TFirst, President Barack Obama stroked talk show kingpin Rush Limbaugh’s ego by proclaiming him the pied piper of the GOP. Next, Republican National Chair Michael Steele showed some moxie and publicly told Limbaugh that he was the shot caller in the GOP. That didn’t last. In the next breath, he publicly pleaded for forgiveness from Limbaugh for his momentary pique.
Then top Obama advisor Rahm Emanuel jumped in and lathered Limbaugh with praise and scorn as the boss of the GOP. Obama and Emanuel had an ulterior motive. They propped up Limbaugh as their strawman to tar the GOP as an antique, discredited and obstructionist bunch of sore losers who will stop at nothing to derail Obama’s policies.
Steele is just simply running scared of Limbaugh.
A Boost, Yes, but an Empty One
But in either case, they have done what Limbaugh couldn’t do for himself, wildly inflate his importance as the GOP kingmaker.
Limbaugh got the kind of promotion that ad companies spend millions on for nothing. But it’s still nothing but hot air.
Limbaugh hasn’t stopped one Obama staff or cabinet appointment, prevented one policy directive, executive order or a single piece of legislation. That includes Limbaugh’s favorite target — Obama’s economic stimulus bill.
Heck, Limbaugh couldn’t even stop his arch- nemesis, Al Franken, from bagging the Minnesota Senate seat. Franken’s the guy who outrageously wolf-ticketed Limbaugh as the big fat idiot, and then turned the wolfing into a best-selling book.
Limbaugh’s rambling, long-winded rant at the Conservative Political Action Conference, complete with his confusion over what the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence say, was the topper. The crowd, which was heavily white and male, lapped up every Limbaugh inanity.
Was This a Joke?
A stroll through the convention hall showed that the crowd’s Cloud Nine divorce from political reality was almost laughable. Every anti in America—taxes, gay rights, gun control, and government, as well as touting their darling Sarah Palin—was on display there. This does a lot to further seal the GOP’s lot as a party that is stepping fast toward becoming a self-marginalized, mean- spirited, faded political entity.
This isn't the first time that the Obama team created and then punched away at a GOP strawman target. When Republican rival John McCain plopped Sarah Palin on his ticket, a top Team Obama member reflexively hammered Palin. Obama quickly realized that it was a colossal mistake. He did the smart thing. He simply congratulated her on being picked as McCain's VP candidate, and then he went back to talking about the issues. He knew not to make her the issue. But the lesson hasn’t stuck in the case of Limbaugh.
Helping Out Limbaugh
By making Limbaugh bigger than life in American politics, it gives steam to his inflammatory campaign of rumors, half- truths, distortions and flat-out lies about Obama, liberals and now Steele.
Limbaugh’s aim with Steele is to further cow the GOP into line; the line that forms behind him.
At the start of his tenure as RNC chair, Steele had the good sense to know that kowtowing to Limbaugh was a prescription for an even bigger disaster for the GOP. He resuscitated the old Bush line, circa 2000, talking about making the GOP a party of big tent diversity. Then, like Bush, he promptly forgot it.
That’s exactly what Limbaugh, with his conservative white man’s litmus test for the GOP, wants.
But that flies in the face of what Obama’s election triumph showed. That is that the country's fast-changing ethnic vote demographics look nothing like they did a decade ago.
Black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American voters now make up nearly a quarter of the nation's electorate.
Check the GOP for Contrast
College-educated whites make up more than one-third of the vote. Limbaugh’s comfort zone voter demographic; white, blue collar, heartland and Deep South voters have shrunk to less than 40 percent of the nation’s voters.
Immigration, higher birth rates and the youth trends will continue to swell the numbers of minority and youth voters. The white electorate overall will continue to decline.
It's not only the numbers that work against the GOP. It's also ideology. The Democrats’ expanding core base of voters is more moderate, socially active and pro- government; the exact opposite of what Limbaugh rants for.
Obama, Emanuel and Steele know this. The Democrats would not have won the White House and Steele would not have beat out a pack of mostly Limbaugh-fawning contenders for the RNC top spot if that hadn’t been true.
Still, Limbaugh has one powerful tool to bully, badger and cajole the GOP and saber-rattle Obama, the airwaves.
He’ll exploit it to the hilt.
But that won’t make him the boss of the GOP let alone any real threat to Obama. It’ll just make him an inviting and convenient strawman.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press.)
