could not match Limbaugh's audience.

2) Unlike many of his critics, Limbaugh is consistent, and that's why he maintains his audience. He is not going to wake up in the morning with vero possumus infatuation. Long before Barack Obama came along, he was warning his listeners about another populist maverick (from the Right) Ross Perot, and why they should not jump ship for him. For millions of conservatives the problem is not Limbaugh's occasional over-the-top riffs that are part of the talk-show genre, but NY-DC trimmers and triangulators who get caught up in fads and waves of popularity and adjust accordingly — as if they do not have the innate common sense to see that borrowing another trillion and more dollars to cure the problems brought on by borrowing annually a half-trillion dollars is, well, insanity.

3) When commentators bring up Limbaugh's private life in contrast to Obama's picture-perfect image, they only emphasize the superficial. I don't think Limbaugh would sit for 20 years listening to a white-supremacist preacher G-D-ing America. I don't think, like a Moyers, he would care all that much to learn who on his staff is gay. As is not the case with a Bill Maher or Michael Moore, those around Limbaugh like him, because they sense he is, for lack of a better word, a regular guy. That's why he can go on about his mansion and plane since his audience senses it is more caricature than snootiness. And if you did not actually hear conservative elites tsk-tsking Limbaugh's weight, marriages, and past addiction, then you would have to invent them doing so. We saw all that with Palin and the demonization of her multiple pregnancies, blue-collar husband, twangy speech, and Idaho B.A. Yet the reason why a Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush was elected twice — and not George Bush primus — was precisely because they could resonate with the middle classes in both a cultural and social sense, an ability that transcends money but has everything to do with attitude. What scares many is not the sometimes slobby but authentic image of a blunt-talking Rush Limbaugh, but the polo-shirted pre-packaged personas of an Obama, John Edwards, or John Kerry.
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R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.

Rush to Rush

By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. on 3.5.09 @ 6:08AM

WASHINGTON -- "Rush is the bloated face and drug-addled voice of the Republican Party," Paul Begala is quoted as saying in the Washington Post. Begala is asseverating on Rush Limbaugh, the most popular radio commentator in the country, but alas one who disagrees with Begala. I think it speaks volumes about Begala's obliviousness that he would bring up physical traits in attempting to make some political point. Has he beheld himself in a mirror lately? Even friends know him as "The Skull," owing to his cadaverous countenance.

You may only have seen him on television. I have had the gruesome experience of seeing him in the flesh. We were in the makeup room being cosmeticized for appearances on a cable television show. The artiste attending to the crevices, the gullies, and the bumps of Begala's unfortunate face had to apply so much makeup to it that when he left the makeup room it looked as though he was wearing plaster of Paris. During the ensuing debate he may have laughed at one or two of my jokes or he may have frowned. It was impossible to tell. His ghoulish features were completely covered up.

The point Begala has been trying to make about Limbaugh is the point that apparently an entire phalanx of Democratic operatives, including President Barack Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, is trying to make, namely, that Limbaugh wants the President to fail. Of course, these Democrats are practicing a deception on their audiences. What Limbaugh clearly wants is for the president to fail in his apparent goal of bringing social democracy to our shores (through his nationalization of much of the economy and his onerous tax increases). Limbaugh wants this effort to fail because it will prevent economic recovery and the prosperity that has been allowed us by free-market economics. The whole controversy is a hoax. Yet now it is reliably reported that as many as a dozen top Democrats, some on the White House staff, are continuing this hoax and expanding it by trying to make reaction to Limbaugh an issue for the Republican Party to pronounce on.

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Jay Nordlinger

Shook up about Rush, &c.
By Jay Nordlinger

In recent days, there has been a great fuss over Rush Limbaugh. It’s amazing, the attention he attracts, and the heebie-jeebies he gives people. Some of my friends have blasted him. One was in my office just yesterday, blasting him.

Okay. Rush isn’t for everybody, but who is? There are many other radio hosts on the dial, and you can choose the ones you like — or none at all. I like Rush. I think he’s right about almost everything. And I like his spirit — the sheer joie de vivre he expresses. I wish I had more of that myself.

After November’s election, Colin Powell said that Republicans have to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh. Since when have they ever listened to Rush? For president, the Republicans nominated probably Rush’s least favorite politician (in the GOP, that is). And I’m sure most Rush fans voted for him, because they thought he was a lot better than the alternative, which he was.

Whom did Powell support, by the way? Barack Obama, the Democrat, and the most left-wing president we have ever elected, possibly. I’m not sure that Powell Republicanism is the Republicanism the GOP should want.

