Rush Limbaugh vs. Michael Steele is latest sign of GOP schism

Original Link: http://blog.shankbone.org/2009/03/03/rush-limbaugh-vs-michael-steele-gop-smackdown/

By David Shankbone

Forget the Bobby Jindal disaster. Things are looking bad for Republican moderates as the party is increasingly swallowed by the intolerant hard right. Paul Jenkins at Huffington Post provided a good, detailed summary of the Republicans’ Worst Week Ever:

With the country on the verge of being swallowed up in its entirety by the spiraling economy, Republicans obsessed over Obama’s citizenship, gay people, pregnant women with HIV, helicopters, primary challenges to their own Senators from porn stars and Christian fundamentalists, registration forms, hopeless recounts, and assorted variations on the 1981 theme of "Government Is The Problem."

Against the backdrop of their ridiculous week, RNC Chairman Michael Steele has now had to apologize to Rush Limbaugh for referring to him as an "entertainer" who can be "ugly" and "incendiary". If you missed it, on CNN Steele riffed on the divisive demagoguery of Limbaugh, who often does not tell the truth for the sake of appealing to his listeners.

Limbaugh was furious, and responded on his radio show:

"So I am an entertainer and I have 20 million listeners because of my great song and dance routine. Michael Steele, you are head of the Republican National Committee. You are not head of the Republican party. Tens of millions of conservatives and Republicans have nothing to do with the Republican National Committee…and when you call them asking for money, they hang up on you."

After that broadside, Steele apologized to Limbaugh, stating, “I went back at that tape and I realized words that I said weren’t what I was thinking." It has become increasingly clear that Limbaugh sees himself as the leader of the Republican party, and according to Thomas Schaller at Salon, Limbaugh is increasingly making some Republicans increasingly uncomfortable:

The reliably self-aggrandizing Limbaugh referred about nine times during his speech to it being his first ever live televised national address. While that ignores the four years during the 1990s when he had a syndicated television program, taped live before a studio audience (and produced by Roger Ailes), it does underscore his relative importance to what remains of the national Republican Party. He spoke on the heels of a CPAC poll that revealed no clear choice among attendees for a 2012 GOP nominee, at the end of a week in which new Republican National Committee head Michael Steele kept finding fresh ways to make America cringe, and in which Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal went from Next Big GOP Thing to punch line. Republicans, and some enablers in the media, have complained that "the left" wants to make Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin the de facto heads of the Republican Party, but, in fact, it seems to be the right’s beloved free market that is doing that. The other contenders have failed — including the ones for whom Rush Limbaugh admits he used to carry water, and those, like Jindal, for whom he still does. The Republican base votes for Palin in polls like this one, and as his radio ratings and the massive crowd at CPAC demonstrate, for Limbaugh with their ears, feet, hands and voices.