If it were possible to reach into the television screen and throttle the scrawny neck of the Washington establishment, shake it until the dice rattled and the stem came loose, would that be wrong? Would that be considered unsporting? It pains me, as a bringer of dharma and light, to feel driven to imaginary acts of symbolic violence, but even a man of peace can take only so much until frustration blazes to the upper floor. Watching ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, for instance, is like receiving an engraved invitation to apoplexy. When the panel that Stephanopoulos conducts after his “Newsmakers” interviews includes Sam Donaldson, George Will, and Cokie Roberts, longtime observers of Roman folly, it is like being swallowed by an hourglass; they saw away at the same old creaky strophes of received wisdom as if nothing short of divine revelation could awaken a new thought, eject the dust bunnies from their brains.

The most elemental fact about the Limbaugh career might be that, outside of seriously corrupt dictatorships, nobody has made as much money from politics as Rush Limbaugh. Since this Top 40 D.J. and local talker in Sacramento went national, in 1988, as a right-wing voice, he has made hundreds of millions of dollars in salary, bonuses, participation in advertising revenue, and the sale of his show to the Sam Zell–controlled Jacor radio production company (Zell, a real-estate entrepreneur, now controls the Chicago Tribune), which was then sold to Clear Channel. His new contract, signed last summer, is worth a reported $400 million over eight years. There are, too, his newsletter, his paid Internet site with its voluminous traffic, his blockbuster best-sellers, his speaking fees, his half-dozen cars, including a Maybach 57S, his Gulfstream G550, and his Palm Beach estate with five houses.

Rush’s business plan seriously impacts on the future of the Republican Party.