Limbaugh's America is Corporate America.
A lot of attention is being paid to Limbaugh's "double down" bet in his speech to CPAC on Saturday, as evidence of a deeply nihilistic trend in the right wing of the conservative movement. Surely it is a sign of desperation and immaturity. It is also a clear sign that the right has run out of ideas. So much for the "loyal opposition." But in his speech Limbaugh makes an even more revealing declaration. Limbaugh defines real "Americans" as:
The people that make this country work, the people who pay on their mortgages, the people getting up and going to work, striving in this recession to not participate in it, they're not the enemy. They're the people that hire you. They're the people that are going to give you a job. They're the people that are going to give you a raise, the people that need you to do work for them
This is an amazing admission. According to Rush, real Americans are the people that control your job and your pay, people that need you to work for them, in short, employers. Limbaugh said conservatives "love people." That is at best an equivocation. What he really means is that conservatives love employers. Now mind you, this is not a class warfare rant. Employers are essential to our economic well being, but the vast majority of people are not part of that segment of the population. Most people are either employees or self employed. We do need an ownership class, people that lead businesses and drive growth, but to identify that group with the core values of the American Revolution, as Rush does, is to confuse wealthy plantation owners with the Minutemen. They both played a role, but we all know who were the real Patriots.