10 Years After: 2012 -- ...Even the Police Began to Sit Up and Take Notice

The 10th blogiversary fundraiser continues with the Presidential Election year of 2012.

...and as long as were speaking of Boss Limbaugh, in March of 2012 a small but fascinating experiment in operant conditioning was underway just outside the wingnut welfare feeding pen.

In 2010, Arthur C. Brooks (America Enterprise Institute president and David Brooks' Reasonable Conservative snuggle buddy) decided to cut David Frum's allowance to, well, zero,   And while the reason behind Mr. Frum being shown the door was definitely not over double-plus-ungood thoughts Frum had expressed about the GOP's "Burn the barn down and shoot whoever comes out" approach to health care reform, Frum was out of the good graces of the Conservative Brain Caste.

Anyhoo, with family to pay and bills to feed, as Mr. Frum's friends found work for him (because what are friends for?) at considerably-less-outright-batshit-friendly media outlets, he suddenly began to notice things like, say, the existence of Rush Limbaugh.

And how Rush Limbaugh sometimes says really mean things!

Spoiler:  Mr. Frum's apostasy didn't last.  Once he established firmer footing, Frumpelstiltskin went right back to pounding them Hippies.   But as ace-newsman Murray Slaughter once said, "When a donkey flies, you don't blame him for not staying up that long."

...Even the Police Began to Sit Up and Take Notice



Did you do it for love?
Did you do it for money?
Did you do it for spite?
Did you think you had to, honey?

 -- Don Henley, Glenn Frey & Bob Seger

Now that the AEI no longer supports him in the style to which he had become accustomed, David Frum (like many, many other involuntarily apostated Conservatives) has suddenly discovered the truth of what Liberal have been saying for the last few decades.

Are we being fair to Rush Limbaugh?

By David Frum, CNN Contributor updated 9:39 PM EST, Mon March 5, 2012

... 

A word of criticism from Limbaugh...will reduce almost any member of the Republican caucus to abject groveling. See, for example: GINGREY, PHIL.

Among TV and radio talkers and entertainers, there is none who commands anything like the deference that Limbaugh commands from Republicans: not Rachel Maddow, not Jon Stewart, not Michael Moore, not Keith Olbermann at his zenith. Democratic politicians may wish for favorable comment from their talkers, but they are not terrified of negative comment from them in the way that Republican politicians live in fear of a negative word from Limbaugh.

The ultimate test came in 2002, the vote to authorize force against Iraq. Almost every liberal talker opposed that vote. Hillary Clinton, with her eye on a presidential run in 2008, voted in favor.

That is why no one asks Democratic politicians to repudiate the latest strident statement from an Olbermann or a Moore. There's no sport in it. It's too easy for them to say, "Sure." For Republicans, it's tough...

Great, David. Just great. Very eloquent. But why do I have the feeling that if Mitt Romney calls and offers you a job writing his speeches for the general election you're not going to make it conditional on him bravely standing up and denouncing Boss Rush in clear, unequivocal terms?

Maybe I have that feeling because the one question you and all of your Conservative friends are all collectively too cowardly to answer is this: Where were you when it counted?

See, it's the lying, David, that makes you and your friends such a bad bet. The constant lying. The years and years of reflexive "Both sides do it" and "Libruls are worse" lying every time another Conservative family values goon got caught fondling or coveting or sucking or invading or looting or lying shoving dollar bills into places that he should not have been fondling or coveting or sucking or shoving dollar bills into.

Even George Will -- taking a break from extolling the virtues of Calvin Coolidge long enough to bother to notice that the monster his Party built to win elections had kick the lab door off its hinges and was running amok -- could not do so without obediently and automatically reciting Wingnut Catechistic Lie Number One. See if you can spot it:

“[House Speaker John] Boehner comes out and says Rush’s language was inappropriate. Using the salad fork for your entrée, that’s inappropriate. Not this stuff,” Will said. “And it was depressing because what it indicates is that the Republican leaders are afraid of Rush Limbaugh. They want to bomb Iran, but they’re afraid of Rush Limbaugh.”

ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd said the Republicans’ apprehension to say anything negative about the conservative big hitter is based on the “myth” that Limbaugh influences a large number of Republican voters.

“I think the problem is the Republican leaders, Mitt Romney and the other candidates, don’t have the courage to say what they say in quiet, which, they think Rush Limbaugh is a buffoon,” Dowd said. ”They think he is like a clown coming out of a small car at a circus. It’s great he is entertaining and all that. But nobody takes him seriously.”

While President Obama has denounced Limbaugh’s comments as “reprehensible,” Republican leaders and GOP presidential candidates have used far milder language.

While Rick Santorum said Limbaugh’s comments were “absurd,” he said the radio host was an “entertainer” and “an entertainer can be absurd.” “No,” Will said about Santorum’s response. “It is the responsibility of conservatives to police the right and its excesses, just as the liberals unfailingly fail to police the excesses on their own side.”

See the problem, David?

You conservatives lie like junkies. You literally cannot stop lying -- lying about Liberals, lying about your own, very well-documented history -- because at the end of ever righteous criticism which you level at the Gorgons that are destroying this country comes the same, damning question:

Where the fuck were you when it counted?

Were you people really that stupid? That willfully blind? For all those years? In which case, isn't Public Intellectual a job from which you should be automatically disqualified for the rest of your life?