And let me say a further word about John McCain — whom I admire, and whom I voted for enthusiastically. He was almost perfect for the GOP moderate types, you would have thought. He was anti-Christian Right. He was Mr. Campaign Finance Reform. He was Mr. Amnesty. He was Mr. Global Warming. He was Mr. Reach Across the Aisle.

Except for being against abortion and for free trade, he was made-to-order.

And if McCain isn’t good enough for the Powell brigades — who ever would be?

As far as I know, Rush Limbaugh isn’t running for anything. And he isn’t trying to be the face of the Republican party. He has a radio talk show. And, taking advantage of free speech in America, he says what he thinks. People are free to agree or disagree. That’s democracy. (Forgive the banality.) If you have a better argument, spell it out. One thing Rush has always been happy to do is engage with ideas.

Are his critics willing to engage with him? Or just sneer and resent?

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Powerline

Mano a Mano: Rush vs. Barack!
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March 4, 2009 Posted by John at 4:20 PM

I noted earlier today the Politico story about how the White House has coordinated an attack on Rush Limbaugh for political purposes. Today on his show, Rush responded by issuing a challenge to President Obama:

If these guys are so impressed with themselves, and if they are so sure of their correctness, why doesn't President Obama come on my show? We will do a one-on-one debate of ideas and policies. Now, his people in this Politico story, it's on the record. They're claiming they wanted me all along. They wanted me to be the focus of attention. So let's have the debate! I am offering President Obama to come on this program -- without staffers, without a teleprompter, without note cards -- to debate me on the issues. Let's talk about free markets versus government control. Let's talk about nationalizing health care and raising taxes on small business.

Let's talk about the New Deal versus Reaganomics. Let's talk about closing Guantanamo Bay, and let's talk about sending $900 million to Hamas. Let's talk about illegal immigration and the lawlessness on the borders. Let's talk about massive deficits and the destroying of opportunities of future generations. Let's talk about ACORN, community agitators, and the unions that represent the government employees which pour millions of dollars into your campaign, President Obama. Let's talk about your elimination of school choice for minority students in the District of Columbia. Let's talk about your efforts to further reduce domestic drilling and refining of oil. Let's talk about your stock market. ...

Let's talk about all of these things, Mr. President. Let's go ahead and have a debate on this show. No limits. Now that your handlers are praising themselves for promoting me as the head of a political party -- they think that's a great thing -- then it should be a no-brainer for you to further advance this strategy by debating me on the issues and on the merits, and wipe me out once and for all!

You're a smart guy, Mr. President. You don't need these hacks to front for you. You've debated the best! You've debated Hillary Clinton. You've debated John Edwards. You've debated Joe Biden. You've debated Dennis Kucinich. You've debated the best out there. ...

I would rather have an intelligent, open discussion with you where you lay out your philosophy and policies and I lay out mine -- and we can question each other, in a real debate. Any time here at the EIB Network studios. If you're too busy partying or flying around giving speeches and so forth, then send Vice President Biden. I'm sure he would be very capable of articulating your vision for America -- and if he won't work, send Geithner, and we can talk about the tax code. And if that won't work, go get Bob Rubin. I don't care. Send whoever you want if you can't make it. You don't need to be leaking stories to Politico like this thing that's published today. You don't need to have your allies writing op-eds and all the rest. If you can win at this, then come here and beat me at my own game, and get rid of me once and for all, and show all the people of America that I am wrong.

Who knows? President Obama might come to regret the day that he set out to destroy Rush Limbaugh.
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Erick Erickson

A Question About Rush’s ‘Conservative’ Critics

Posted by Erick Erickson (Profile)

Monday, March 2nd at 10:58PM EST
38 Comments

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.

Rush has been fighting for us on the front lines for two decades and he has proven he can make a difference in elections and policy for the better. I love the guy just for making me smile on a daily basis. These other turds who want us to sideline our most proven warrior do nothing but tear down others to elevate themselves, and none of them have proven any lasting success that we can trust. They preach about big tents, inclusion and broad appeal, but they can’t stop condescending to the majority of the Republican Party that consider themselves Rush Limbaugh conservatives. I’m so sick of these leeches.

Oh, and have any of these critics ever actually won an election?
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Hugh Hewitt

Saturday, February 28, 2009
"The Speech," 2009
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 10:37 PM

Rush gave a speech at CPAC today that will be talked about for years and even decades. The CNN commentators called him "angry," --did that description ever attach to Howard Dean or any of the leading Democrats in opposition to President Bush?-- but what he actually was was passionate about freedom. And completely and utterly contemptuous of conservatives urging accommodation to the agenda of President Obama, especially those conservatives ashamed of the grassroots and their attachments to pastimes such as NASCAR and issues such as the dignity of every human life and the importance of marriage.

