Personally I'd rather he be oblivious. Then he can just go right on becoming a caricature of himself, and then he becomes another Ann Coulter at which point he can be safely ignored. He'll keep talking, mind you. But he'll be more of an interesting museum piece where kids walk by and say "Daddy, did people really think that?"
Here's one of the many things Rush did during the 2004 election that really showed what a hypocrite he is. During the 1992 election you may remember the SCLM was riding Bush 41 for his plans to cut various programs. Every time the media would mention a program cut Rush would get all apoplectic. "How can you call a 3% INCREASE a cut!" That's right, 41 was proposing a 3% increase in a program's budget and those bastards in the liberal media called it a cut. Why? Because the program was scheduled to receive a 5% increase.
Now, honestly, I can see how you could argue both sides of this. It was supposed to be a 5% increase, now it's only 3%, so it's a cut. Or you could say we WANTED to increase it by 5%, but we can only afford to increase it by 3%, but it's still an increase.
It seems pretty clear to me, though, that in 1992 Rush Limbaugh drew the line in the sand and announced which side of it he was on. So you'd better stay on that side if you're going to jump up and down about how you have unwavering core principles (NOT princiPALs...whoever pointed that out to me before, don't worry. My wife pointed it out too. She got her Masters in Technical Communication. I was properly flogged...and not in a good way).
It may seem like a minor issue, but this point really hooked me on Rush. Why else would the media call an increase a cut unless they had a liberal bias? I don't think many dittoheads even remember this. And if I weren't a dittohead, I think I'd have to do some pretty specific Google-ing to come across this point. I only know it because I remember how much it honked me off at the time. It was the birth of my SCLM hatred.
Flash forward to 2004. Rush Limbaugh starts echoing the ridiculous statement that John Kerry voted over 350 times to raise taxes. Doesn't question it, doesn't explain it. Just echoes it. Since he was an unpaid advisor to the Bush campaign, I strongly suspected that he wrote it. But at a minimum he HAD to know what he was reciting. Sadly his argument was buried by this little number I pulled off of factcheck.org. Enjoy it now...in a BOX! TA-DA! (Thanks to all who helped):
Bush and his ads used the same figure phrased in a duplicitous way, saying Kerry voted 350 times for "higher" taxes, which was misleading because most of those votes were to keep taxes the same -- opposing proposed cuts. Later the Bush campaign retreated to a less indefensible claim, saying Kerry cast 98 votes to "raise" taxes, but even that figure is puffed up by including 43 votes on budget bills that only set targets without actually legislating higher taxes, and as many as 16 votes on a single tax bill.
But wait... here's the REAL kicker...
The Bush list also includes votes in which Kerry backed proposals to cut taxes but not as much as Republicans advocated.
Aww...not just `No,' but `HELL No!' You did NOT just do that! Rush included a vote to cut taxes by less than the Republicans wanted...as a tax INCREASE!? Isn't that the same as calling a 3% increase a funding cut? Where'd those unwavering principles go? Could it be that this is a grey area? I thought there weren't any grey areas! Just right and wrong.
I brought this up to my dad, and God bless him he didn't have a problem with it. His argument was that the liberal media gets away with so much lying (none of which he chose to document), and that if Rush has to flip-flop on this, well than that's okay. So now conservatism is reduced to "It's Okay If A Republican Does It." Guess that explains all the spending.
I was already off the reservation when this one cropped up, but it may be one of those things that gets an otherwise sane individual to start walking down the right path. Oh...and it REALLY annoys conservatives.
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