Democrat Rush bashing starting to backfire

spike said:
Weird how they don't give any citations or context to Carvile's remarks and there's never any link to that poll or the actual question it asked.

Hmmnn....makes you wonder if Fox is making up shit again. ;)
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Carville dancing to Media Matters' tune. Media Matters bobbing and weaving.

The problem with their contentions is that the guy who led the charge denouncing Limbaugh is a guy who wished the same thing on Bush.

The double standard continues unabated.

Carville, one of the smartest people in America, says he doesn't remember what he said that day; but Sammon is a good reporter

http://mediamatters.org/items/200903120020

One difference between Limbaugh and Carville? Limbaugh is still saying he wants Obama to fail

Summary: Rush Limbaugh purported to favorably contrast his repeated statements that he wants President Obama to "fail" with Democratic strategist James Carville's statement -- prior to learning of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that "I hope [President Bush] doesn't succeed." In fact, whereas Carville reportedly retracted his statement immediately upon learning of the terrorist attacks and subsequently urged Democrats to support Bush's anti-terrorism efforts, Limbaugh has repeated his desire to see Obama fail throughout the current economic crisis and has gone so far as to say that he "hope" Obama's stimulus package "prolongs the recession."

...

CARVILLE: First of all, the guy that wrote that is Bill Sammon, and he works at Fox and I've always find him to be a straight guy. To be fair to me, I said, look, everything I said, I just said everything I said, I you know, given the circumstances, everything was changed. Thank God I had the good sense to realize the United States was at war, unlike Rush Limbaugh, who four times after he said it when the United States is at war fighting three different wars, kept insisting that he wanted the president to fail in a time of war. Again, I was pretty clear when I read that report, that Bill did report that I said that after I found out.

BLITZER: But let me just be precise, James. Did you say that morning, did you say that you hoped President Bush would fail?

CARVILLE: I don't know what I said that morning. I know him to be a reporter. Once I found out that the country was at war, I said I don't mean whatever I said, disregard it. I had the good sense, I presumably to the extent I can remember seven and a half years ago, to say that. And I was grateful he put that in.
​

[more ... much more]
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jimpeel said:
Rush Limbaugh EIB Network:

1Q 2009 Revenues up 13.5% over 1Q 2008

Audience up 32% from baseline of 20-22 million listeners.

I hope the Libs keep up the good work.
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Me too if it meens the approval for the Cons keeps dropping like it has. ;)

I didn't realize also said he wanted the recession prolonged too. He's really going all out anti-American.
 
spike said:
Me too if it meens the approval for the Cons keeps dropping like it has. ;)

I didn't realize also said he wanted the recession prolonged too. He's really going all out anti-American.
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If Air America Radio had his audience they would be:

Not bankrupt, and;

They would still be on the air, and;

They would have better than a 1.3 share, and;

They would have more than 1.5 million listeners each week, and;

They would have more than 66 stations carrying their broadcasts, and;

They would be telling us the best way we can get out of the recession.

But, alas, they can't. They're gone. They were bought up by the Green family and had their name changed to Air America Media.
 
spike said:
I'm curious how you think this reply relates at all to my post? Kinda bizarre thing you did there.
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Thought you'd get it.

Thought wrong.

The approval rating of Air America, the antithesis of Rush Limbaugh, was so low they went out of business. Seems it went far lower than the "cons".
 
huh, i was talking about the dwindling republican approval ratings and you decided to go off on a tangent about Air America.
 
Gonz said:
Not necessarily.

The man may have an agenda in which you disagree but he is the President. The office is bigger than the man.
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whether I agree or disagree is beside the point.
A man's agenda, and what is actually required of the office, are 2 different things.

How many exec. orders already?

if what you say, and what you do, don't define you, then what does? Not the office.
The office is what it is, but doesn't reflect on how the holder will act.
 
SOURCE

MARCH 12, 2009

The White House Misfires on Limbaugh

By KARL ROVE

Presidents throughout history have kept lists of political foes. But the Obama White House is the first I am aware of to pick targets based on polls. Even Richard Nixon didn't focus-group his enemies list.

Team Obama -- aided by Clintonistas Paul Begala, James Carville and Stanley Greenberg -- decided to attack Rush Limbaugh after poring over opinion research. White House senior adviser David Axelrod explicitly authorized the assault. Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel assigned a White House official to coordinate the push. And Press Secretary Robert Gibbs gleefully punched the launch button at his podium, suckering the White House press corps into dropping what they were doing to get Mr. Limbaugh.

