Rush Limbaugh the Republican Party leader?

[Galen Sevinne]

Anyone notice how deft Obama is in pushing Rush into a position where he becomes the de facto leader of the republican party?

You can cricitise Obama all you want for whatever the reason du jour is but man, he is a crafty politician. The idea of who is centrist and where the center of america rests certainly does take on a different complexion when it is Rush who becomes the leading speaker of the republican party.

Obama is playing this guy like an addict coming off a three day dope sickness with a bottle of oxycontin dangling before his eyes. He is single handedly dismantling what remains of the GOP.

You connies better hope more people than just William Bennett speak out against Rush because if you are not careful the only republicans standing in the end will be Rush and Hannity on the 2012 ticket. Could this get any better?

[Rochardrik]

Um, like all the guys he brought back from Clinton's administration - whatever happened to CHANGE, he's actually stealing his technique. Its nothing new when it comes to Rush. OBY did the same and really attacked Rush and especially Hannity, a private citizen, hard during the campaign.

Rush was generally the party's spokes man, and perhaps leader, all during the Clinton administration who often attacked Rush in speeches, one of the first times a private citizen was attacked by the President of the US.

Willie was obsessed with Rush's attacks and jokes on him.

In fact, Rush was the first conservative to go on talk radio in 1988. It was mostly liberal shows. There were no O-Reilly's, Coulter's, Hannity's or Liddy's.

It is said that David Rockerfeller of the GOP wanted a conservative talk show to counter them and hired someone to discover Rush. Sometimes Rush qualifies that argument by pushing Rockefeller's agenda like NAFTA. Of course Rush always denied it.

He got his radio start in Pittsburgh of all places and btw, Rush was only 4 pts off the Squeeler's score and 1 pt off ours saying the final score would be 27-13.

He was actually fired from that station although the GM claims he never knew Rush. His radio name there was Jeff Chandler.

Rush then got a job in the PR office of the KC Royals and eventually went on a KC station. He then migrated to a California station when Mort the Mouth got his TV gig.

The guy who people think Rockefeller paid was the former VP of ABC NEWS who discovered Dr. Dean Edell-sp, Dick Clark and Casey Cason. The Sacramento affiliate's station manager sent him some of Rush's tapes and he went out to hear him.

He drove around the beltway during rush hr traffic listening to his bombastic voice and was convinced he was the man before he heard the tapes.

He brought Rush to ABC NEWs in NY around 1991 and Rush ended up on over 7,000 radio stations with 24M listeners - still the most in radio.

After he got to NY, Roger Ailes put him on TV. He was the PR guy who got Nixon and H Bush elected.

You could say he is really the voice of the GOP now that they are out of power. There's no one in the party to listen to - thats for sure.

Rush predicted before the mid terms that if the Christian right punished Bush by not voting for GOP, the Dems would win control of Congress and it would set the stage for McCain. He said that two years before McCain was nominated.

Rush is also a favorite of The Heritage Foundation which is a GOP think tank and often speaks there and across the country in its behalf.

He often entertains the top GOP figures at his beach front estate in Florida.

The climate has changed. People see that. Rush will become the scourge of the party... or the party will self destruct. His song is old, tired and out of date. He will hang on for a few more years, but I view it as the (thankfully) welcome end of a dark era in our history. The Morons will fall out of favor, just like the balance of power that shifted to Texas because of oil, will change(Thank You Lord) because oil will become less important.