Boo Hoo

by digby

Now we're having some fun:

A defensive Rush Limbaugh, one of Senator McCain's biggest detractors, just delivered what he called a "non-concession speech" in response to Mr. McCain's win in Florida Tuesday. "Yeah, it looks like McCain's pretty far down the line now to having wrapped this up," he said on his popular conservative radio show today.

At times, the talk host still seemed to have some fight in him. At other times, he seemed ready to move on. "There's going to be another election in 2012," Mr. Limbaugh said at one point.

"There's a lot of anxiety among a lot of conservatives about Senator McCain. It's simply indisputable,but there was no figure in our roster of candidates who rose up to challenge him or to galvanize conservative support. All the candidates on our side, for various reasons, are uninspiring or worse and so just as I predicted the base has fractured. Some going here. Some going there," Mr. Limbaugh said as he explained Mr. McCain's victory in Florida Tuesday night.

"Senator McCain has been able to cobble together enough votes to win in a few states. Fine. He deserves credit for that. But to pretend that Senator McCain is the choice of conservatives when exit poll data from every primary state show just the opposite--he is not the choice of conservatives as opposed to the Republican establishment, and that distinction is key," the conservative talker said. "The Republican establishment, which has long sought to rid the party of conservative influence since Reagan, is feeling a victory today as well as our friends in the media, but both are just far-fetched and wrong."

[...]


Mr. Limbaugh warned the mainstream press not to interpret Tuesday's results as the demise of the Reagan movement. " The Reagan coalition is not breaking up," he said defensively. "The Reagan coalition is going in different directions because there isn't anybody from the Reagan coalition in the Republican roster of nominees.....Those of us in the Reagan coalition have not lost anything."

The talk radio host insisted that Mr. McCain is being supported by "a veritable list of the old country club blueblood establishment." That claim is debatable, since only 12 Republican senators have endorsed him and many others nurse grievances against him over his crusades against pork and in favor of tighter campaign finance and ethics laws.



Heh. Looks like Rush still doesn't want to admit that he IS the "blue-blooded" Republican establishment and he and his pals are the reason voters are rejecting hard core conservatism. Even Huckabee and Romney aren't doctrinaire Republicans. In fact, the only one who was, was that magical vote getter, Fred Thompson.

So, Republican voters understand, even if their establishment leaders like Limbaugh and Coulter don't, that they can't win after Bush by being far right. They are choosing between a rich flipflopper from Taxachusetts and a grizzled maverick from Arizona. Clearly, voters, at least, see the value in being pragmatic in the wake of the Bush catastrophe. As well they should. They will be lucky to pull out a win under any circumstances, but it is nearly impossible to imagine they would be able to do it with the tired, standard Limbaugh/Bush line.

Limbaugh and company are upset at losing influence. But they shouldn't be. Old time movement types like Richard Viguerie understand this much better than the entertainment conservos like Limbaugh and Coulter.

Sometimes a loss for the Republican Party is a gain for conservatives. Often, a little taste of liberal Democrats in power is enough to remind the voters what they don’t like about liberal Democrats and to focus the minds of Republicans on the principles that really matter. That’s why the conservative movement has grown fastest during those periods when things seemed darkest, such as during the Carter administration and the first two years of the Clinton White House.

Conservatives are, by nature, insurgents, and it’s hard to maintain an insurgency when your friends, or people you thought were your friends, are in power.

Rush should relax, play some golf, take a little trip to the Dominican. They'll be back. And the Republicans in congress will be able to successfully use their power as a regional minority party to hold the line.


Update: Rush needn't worry. His style of politics never gets old with some people.

Here's an email I just received:

Hillary linked to "Electile Dysfunction" in crucial Swing Voters Bill is not the only one Hillary does not turn on ... Angry, dishonest, bull dyke persona does not cut it with voters. Some homos like her for her S&M qualities

Larry Sabato comments on Hillary's problems with voters:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/06/the_hillary_dilemma.html

They're always out there.

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