Was it smart politics and good policy? No. For one thing, it gave the lie to Barack Obama's talk about ending "the political strategy that's been all about division" and "the score-keeping and the name-calling." The West Wing looked populated by petulant teenagers intent on taking down a popular rival. Such talk also shortens the president's honeymoon by making him look like a street-fighting Chicago pol instead of an inspirational, unifying figure. The upward spike in ratings for Rush and other conservative radio commentators shows how the White House's attempt at a smackdown instead energized the opposition.

Did it do any good with voters not strongly tied to either party? I suspect not. With stock markets down, unemployment growing, banks tottering, consumers anxious, business leaders nervous, and the economy shrinking, the Obama administration's attacks on a radio talk show host made it seem concerned with the trivial.

Why did the White House do it? It was a diversionary tactic. Clues might be found in the revelation that senior White House staff meet for two hours each Wednesday evening to digest their latest polling and focus-group research. I would bet a steak dinner at Morton's in Chicago these Wednesday Night Meetings discussed growing public opposition to spending, omnibus pork, more bailout money for banks and car companies, and new taxes on energy, work and capital.

What better way to divert public attention from these more consequential if problematic issues than to start a fight with a celebrity conservative? Cable TV, newspapers and newsweeklies would find the conflict irresistible. Something has to be set aside to provide more space and time to the War on Rush; why not the bad economic news?

Here's the problem: Misdirection never lasts long. Team Obama can at best only temporarily distract the public; within days, attention will return to issues that clearly should worry the White House.

Not even Team Obama can forestall unpleasant reality. And among those America now faces is Mr. Obama adding $3.2 trillion to the national debt in his first 20 months and 11 days in office, eclipsing the $2.9 trillion added during the Bush presidency's entire eight years.

Another reality is that Mr. Obama's fiscal house is built on gimmicks. For example, it assumes the cost of the surge in Iraq will extend for a decade. This brazenly dishonest trick was done to create phony savings down the line.

Mr. Obama's budget downplays some programs' true cost. For example, his vaunted new college access program is funded for five years and then disappears (on paper); the children's health insurance program drops (on paper) from $12.4 billion in 2013 to $700 million the next year. Neither will happen; the costs of both will be much higher and so will the deficits.

Mr. Obama's budget also assumes the economy declines 41% less this year and grows 52% more next year and 38% more the year after than is estimated by the Blue Chip consensus (a collection of estimates by leading economists traditionally used by federal budget crunchers). If Mr. Obama used the consensus forecasts for growth rather than his own rosy scenarios, his budget would be $758 billion more in the red over the next five years.

Then there's discretionary domestic spending, which grows over the next two years by $238 billion, the fastest increase ever recorded. Mr. Obama pledges it will then be cut in real terms for the next nine years. That's simply not credible.

Then there's his omnibus spending bill to fund the government for the next six months, laden with 8,500 earmarks and tens of billions in additional spending above the current budget. What happened to pledges for earmark reform and making "meaningful cuts?"

In the face of our enormous economic challenges, top White House aides decided to pee on Mr. Limbaugh's leg. This is a political luxury the country cannot afford, and which Mr. Obama would be wise to forbid. Or did he not mean it when he ran promising to "turn the page" on the "old" politics?

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
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Karl Rove :rofl3:

Geezus Jim, do you spend your entire free time looking for opinion pieces that agree with you? Damn man, just read some actual news or something.

What's good for Rush Limbaugh is bad for Republicans
National Post ^ | David Frum

Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2009 9:48:49 PM by indcons

Gallup's latest polling reveals the continuing collapse of the Republican party's base vote. The news is so very bad that there will be only one possible response from GOP party leadership and our radio talkers: Ignore it.

--SNIP--

Instead, our congressmen talk to and about Rush Limbaugh like Old Bolsheviks praising Comrade Stalin at their show trials. Rush is right! We see eye to eye with Rush! There is no truth outside Rush!

Rush and Hannity and O’Reilly and Ann Coulter and the others have their place and their role. They spoke for an important section of public opinion, and it is a section our party needs. But it is only a section, and not the whole. The more the party allows them to become our public face, the more embattled and endangered the party becomes.

