Rush Limbaugh: Undercover Democrat

I think the time has finally come to consider a conspiracy theory. There was a time when this would have seemed preposterous, but now? I have to wonder. Is Rush Limbaugh on the payroll of President Obama and the Democratic Party?

Ridiculous! Right?

Limbaugh makes a living howling at the moon about how Obama is the devil and our country is going straight to hell under his leadership and he seemingly offers up the Republican Party as the only possible way to save the country, the American way of life and our mortal souls. How could he possibly be playing for the other team?

Then you think about it though. For better or worse, the Republicans have had the spotlight now, in terms of the upcoming presidential election, for a few months. They’ve had the chance to set the table, pick the issues, and pound away at the job President Obama has done for the past 4 years. And, let’s face it, the job he has done is a far from the “Change we [could] believe in!” You can point out, all day long, that it’s been the Republicans of Congress who have stood in Obama’s way of enacting that CHANGE all you want, but Obama’s pre-election rhetoric never took the tone of, “Change you can believe in (if the Republicans do what I tell them to in complete opposition to the trend of polarized politics that has our country in it’s grip.” It’s also worth pointing out that while Obama did have the majority in Congress, he chose to prioritize his health care reform over the economy which led to the congressional purge that placed the Republicans in power there.

In short, had the Republicans fielded a charismatic, intelligent, level-headed candidate for the presidency, he or she may have actually had a chance. Instead, they fielded a cast from Clown College and Ron Paul who never had a chance in the first place. So, things were looking good for the president. Still, they say that any publicity is good publicity and the final few candidates who have survived the reality show-like eliminations have been front and center.

And the debate has turned to contraception. Sex sells. The Republicans have drawn a line in the sand. It’s a brilliant move because surely the youth and moderates will flock to this Republican effort, right? College kids hardly ever have sex and when they do it’s only for the purpose of procreation. Moderates with high-school and college-aged kids are so eager to be grandparents that they will, obviously, side with the Republicans on any issue that will help take them remove easy access of contraception to more kids. Nothing fills the parent of a kid away at college with more pride than announcing that little Betty is dropping out to have the baby of some guy whose name she thinks was Pete at the frat party a few weekends ago!

Only a Republican can understand the logic behind a move that only solidifies their already hard-core base and alienates the majority of the rest of us, but we’ll let the strategy slide, and the actual issue, which only involves the health care of religious institutions slide because those things are only background to the point at hand. Let’s get back to President Obama’s secret weapon: Rush Limbaugh.

Between Obama’s not living up to his promise of Change and the Republican’s seemingly poor strategy of alienating large portions of the votes they need to win the upcoming election this presidential race could have been an interesting one. Enter Rush Limbaugh. Leave it to Rush to truly offer President Obama the best opportunity he’s had to remind the youth and women voters that he is the only choice for them. Rush went on the radio and called a woman, who spoke before Congress on the issue, “a slut.” He suggested that if we had to pay for her contraception that she was essentially a sex worker and that we were entitled to see a video tape of all the fun stuff.

Let’s look at that another way: A seemingly intelligent, articulate, young woman who works for and spoke with the support of a faith-based employer who would be affected by this legislation spoke her mind before her elected officials to offer evidence on behalf of others in her situation and our friend Rush, who is, as I understand, a big proponent of the First Amendment, calls her a slut for doing so. He didn’t call her a great American for participating in the political process. He didn’t laud her for her courage and conviction. He called her a slut. He suggested that his tax dollars being involved entitled him to see a tape of her having sex. He objectified women. He disrespected them. He singled out this one woman in particular and called her a name that women voters will not forget.

Say what you will, but while it may only be a very loud, very vocal segment of Republicans that Rush speaks for—the perception (which is much more important than the reality) is that he is the voice of the party, to those outside of the party. Some of those people outside the party might even be referred to as moderates or the swing vote and now, they have, perhaps reluctantly, slid themselves firmly back into President Obama’s pocket because, let’s face it, the alternative is the party that calls women’s who express their opinions in the manner of a good American, as sluts.