A week ago a reporter from a major American newspaper called me to talk about Rush. I agreed to do the interview provided it was recorded and that I could air it after the story the reporter was working on ran. The reporter asked me if Rush was a "leader," and I said no. He is, I continued, a communicator, a pundit and an entertainer, one of the two best in the country --along with Oprah. And a man of extraordinary influence. I think the Rush-Oprah comparison startled the reporter, but it is exactly correct. They have the same reach, and though they have almost completely different approaches to life, both are deeply sincere about their views and thus far beyond merely "effective." Both communicators change lives.

Rush eschews "leadership." He doesn't tell people who to vote for or where to show up and march.

But he does communicate with quite extraordinary clarity the deep, abiding attachment that conservatives have for liberty. He does so with great, good humor, and it is this quality that drives the left to distraction. Rush is funny; really, really funny. This is of course the reason he has succeeded far beyond every other radio talk show host. The "women's summit" this week was just the latest in a long string of innovative --and profitable-- firsts that amused even as it made key points.

And Rush is authentic. And deeply appreciated as a result. Long may he prosper.

BTW: The newspaper's story hasn't run yet. Though I am on vacation next week, Duane will play it if and when the story does run to see which quotes the reporter used. That will be interesting.
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Hey looky! Opinion pieces! :laugh:

You have posted nothing to indicate "Democrat Rush bashing" is backfiring.

The big Rush issue is between Rush and Micheal Steele. Just some republican implosion. In fact one of your opinion pices even refers to "All these highbrow conservative attacks on Limbaugh".

Pretty funny to watch actually.

See more republican implosion with Ann Coulter speaking about Bobby Jindal "Wasn't Bobby great in "Slumdog Millionaire"? Also Rush showing his unfamiliarity with the Constition at CPAC was entertaining.
 
He's a radio personality, what does he need to know of this "constitution" you speak of? :lol:
 
He is just a radio personality. Not a politician. Why does 0bama feel the need to go on the attack?
 
Cerise said:
He is just a radio personality. Not a politician. Why does 0bama feel the need to go on the attack?
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He didn't 'go on the attack' - he mentioned him as a caricature of confrontational Conservative mindset.
He then told them to break free of the confrontational mindset epitomised by Mr Limbaugh, the highest paid talk show host in America. "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done," Mr Obama said.
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Cerise said:
He is just a radio personality. Not a politician. Why does 0bama feel the need to go on the attack?
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what's this "attack?"

all i've heard is a bunch of limbaugh's pissing and moaning (along with similar pissing and moaning from the local dumbmeisters) and some crap about that steele guy.

doesn't it get tiring, feeling so persecuted all the time? isn't there enough drama in your life already?

oh, woes is yous.
 
obama0123.jpg


"You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done.."
 
I saw a video recently about how tremendously wrong Jim Cramer is very often. I wonder what Jim thinks he's proving at this point by posting more opinion crap?
 
This is all one big effing problem for the republicans. On one hand they are singing their own praises about being the party to "save the nation" and on the other, they can't agree who their leader is. So who's it going to be for the republicans? Rush Limbaugh or Michael Steele?

What I see is a bunch of pathetic and gutless republicans who call Limbaugh an entertainer and then wind up apologizing to him. Now that is gutless. What is that all about? This blowhard has the republicans so confused they do not even know if Limbaugh or Steele are in charge of the republican party. And now it looks like Steele might resign. But that won't that be funny because it will leave only one titular head of the republican party and guaranteed he won't take the reins.
So what we have now is a republican party that has two heads, both oversized by ego-mania, pulling in different directions and a republican party saying they want to lead America.
Ain't that a cute scenario. The republicans can't decide who their leader(s) are and they think they have it together enough to run the government. The republicans are so neurotic they spent twenty or the last twenty-eight years screwing things up and now, with the present economic climate do not even know who their leader is and want to lead America! If this wasn't such sorry a state of affairs for republicans, it would make a great script for a television series. Any suggestions for a possible title?
 
2minkey said:
oh it's still an open question as to which party is stupider.
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I keep telling you that it's a mistake to separate them. It's one homogeneous group pretending to be two separate entities. Look at reactions and results.
 
To my way of thinking Rush would be a great leader of the Republicans from a Democrat's perspective. I mean he is just a blowhard bozo, and more than that a proven hypocrite. I wonder how those pain med problems are going for him these days? If I were in the democrat's shoes I would think he would be better than a clear and respectable leader.
 
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