Question: How do you know when the powers that be at Fox News Channel think something is bad for the Republican Party?
Answer: They ignore it.
With the above axiom in mind, it seems pretty clear that Fox thinks Rush Limbaugh is a problem, because since his ascension to the top of the GOP power structure started to turn south, Fox has barely paid him any attention, fair, balanced, or otherwise.
Here's the numbers, excluding the evening commentary shows (Hannity and O'Reilly, with 19 mentions, and Maddow and Olbermann, with 42 mentions):
As you can see, while CNN and MSNBC covered the controversy extensively, Fox lagged far behind, covering Limbaugh 75% less frequently than the other channels.
The striking thing here is that all last week, Fox promoted their live coverage of Limbaugh's speech, encouraging their audience to watch.
Now, however, they aren't paying nearly as much attention, preferring to ignore a problem that they helped to create, implicitly admitting that Rush is no good for the GOP.
One wonders when Fox will be forced to apologize.
But hey, at least in the meantime they got the topic off of Bobby Jindal.