The relationship between these radio talkers and the larger Republican and conservative world has become parasitic and antagonistic. They flourish and profit to the extent they can polarize and radicalize. The GOP will recover only to the extent that it moderates and reaches out. They benefit from controversies that position them as the leaders and designated speakers for conservative America. But the more visible they become, the more our party is shoved to the margins and rendered unelectable. What is good for Rush is bad for the GOP, and what is good for the GOP is bad for Rush.
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2174770/posts
 
catocom said:
whether I agree or disagree is beside the point.
A man's agenda, and what is actually required of the office, are 2 different things.
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Correct. However, the Office & Title of President are far more important than the current holder of that Office & Title.
 
The world certainly saw us in a whole new light due to Bill's antics.

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By the by, there is nothing new with declaring Rush as the unabashed Conservative leader. They were doing the same thing back in 2003.

http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/flashback-bowman080103.asp

August 1, 2003, 10:40 p.m.
The Leader of the Opposition
Meet Rush.

By James Bowman

EDITOR'S NOTE: August 1, 2003, marks the 15th anniversary of The Rush Limbaugh Show. In the September 6, 1993, issue of National Review James Bowman wrote about Limbaugh, his role in broadcast media, and leadership among conservatives. Bowman's article, an NR cover story, is reprinted here.

Which is the real Rush Limbaugh — the merry prankster of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, or the unifying voice of conservatives across the country? Just tune in . . .

To begin with, he's not Mr. Limbaugh. You've got to call the ornament of the EIB (Excellence in Broadcasting) network, the man so used to the adulation of his fans that he long ago asked them to skip the praise with which they prefaced every phone call and just say "Ditto," the man who likes to claim he has "talent on loan from God," just plain Rush. That's what the ever-courtly Ronald Reagan, who has never met him, calls him. A month after George Bush's defeat by Bill Clinton last year, Reagan sent him the following unsolicited note:

Dear Rush,

Thanks for all you're doing to promote Republican and conservative principles. Now that I've retired from active politics, I don't mind that you have become the Number One voice for conservatism in our Country.

I know the liberals call you "the most dangerous man in America," but don't worry about it, they used to say the same thing about me. Keep up the good work. America needs to hear the way things ought to be."

Sincerely, Ron​

To some of those close to Reagan, the letter is evidence that the former President is losing his grip. "If Limbaugh is leader of the opposition in the true political sense," one of them told me, "then we're in serious trouble." Fred Barnes in The New Republic ended a piece on the Republican resurgence under Clinton by drawing a contrast with the Carter era: "When the GOP rose in the late 1970s, it had Ronald Reagan. Now the loudest Republican voice belongs to Rush Limbaugh."

PASSING THE TORCH

The unspoken premise there is that Limbaugh, unlike Reagan, cannot be taken seriously as a political leader. But to a surprising number of conservatives there is a solemn appropriateness about Reagan's passing the torch to the 42-year-old former disc jockey and college dropout. Certainly if any conservative is in line to inherit the mantle of "The Great Communicator," it is the idol of the "dittoheads," the man who presides over the country's most listened-to radio talk-show. But his twenty million listeners a week on 616 stations also make him the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the cage in which American conservatism is languishing. "One reason he unites the Right is that he's the biggest kid on the block," says Terry Eastland, editor of The Forbes Media Critic. "People don't want to be lampooned on the air; politicians don't want to offend him because he's so popular."

Certainly, of those who might themselves be considered leaders of the opposition, no one to whom I was able to speak has a word to say against him. Their compliments sound as if they have been rehearsed in front of a mirror. "When Rush Limbaugh talks, you know you're listening to the real world," says Bob Dole. "He's a powerhouse antidote to the liberal cheer-leading you hear all the time from the national media. That's why Rush is such a refreshing addition to America's airwaves. He's smart, he's tough, and he isn't going away, much to the annoyance of the liberal crowd." In amongst such unmitigated praise, do we detect just a hint of condescension in the word "refreshing" or that mention of the "airwaves"? Is there the tiniest smidgen of resentment of Limbaugh's popularity in "the real world" as opposed to the power in the political world that Dole wields? If so he is not saying so. On Rush as leader of the opposition he had no comment.

