Limbaugh congratulates self for messing up Dems, then says McCain victory means end of GOP as conservative party
Rush Limbaugh is living on the edge of the multiple contradictions of this race. He’s dealing with it rationally in part and irrationally in part. He’s being rational in that he dislikes all three candidates (if you oppose all three, then you oppose all three, and there’s nothing wrong with that). But he’s being irrational in that he boasts of his (deeply unethical) “Operation Chaos” by which he urged Republicans to vote in Democratic primaries purely for the purpose of keeping the tortuous Democratic race going and damaging the Democrats. But now that they are damaged, and now that McCain’s election has become likely, Limbaugh turns around and realizes that a McCain election means the loss of the very thing to which Limbaugh has been devoted for his whole career: Republican conservatism.
So it seems to me that Limbaugh is veering wildly. It’s one thing to say: “I oppose all three of these candidates, I’m going to speak out against all three, and I will continue to oppose whichever of them is elected.” It’s another thing to intervene in a highly partisan, unethical manner to induce “chaos” in the other party, which means advancing the candidate of your own party whom you oppose, and then being brought up short by the fact that you have helped bring about the victory of the candidate who represents the destruction of your own party.
Here’s my abridged version of Limbaugh’s March 31 monologue on this.
Operation Chaos Has Worked: Prepare for the McCain Presidency
March 31, 2008
RUSH: … As I sit here now, ladies and gentlemen, I think we had better prepare ourselves for the likelihood—of course nothing is guaranteed right now, but we need to prepare ourselves for the likelihood—that John McCain will be the next president of the United States. It’s a long shot that Mrs. Clinton’s going to get the nomination, but we want her to hang in and give it every shot she’s got. But Obama is in the process of McGoverning himself. He’s in the process of it. McCain might just walk away with this election for a host of reasons. Now, again, this is just the end of March, early April, and anything can change here. I’m speaking with a snapshot of the situation as the exists today. The McCain camp is actively now courting Democrats and independents to vote for him, and there are some that will just on general principle because they like McCain’s liberal Democrat policies, those of his policies that dovetail with liberal Democrats. But there’s going to be a lot of people angry at the end of this whole Democrat process, who are either going to vote for McCain or sit at home. Those left.
Obama is… I mean, Operation Chaos is working, folks. We’re finding out more about Obama and his lack of knowledge; his ultrapure, 100% liberalism, his insincerity. The way he is treating his grandmother is outrageous. There’s a story in the Honolulu newspaper over the weekend about what a great woman this woman is. She was a pioneer for women in the banking industry, of all things, in Hawaii, and he’s treating her as no different than your average Deliverance white racist pig! These kinds of things register with people. They matter with people. And the Jeremiah Wright business? Now, he’s gained ten points over Hillary since the Jeremiah Wright news came out. Now, people ask, “How can that be? How can he be up by ten over Hillary even after the Jeremiah Wright business?” Well, we’ll try to explain that. We’re talking Democrats here, and we’re talking a lot of defections coming from the Clinton camp.
Hillary hasn’t done any better…. So McCain, a snapshot right now, looks like he could handily defeat either of these two people—and I gotta tell you: The Democrats know it.
Operation Chaos has ‘em teed off, and they also were teed off because they had themselves already in the White House. So they’re going to try to make McCain into Bush III. They’re going to go out there and they’re going to do everything they can to try to position McCain as a conservative. McCain’s got a challenge, and he and his campaign people have a real decision to make. He’s got two options. He can go for victory by continuing to be seen as a “moderate” and as a “maverick,” and as seeking votes from the other party and from moderates and from independents. Or he can, as some suggest he needs to do, secure his base, i.e., go for conservatives who are… Every time he opens his mouth they get madder at him, like that world affairs speech. They just get angrier and angrier….
… So his options are to continue to do what he’s doing and go get the Democrats and the moderates, or change field and go try to solidify the Republican base. If he does that, then the Democrats are going to say, “See? He’s just a conservative! He’s just Bush III,” which McCain does not want to be seen as Bush III, nor does he want to be seen as a conservative. That’s rather obvious. So if he goes the route he’s going now, the Republican Party is going to change. It’s going to grow and swell, at least the numbers of votes, with liberals and Democrats becoming members and people are going to say, “See…?” Well, wait for the conclusion after this….
So the odds are that McCain is not going to make a huge public effort to solidify the Republican base and he’s going to try to win this by taking advantage of the absolute chaos that has befallen the Democrat Party: recalcitrant, angry liberals and Democrats fed up with what’s happening to both Obama and Hillary will look to McCain, who’s not that bad an option for them, in terms of policy, in terms of things that he has authored and cosponsored in terms of legislation. So, snapshot as of today, let’s pretend the election is today, and that McCain wins it and he wins it with a sizable margin, and he does so by attracting Democrats, liberals, and independents to his otherwise Republican coalition. Do you know what’s going to happen then folks? I’m not trying to depress you; I’m trying to prepare you…. We are going to have a revival of the whole notion that Rockefeller Republicans, that country club blue-blood Republicans are the way to go and the way to get victories, that conservatism, the conservatism of Reagan is dead. Look, the Republicans will say, we just won big. We won big against two people that were figured to be unbeatable, Obama and Hillary, we’ve won this, and how did we do it? We did it by going out and getting liberals and independents and Democrats. Then we conservatives are going to be essentially—I mean, it’s going to revitalize our movement, it is going to energize our movement after it depresses some people.
But a movement needs a party, and if this thing plays out as I see it now, the Rockefeller Republicans may think that they have wrested control—by Rockefeller Republicans I mean, there is no conservative. There really weren’t ever any conservatives. Reagan really wasn’t a conservative, they say. We’re all moderates. We are moderate centrists that sometimes lean to the right. That is how they want the party to be ID’d. And if McCain is indeed victorious this way—that’s why I told you way, way back, the party is going to be redefined. The party is going to change for quite a long time if this all shakes out the way it appears to be shaking out….
- end of Limbaugh monologue, end of initial entry -
Mark Jaws writes:
Rush is as confused as all of us are, and here is why. The Rockefeller Republicans have already captured the White House, but the non-conservative portion of the country believes that Bush was indeed a true conservative. As a result, we on the right are being blamed for the results of his disastrous mistakes and so the country has turned leftward. For example, the mortgage crisis was in part caused by the government’s eagerness to increase the percentage of minority homeownership—a liberal policy. Yet, conservatives will be blamed for the mess.
So, with such confusion about us, I think the election of Obama will likely lead to a TRUE conservative regeneration in 2010 and 2012. If so, the Messiah will have only a two year window in which he can appoint dangerous judges.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 01, 2008 11:35 AM | Send