Rush is Smoking with Conservatives

We’ve said it before and we say it again: Rush Limbaugh is the best thing that has happened to Barack Obama all year.

First came Limbaugh’s filibuster-worthy speech at CPAC (the convention for conservatives) on Saturday during which he “doubled down” (as White House Press secretary Robert Gibbs so eloquently put it) on his earlier statement that he was hoping for Obama to fail. The crowd and the conservative blogosphere could barely contain itself.

Then hours later the battle between Limbaugh and new Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele began — a cat fight that is so incredibly entertaining in a way only Washington can deliver — petty, political, and pathetic. By now you know the story: Steele tells CNN’s comic news host D.L. Hughley Limbaugh an “entertainer” whose popular radio show is sometimes “incendiary” and “ugly” — not as Hughley suggested the “de facto leader of the Republican Party.”

Limbaugh fires back repeatedly on his show Monday: “Michael Steele, you are head of the Republican National Committee. You are not head of the Republican party. Tens of millions of conservatives and Republicans have nothing to do with the Republican National Committee….” You can’t make this up!

By nightfall Steele, tail tucked firmly between his legs, tells Politico’s Mike Allen that he screwed up — or was at least misunderstood:

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. I’m not going to engage these guys and sit back and provide them the popcorn for a fight between me and Rush Limbaugh. No such thing is going to happen. I wasn’t trying to slam him or anything.

So the actual head of the Republican Party genuflects to the true head of the party. Limbaugh comes out on top. But remember what we said back in January:

Some Obama supporters have worried that the President was foolish in even acknowledging the existence of Radio Rush after the talk-show host said he hoped Obama would fail. They said Obama only gave the Rotund One more attention and therefore more power.

Exactly.

At a time when the Republican Party is in a desperate search for it’s soul — the website GOP USA has a fundraising email out talking about “real Republicans” reclaiming their party — Obama has managed to make Rush Limbaugh the poster boy for the opposition.

That was January 29th. Now we have Obama’s Chief of Staff saying it outright on Face the Nation (Limbaugh is the “intellectual head” of the GOP). And according to Greg Sargent’s excellent inside DC blog:

Top Democratic operatives are planning a stepped up campaign to promote Rush Limbaugh as the public face of the GOP — an effort that will include recruiting Dem governors to make this case on talk shows, getting elected officials to pen Op eds arguing it, and running more ads pushing it.

While Greg notes that James Carville started this in early February, Get Real said it before then and we stand by our original statements: Rush Limbaugh is an idiot because he’s being played by Obama.

On the other hand if you believe that Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer first and a conservative second then he’s no dummy because he’s getting just what he wants too. Attention.

The only people who are really hurt by all this are movement conservatives who have watched their political power fall off a cliff. They appear too smitten of Rush to notice he’s the head lemming who, unlike them, has a golden parachute.