Phil Gramm says Limbaugh "has had a profound impact on conservative thinking in America . . . He says things other people are afraid to say. As an opinion maker and thinker he is very intelligent and, like Ronald Reagan, a very effective communicator. There are many days when I think he's doing a lot more good than the Republicans in the Senate are doing."

Dan Quayle agrees: "He's certainly out there carrying his fair share. I'd say he's leading the charge right now. It's only in the three months since I returned to Indiana that I've realized how big he is. . . . I know the Republican Party listens to him. He's got the pulse of our rank and file."

Jack Kemp, who compares Rush's influence among Republicans to that of Will Rogers among Democrats in the 1930s, adds that he's certainly leading the fight against some of the far-left policies of the Clinton Administration and doing it with wit, wisdom, humor, tenacity, and an irrepressible style. He shows people that the Democratic Party, and especially Bill Clinton, who ran as a centrist, are not (New Democrats' at all but old Democrats who are not trying to empower people but government."

But it is Kemp's partner in Empower America, William Bennett, who must take the prize as the most convinced Rushophile among Republican leaders. He has gone from being a listener to the show, to being an occasional contributor by phone, to being a close personal friend and something of an intellectual mentor. Rush, says Bennett, "may be the most consequential person in political life at the moment. He is changing the terms of debate. He is doing to the culture what Ronald Reagan did to the political movement. He tells his audience that what you believe inside you can talk about in the marketplace. People were afraid of censure by gay activists, feminists, environmentalists — now they are not because Rush takes them on. And he does it with humor. We have a reputation as somewhat prim and priggish, and Rush is absolute death to liberals: a conservative with humor."

Yes, but . . . Is Limbaugh really an homme serieux, a man with the gravitas to be a — let alone the — republican leader? A lot of very wealthy Republicans consider themselves sophisticated beyond the Limbaugh types," Bennett goes on. "They miss the point. Rush is extremely sophisticated, extremely smart. The great thing is that, never having been through a university, he is not complicated with pedanticism. He's very serious intellectually. He knows how to frame an issue, how to debate an issue, how to argue ad finem and ad absurdum. He does both. But he is larger than a leader of the political opposition. He represents a shift in the culture. Another ten years of the political change he stands for will take us beyond Republicans and Democrats."

WHAT WOULD MAKE RUSH RUN?

All such praise from would-be rivals for leadership depends in part on Rush's own disavowal of any electoral ambition. Are there any circumstances in which he would be a candidate? "Maybe, but I don't know what they are," he told me. "I have said never to this — never, ever, I don't want to do it. And I don't. I have no desire. Primarily because, to do it, to be elected to anything you have to walk around like this — with your hand out. And you have to beg people to put something in it. Somebody always does, and they want repayment. And not with dollars. It's going to be with your soul, it's going to be with a portion of your soul. I don't look at it as fun." The point is that he does look at hosting the Rush Limbaugh show as fun — "more fun than a human being should be allowed to have," as he so frequently says. And if he is to be understood at all it is in terms of what he considers to be fun.

[more]
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jimpeel said:
The world certainly saw us in a whole new light due to Bill's antics.
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They still liked us then. But then we ruined it by putting an idiot like Bush in office.

freerepublic???? BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
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You don't like those conservative sites? :laugh:

What's good for Rush Limbaugh is bad for Republicans
National Post ^ | David Frum

Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2009 9:48:49 PM by indcons

Gallup's latest polling reveals the continuing collapse of the Republican party's base vote. The news is so very bad that there will be only one possible response from GOP party leadership and our radio talkers: Ignore it.

--SNIP--

Instead, our congressmen talk to and about Rush Limbaugh like Old Bolsheviks praising Comrade Stalin at their show trials. Rush is right! We see eye to eye with Rush! There is no truth outside Rush!

Rush and Hannity and O’Reilly and Ann Coulter and the others have their place and their role. They spoke for an important section of public opinion, and it is a section our party needs. But it is only a section, and not the whole. The more the party allows them to become our public face, the more embattled and endangered the party becomes.

The relationship between these radio talkers and the larger Republican and conservative world has become parasitic and antagonistic. They flourish and profit to the extent they can polarize and radicalize. The GOP will recover only to the extent that it moderates and reaches out. They benefit from controversies that position them as the leaders and designated speakers for conservative America. But the more visible they become, the more our party is shoved to the margins and rendered unelectable. What is good for Rush is bad for the GOP, and what is good for the GOP is bad for Rush.
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