The President's Lost Week

Bum’s Rush

It was all going so well.  Rush Limbaugh had been tagged as the Republican leader, well; he was because no one could stand up to his rants without scorn.  Senators, Republican National Committee leaders and such were kissing his ring.  Obama’s popularity rating was going up even as the Stock Markets dived.  Then the cat got out of the bag.

It seems it was leaked that Paul Begala and James Carville, Democratic Party strategists and friends with Rahm Emmanuel, he of the White House are all good buddies.  Carville who so brilliantly managed Bill Clinton’s campaigns had learned in some polling that Rush Limbaugh had a lower approval rating than Jeremiah Wright.  Yes, that Jeremiah Wright, the radical preacher the Republicans tried to pin to Obama during the Presidential Campaign.  While Rush’s ditto-heads are loyal to a fault (understatement) the populace as a whole think Limbaugh is a gas bag. 

Phone calls were made to Emmanuel from Begala/Carville and before you know it, Rahm Emmanuel pinned the Republican leader tag on Rush.  Only they “got found out”.  I’m sure it wasn’t a pleasant conversation when President Obama, who had beseeched the Washington set to “set aside” childish behavior, read the riot act to these political funsters.    

Oh ok, so it worked, and the President’s popularity soared, but it ate up a whole week of news and the Country really needs the Republicans to play nice.  They Republicans were not doing so well on their own…eating their young (Steele, Jindal) and generally floundering around.  David Frum of Newsweek chimed in, “Rush is to the Republicanism of the 2000s what Jesse Jackson was to the Democratic Party in the 1980s. He plays an important role in our coalition, and of course he and his supporters have to be treated with respect. But he cannot be allowed to be the public face of the enterprise—and we have to find ways of assuring the public that he is just one Republican voice among many, and very far from the most important. “

It’s time for the White House, Mr. Emmanuel, to drop this and let the corpulent Limbaugh hang himself. On his radio show Friday, Rush Limbaugh suggested that Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) would be dead by the time health care reform legislation passes. "Before it's all over, it'll be called the Ted Kennedy memorial health care bill,” So you see…just send him a box of chocolate covered Oxycontin and your problems are over.

Follow-up

Republican Party National Chairman, Michael Steele, is in trouble with his own party: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/us/politics/08steele.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all

Meanwhile, Governor Bobby Jindal seems to be viewed as more of a Napoleon Dynamite than a serious Presidential Candidate: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19722.html.

 

Happy reading.