One morning, as Rush Limbaugh was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that he was the last Republican left in the United States.
He supposed it was inevitable. Ever since the 2006 midterms, conservatism had been on the decline. Rush knew that at some point he would be its only remaining adherent. Now that it was so, he decided to put on a brave face and accept his status as the last of the dinosaurs.
Curiously enough, his greatest fear was not realized; he was still in demand, still listened to. True, his radio audience had dwindled dramatically, since there was no longer a conservative base. But there were plenty of liberals (i.e., Americans) stricken with morbid curiosity, and they did tune in, in significant numbers, like visitors to a museum. "It's hard to believe some people used to live like this," they'd say.
Rush found, to his great pleasure, that the extinction of conservatism begat a career renaissance. Before, he had bellowed his opinions in the isolated ghetto of his "Excellence in Broadcasting" studio; now, he was in demand everywhere. CNN and MSNBC invited him to be a daily guest on every one of their programs, as they were still intent on covering both sides of every story, and Rush was the only person left to argue from the right. (Fox, having lost its raison d'être with the fall of conservatism, had given up the news and was now devoted entirely to competitive dance shows.)
Without the force of a movement behind him, Rush was not the dangerous figure he had been, but he still had prominent detractors. "Why are we still paying attention to this guy?" asked Chris Matthews one evening on Hardball. "Here to discuss the continued media presence of Rush Limbaugh is Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis, and Rush Limbaugh."
If Rush opposed, say, a new tax plan, the Associated Press described it as having been rejected by one hundred percent of conservatives. President Obama was said to have a zero percent approval rating among Republicans, but he promised to do his best to reach across the aisle. Limbaugh himself ran in the Republican presidential primary, garnering one hundred percent of his party's votes, but he was forced to drop out due to health problems.
He had never been the healthiest of men, and soon the day came when Rush Limbaugh passed away, seized by a massive heart attack while golfing. His death, because it was also the final bow of American conservatism, was the most sensational news story of its time. Everywhere you looked, you saw him. Every website, magazine, newspaper, and television channel overflowed with affectionate and philosophical tributes. Lifelong Democrats remembered him as a worthy opponent. Former Republicans spoke of the old days with a certain misty longing, and although they had parted violently with Rush during the fall of the movement, they now praised his lonely fidelity to the sinking ship. Everyone agreed that despite his failures as a human being, he had been profoundly talented, and one of the defining figures of a turbulent era in American history.
His death, like his life, was marked by controversy and intrigue; a bevy of personal assistants and concierge doctors testified to his ongoing drug dependency and emotional volatility. At the time of his passing, he had been booked to deliver fifty lectures at London's O2 Arena, and his physicians questioned whether he was up to it.
Now CNN and MSNBC were really in a fix. Without America's last conservative, how could they hope to present balanced, impartial news coverage? Where could they point the next time some self-hating liberal accused them of having a liberal bias? To fill the gap, and to maintain balance, they adopted the practice of hiring actors to play Republicans. Pretty soon, the real liberals got tired of debating fictional conservatives, and they resigned en masse; now the networks had no choice but to hire more actors, to play Democrats, and debate the actors who were playing Republicans.
"What a glorious time it is for America," began a widely-quoted editorial in the New York Times. "In recent years we have seen not only the end of the Republican Party, but the return of scripted television."