President Obama has reached out to the woman in question and spoken to her by phone, thanking her for her bravery and intelligence and offering to be of aid to her in any way he can. It’s almost reminiscent of a cowboy in a white hat coming to the defense of the picked upon woman. You can almost hear the collective swoon of women voters.

You can also, almost hear the collective eye-roll of the Republican candidates who must now stay true to their base while backtracking against the idea that any woman who uses contraception is a slut. It doesn’t matter if their opinion on the subject is right or wrong now, what matters is that they have to fight for what they believe in from a defensive standpoint. President Obama gets to fight for what he believes in from the role of gentlemanly hero.

President Obama’s next call should have been to Rush Limbaugh, just to say thank you.

The Republicans, through their strategy, have seemingly decided that Obama has done a poor enough job that the presidency can be won by simply solidifying the base. They felt that the youth and moderate votes that swung things President Obama’s way in the last election were going to stay home this time around, be it due to complacency or disappointment. They’ve only touched on issues that appeal to their own base. They’ve felt no need to venture out to get the votes of those in the middle. They thought it would be an election of us versus them and that the majority of us, the disillusioned middle, would stay out of it.

At the start of World War II, after the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Admiral responsible for that attack, Isoroku Yamamoto famously said, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." When the Republicans look back at this election and try to figure out why they lost—not only the White House, but at least a part of their power in Congress as well—they would do well to remember the efforts of party cheerleader, Rush Limbaugh, who helped to wake the sleeping giant that hadn’t planned on taking sides, until he decided to be a bully and call a woman, exercising her right as an American, a slut.

It was such an obvious, boneheaded move on Rush’s part, you almost have to wonder if it was purposeful? I mean, no one could possibly be THAT stupid. Could they?

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!

George W. Bush gave his final press conference today as President of the United States of America and I, for one (and I could be alone here), will miss him. For someone who enjoys writing as much I do, with a humorous spin whenever possible, Bush has been a godsend that won’t easily be replaced. It makes for a good time to look back upon his Presidency though, and to look forward to what lies ahead for our next President.

From the point of view of a humorist, Bush’s many faux pas and foibles have been vitamin rich in opportunities to ridicule and torment. Rarely has a week gone by in the past 5 or 6 years when he hasn’t done something worthy of a jab or a dig. From his mispronounifications of words to his goofy grins and expressions, Bush has provided a continuous and ever-present butt for any and all jokers.

From the point of a political analy st, the loss is equally as significant. Right or wrong, regardless of which side of any particular issue you may have come down on, Bush has provided lots of fodder for debate, discussion and in many cases, blatant outrage. His policies and procedures have been in almost constant question since he took office. He has been at the center of political and social debate for eight long years now and it’s been a full eight years with a seemingly nonstop train of issues and consequences.

What I’ll miss the most about him though is the ignorance. Not his ignorance, but the absolute and blissful ignorance the American public, and the world at large for that matter, had regarding his decisions, actions and politics. I think that Bush, unlike anyone before and as no one in the foreseeable future has been the president of perception.

To many, he has been a clown prince and political buffoon. He has been the scapegoat for many things that have happened which were far beyond his control. To many, any decision he has ever made has been completely and unquestionably indefensible. His detractors are many and they almost uniformly fail to find a single good thing to say about him, or point out a single good thing he’s ever done.

This, of course, is ridiculous. Not liking a president is one thing, not agreeing with him more often than not is certainly understandable, but President Bush has been vilified to an alarming and unbelievable extent. There are actual people who side against certain issues just because Bush favors them—regardless of the facts. I can’t think of a single idea that more fervently betrays democracy than that one.

