On the day of my first ever
book signing I got an email from Rush Limbaugh. No, he wasn't suing me (though it would be unbelievable publicity if he did). This email was more of the `mass' variety. He was letting me know that my long ago purchased 3-year subscription to "Rush Limbaugh 24/7" had just expired. How strangely appropriate.
At the time I thought I had reached the end of the all-access world of rushlimbaugh.com, but alas it was only the beginning. Roughly 3 times I week I receive a "Last Chance to Renew" email from the Maha-Rushie. But rather than unsubscribing or just ignoring the message, I use it as an excuse to peruse my once happy stomping grounds to see how long it will take before I see something really, mind-bogglingly disassociated from reality.
On Monday that was about 40 seconds. I have witnessed some pretty remarkable feats of mental gymnastics in my adult political life. Some of them I performed myself, where I could accept family values advice from Rush "Fourth Time's the Charm" Limbaugh or Newt "Till Some Kind of Really Bad Illness Do Us Part" Gingrich. Others I watch from afar, like the debate over why Bush's tax cuts failed to lead to more federal revenue throughout his first term, which conservatives will argue with all the passion of the Geocentric Solar System crowd of the Middle Ages. But today I witnessed the Keri Strug, gold medal winning, one-legged stuck landing of mental gymnastics--a little article on rushlimbaugh.com entitled (and I swear I'm not making this up) "Has Our Success in the War on Terror Made Bush Vulnerable on Other Issues?"
My first thought upon reading that headline was that I had once again inadvertently gone to the website www.rushlimbaughonline.com, which is very different from the `original.' My second thought was that maybe I had stumbled onto some new part of The Onion online news magazine. No one in their right mind would say that...would they? Intrigued, I clicked through.
It's a transcript from a call that Rush took on his May 25th show. The caller has a theory as to why our congressional leaders seem "so out of touch." See, it used to be easy for Republicans to transfer accountability for their policy failures to others--blaming Clinton and the Democrats for everything from 9/11 to Duke Cunningham. But given Republican control of the House, the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court, it's becoming more and more difficult to find scapegoats. I've been told by two current dittoheads in my life that the reason Bush's policies don't work is because of the efforts of a nefarious, entrenched "liberal bureaucracy" that Bush can't fire because of red tape. I had assumed both had heard of this bureaucracy from Rush, and I was looking forward to confirming its genesis.
I thought we were getting there when Rush gave the caller a verbal Scooby Snack for saying that the fault lies with leadership. "Amen! There is no elected conservative leadership -- and you're right -- these guys are just flying blind all over the place, self-interest ruling the day," Rush intoned. Ah...here it comes. I'm not exactly sure what "no elected conservative leadership" means, but it sounds an awful lot like this liberal equivalent of Opus Dei.
The setup was perfect. Bush's leadership failings, by the caller's understanding, came from the fact that he's not defending his administration enough. That he's standing idly by while liberals and Democrats "are making outrageous statements against the United States' self-interests abroad," and "harming our foreign policy efforts." Yeah...that's it. Bush is too nice for his own good. I guess Rove's been too busy making brownies for orphans, and hasn't had time to call Democrats "liars" and "traitors" lately.
To his credit, Rush doesn't let the caller off the hook by blaming the Democrats. "...how do you explain the disconnect of the Republicans and the immigration bill, the disconnect in the Republican leadership in the house over this Congressman Jefferson business?" The caller turned again to the Democrats as being the ultimate culprits, saying that Republican's mere proximity to Democrats is to blame. They party together, they hang out together, and the Democratic `evil mojo' more or less moves from person to person by osmosis. But again, Rush doesn't go for it and instead gives the caller credit for something he never said:
"I think that last is the bottom line. But it's all tied together with your original theory. There is no elected conservative leadership."
So who or what, then, is to blame for the collapse of the Republican party and the failure of its policies? Wait for it...wait for it...
"[T]he Iraq war is already perceived to have been won, not that we're losing it. It's because we have won it, and the American people do not rank it as high on the list of things that concern them as, say, gasoline prices or immigration or what have you."
There it is, folks! Don your flight suit and dust off that "Mission Accomplished" banner! The reason Bush can't get any traction and Republicans can't get anything done is because our proverbial asses are in ice cream! The American people know that the War on Iraq-o-bin-Terror-Laden-ism has been won, so we just don't give a fart about Bush's domestic policies anymore.
Any other time I'd just say this is Rush being Rush. Say something authoritatively, thump the desk, shuffle papers, make it sound like you know what you're talking about, and the dittohead nation will believe you. But this is a little different, because a) the idea is bat shit insane, and b) because it's so easy to prove otherwise. CNN/Opinion Research Poll--#1 Issue-Terrorism followed by the economy and Iraq. CBS News--#1 Issue-The war in Iraq. The Harris Poll--#1 Issue-The war. NBC/WSJ Iraq War ties for #1 with the economy. Pew Research--American's top voting priority? Protecting the U.S. from another terrorist attack.
As to the `conventional wisdom' that "everyone knows we've already won the war," that brings up another set of issues. Most pollsters don't have the balls at this point to seriously ask the question "have we won the war in Iraq," so we'll have to infer how the American people feel about it. Let's see...majorities of Americans, some of them overwhelming...
* Disapprove of the way Bush is handling the war
* Think the Iraq war was a mistake
* Find the level of U.S. casualties unacceptable
* Believe the Iraq war has made us less save from terrorism
* Have `not much' or `no confidence' that Bush will successfully end the war (ahh...that kind of addresses the `have we won the war' question, doesn't it?)
* And finally, remarkably, 52% of Americans think Bush intentionally misled the American public into war with Iraq.
Yip-yip-Yahoo! Sounds like victory if ever I heard it! It's just more evidence of what I said before. The so-called party of ideas is officially out of ideas. And all the mental gymnastics in the world won't save them from Judgement Day on November 7th.
But, hey, at least it's good to know we won the war, right!?