It's become a truism over the past 48 hours (i.e. over the past aeon in the blogosphere) that the punditocracy's degree of delusion about the campaign to unseat Joe Lieberman can be measured by its total disinterest in the primary campaigns being run against significant Republicans from their right.
Well there's news from the world of Republican primary politics: Rush Limbaugh ballistic on Lincoln Chafee today. Probably not for the first time--but it's the first time we've noticed since the Nedmentum! craze reached full force.
Jay Antenen, an intern at Josh Marshall's media empire, made this great catch over at the TPM Cafe. Transcript after the break.
Here's what Antenen transcribes from Rush's show:
Where's this guy been? We need a ceasefire? All this is Bush's fault? He needs to be defeated. It's about time we get rid of these -- whatever you want to characterize Link Chafee as being -- out of the Senate. This is absurd. It's Bush's fault! Bush missed the opportunities? There needs to be a ceasefire? All a ceasefire is a period of time for the bad guys to arm up again and come back with even bigger and stronger and more weapons than they were using before the first time. It's like Bolton said: Ceasefire with terrorists? How in the world do you negotiate that? You don't!... All the while, by the way, George Bush is helping Linc Chafee in his reelection effort just as he helped Arlen Specter. But Chafee's fallen five points behind in Rhode Island, and feels he has to come out and bite the hand that feeds him in order to boost his poll numbers up. This is not exactly the display of the execution of core principles."
So, will we see some stories on how Linc Chafee is facing a dittohead rebellion on the single issue (and there is of course no other for Rethugs) of obesiance to Bush?
Or can we just expect maybe some brief "the fringes of both parties--Rush Limbaugh and Daily Kos--are attacking those nice moderates Joe and Linc" items?
I'm not holding my breath for even that.