I happen to believe that history will much kinder to Bush than we have been. I imagine he’ll be long gone before anyone will care to look at his presidency objectively, but an objective eye is going to see that the past eight years have been a failing of the governed, far more than they have been a failure of the government.

I don’t mean to come off as a defender of President Bush. I’m afraid that his second term has been a disaster and that much of the criticism he’s gotten has been warranted. The idea that everything he’s done has been bad, that he’s a bad person, that he’s evil, that he’s manipulated the people and the government for personal gain and personal reasons is simply foolish. How quickly and conveniently we forget that there are three branches to government. How quickly and conveniently we forget that we elect the officials who preside over that government.

The most glaring part of the past eight years is the absolute lack of culpability the American people have felt. Some will point out the disputed results of the 2004 election without giving a thought to the fact that had things gone the other way, those results would have been as justly disputed as they stand now. They use that election as a get out of jail free card for all that has happened since, pointing out that their ability to affect change was stolen from them, making it convenient to give up entirely on the political process.

And that, in a nutshell is the problem. Democracy is founded on the principle of a fighting people, a people so hungry for freedom and justice that they would stop at nothing to see to it that those ideals were consistently perpetrated. We are a lazy people though and find it much easier to whine than to do when things go against what we want.

Over the past eight years, ignorance has reigned, not in the seat of the Presidency, but in the minds of the people. The most common ignorant idea is that the war in Iraq is entirely about oil, yet while every and any anti-Bush propagandist uses this as a staple of their beliefs, I’ve yet to find a single person who can explain to me the actual benefit or gain that Bush hoped to achieve in this Oil War. I’ve yet to find an adequate explanation as to why the vote to go to war in Iraq was so lopsided? The Senate, working from the same false intelligence that Bush did voted overwhelmingly to go to war, and have escaped any and all culpability for that action.

Again, it is not my intention to let Bush off, but I have to wonder why he alone faces the consequences of that decision? I have to wonder why he takes the blame for poor intelligence? I have to wonder why he alone takes the blame for the poor military strategy we took? The indictment should have reached into our military, our intelligence community, the two other branches of executive government and to the citizenry, but it never has and until a far removed historian is able to look back at the times, probably never will.

In the end, the same things that made him such a convenient target to humorists made him an easy scapegoat for all that went wrong. Our forefathers specifically created a government where one person could not rule as the monarchs of Europe once did, but that never stopped us from lopping every imaginable blame for any possible problem in the lap of one man.

Worse, we now assign the task of making everything all better in the lap of our next President. We don’t want to participate, we want someone to wave a wand and make it all better. The expectations and hopes for President Elect Obama are so incredibly unfair that it’s staggering. His election has many crying out against some of his ideas that lean towards Socialism, but what we should all be worrying about is the very real threat and reality that we are so unappreciative of our liberties that we are willing to allow them to be taken from us.

Say, for instance that Obama works miracles and turns things around quickly. Say that he leads us to four and then eight years of prosperity. Say that the country is happy and fat and content under his Presidency. Say that older generations die and younger generations replace them and the day comes when a choice is given to us about the possibility of allowing a president a 3rd term because we are so happy with him—then even a 4th.

Such a short step it would be to absolute p ower, to dictatorship, to monarch rule. If we are so willing to place blame on one man as our scapegoat, surely we are equally willing to place glory at the feet of another as our savior. The precipice at which we stand is a precarious one. We fail to remember our history—a history of scapegoats, appeasement and absolute power that led to genocide as recently as World War II—and one false step could leave us doomed to repeat it.
Say what you will about George W. Bush as our President. Say what you will about Barack Obama as our next. But please, understand that no one person could ever screw it all up, or put it all back together again. If you believe either of those things is possible, you are a fool, you are ignorant, you the problem. Our government allows only one finger to every be justly pointed in blame, and that is our thumb—opposable, supposed proof of evolution, and yet curiously absent in this discussio n, as are the lessons of history, begging the question, just how evolved are we really?