Andrew Sullivan Wants to Know:

"When will decent Republicans or conservatives actually disown this flaming bigot (Rush Limibaugh)?"

I assume Sullivan means the question rhetorically, because as he damned well knows, "decent Republicans or conservatives" have virtually ceased to exist anyplace but on page 53 of Jorge Luis Borges' "Book of Imaginary Beings".

Right between the "Á Bao A Qu" and the "Axehandle Hound".

For a generation, decent Liberals have been warning people like Sullivan that this kind of Devil would one day come for his due (From Rod Serling writing in an editorial in the (then-very-right-wing) Los Angeles Times in 1964, in response to a series of articles by wingnut-apologist Morrie Ryskind:

…
What Mr. Ryskind seems constitutionally unable to understand is that there is a vast difference between the criticism of a man or a party, and the setting up of criteria or patriotism which equates differences of opinion with disloyalty.

We have need in the country for an enlightened, watchful and articulate opposition. We have no need for semi-secret societies who are absolutist, dictatorial, and would substitute for a rule of law and reason an indiscriminate assault on the institutions of this republic that should and must be held sacrosanct.
…

“[The far right cannot] discount the fact that sitting it their parlor is the Ku Klux Klan, the American Nazi Party, every racist group in the United States and not a few of some Fascist orders that have scrambled their way up from the sewers to a position of new respectability.”

We were, or course, ignored.

We were told to shut up.

We were told that the Limbaughs were just fringe entertainers.

We were told that the Falwells were just useful dolts who could be kept under control.

We were told that, whatever their flaws, the awesomeness of the Small Gummint/Fiscal Responsibility/Individual Liberty ends of the Conservative Movement outweighed any trifling concerns over the means by which they were achieved.

We were told all of these things by people whose entire worldview depended on frantically ignoring the fact that their Conservative Movement never, ever made good on a single word of what they promised, and, in fact, routinely and flagrantly violated their own principles with a profligacy so breathtaking it makes the average Liberal seem positively Libertarian.

Now the day people like Sullivan were long warned was coming has arrived in all its roaring, fascist, pig-ignorant Palinite glory.

Andrew, seriously, after all of this, how fucking dare you feign surprise.

If you want to do something useful, quit shaking your fist at Limbaugh and demanding to know "Why!?"

You already know why.

Instead, perhaps you should consider doing something useful.

Like spending the next 20 years apologizing to every Liberal in America.