Or were you just craven, money-grubbing whores who only came to Jesus once you got thrown off the Wingnut Welfare teat?

Because seeing what was happening on the Right these last 30 years really wasn't that hard. It wasn't string theory or nanoengineering -- millions of perfectly ordinary people called "Liberals" got this right from the very beginning so again let me ask where were you it took more than a wet finger hoisted into the breeze to decide that Limbaugh was a cancer running wild through our body politic?

Liberals have asked you and your pals this same question of over and over again for years, Mr. Frum, and your silence is beyond deafening so let me ask again: Where were you in when it counted? (From me in 2009, and to which I have nothing to add):

Our Loser Media

 

What Rush says:

“I will kill this puppy, because I hate puppies and I like killing them.”

How the Pig People react:

Unable to contain their joy, the throngs of hoof-stomping, rat-squealing, true-believing golem known as “The Republican Party” tear their own eyes out so that the torrents of orgiastic rage pouring out of their mouths can get from their brains into the open air that much quicker.

How the Media reacts:

Blah blah blah context. Blah blah blah what Rush “really” meant was… Blah blah blah because, y’know, if some hypothetical Democrat somewhere had said that they didn’t like kittens blah blah blah.

Until, in the end (from the Chicago Tribune):

Barack Obama's push: Make Rush Limbaugh appear to be the face of the GOP

Obama gambles that taking on conservative radio host will cow Republicans, benefit president's agenda

By Peter Nicholas | Washington Bureau
11:19 PM CST, March 2, 2009

WASHINGTON — The Obama White House has begun advancing an aggressive political strategy: convincing the country that the real power behind the Republican Party is not the GOP leaders in Congress or at the Republican National Committee, but rather provocative radio talk show king Rush Limbaugh.

President Barack Obama, top presidential aides and outside Democratic allies have been pushing the message in unison.
...

"Appears"?

"Convince"?

Really?

Sorry, Petey, but hack reporting like this is exactly why we on the Left have largely given up on the national press except as a Ridicule Piñata; because for the last 20 years, every time the Party of God shit all over itself, Villager reporters -- presumably as a condition of their employment -- could always be relied on to invent some ludicrous unattributed back-story about Democrats secretly slipping “Ex-Lax” into their cocoa.

Because if the GOP painted “I AM RUSH’S BITCH” on their ass in hundred-mile-wide fluorescent letters visible from orbit, the “Fair and Balanced” chip in the Villager’s heads would smoke and writhe and squirm until they figured out how to reformat the facts into a story where somehow Sneaky Liberals were the lead.

So since you obviously have no fucking clue about the modern history of the Republican Party, let me give you the nickel tour.

See, once upon a time, the Party of Lincoln got tired of losing.

Tired, tired, tired.

And their leaders sat down with many graphs and tables and Pareto charts and figured out that if they took a hard, Right turn at the corner of Loutish Bigot Avenue and Ignorant Christopath Way, they would start winning.

And it worked! So yay them!

But as the massive infusion of xenophobes, degenerate yahoos and wannabe fascists packed on Republican electoral muscle, the immutable Law of Fucktard Fluid Dynamics also meant that demagogues like Rush Limbaugh rapidly grew in Party power and influence, while anyone with an ounce of decency and self-respect was slowly cooked off and driven out of the GOP in disgust.

And that's the thing that makes "reporting" like yours so fucking laughable, Petey: the fact that Rush’s status as Party Overboss has never been exactly what you'd call a big secret.

Hell, it was on the God damned teevee!

If you'd bothered to do any checking at all you'd have found that fourteen fucking years ago -- while a popular but relatively unknown professor named Barack Obama was too busy teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago to plot out clever schemes to make it "appear" as though the GOP was Limbaugh's personal ass coachman and penis valet -- this was the actual state of the relationship between Rush and the Party of God (Spoiler Alert: video also proves yet again that no one knows "funny" like the Wall Street Journal's own shreddin' comic hellbeast, John Fund!):


This was a marquee Washington Post story about Rush and the GOP from December of 1994:

The House Republican newcomers made Rush Limbaugh an honorary class member tonight, a symbol of their gratitude for conservative talk-radio hosts who championed their campaigns. Limbaugh was presented a "Majority Makers" pin, the emblem of the newcomers who have given their party majority status in the House for the first time in 40 years.

Six GOP women in the class added their own special thanks, presenting Limbaugh with a plaque that said: "Rush was right." And Rep.-elect Barbara Cubin (R-Wyo.) added: "There's not a femiNazi among us."

What has changed in 15 years, Petey, is that out here in the reality-based community we no longer feel alone and powerless to push back when we see a reporter contorting himself into bizarre, partisan configurations rather than simply reporting the simple fact that the Republican Party really has devolved into one, big, batshit crazy hoe-down where Limbaugh calls the tunes.

Boss Rush and all of his bigoted, fascist, shitbag imitators were the fine print on Nixon's Southern Strategy, as was Newt Gingrich working from the inside to turn hatespeech into the Mother Tongue of the Party of Lincoln.

And you, David Frum, were perfectly willing to go along with these banal, daily treasons right up until your sugar daddy cut you off at the wallet.

Did you do it for love?
Did you do it for money?
Did you do it for spite?
Did you think you had to, honey?