Rush Limbaugh may insist that he is not, as others have suggested, the head of the Republican Party. But all of the GOP's key players are kissing his proverbial ring in the aftermath of his latest anti-Obama episode and intra-party squabble.
The most recent offering of support came from Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal who on Monday night said that he was glad to see RNC Chairman Michael Steele apologize to Limbaugh after Steele had called the conservative talk show host's program "incendiary" and "ugly."
"I'm glad he apologized," said Jindal, appearing on CNN's Larry King Live. "I think the chairman is a breath of fresh air for the party. As I said before I think Rush is a leader for many conservatives and says things that people are concerned about."
That Jindal, the Republican Party's up-and-coming voice, would side with Rush wasn't entirely surprising. Steele himself had done as much only a few hours earlier. Speaking to Politico roughly one day after he had insisted that Limbaugh was not the head of the Republican Party but merely an "entertainer," the RNC chair apologized for his "inaccurate" remarks.
"I went back at that tape and I realized words that I said weren't what I was thinking," Steele said in an interview with Politico. "It was one of those things where I thinking I was saying one thing, and it came out differently. What I was trying to say was a lot of people ... want to make Rush the scapegoat, the bogeyman, and he's not."
Democrats, not surprisingly, are watching it all with a sense of glee, actively hoping to elevate the brash and divisive Limbaugh to the head of the GOP. Said DNC Chair Tim Kaine in a statement released shortly after Steele's apology.
"I was briefly encouraged by the courageous comments made my counterpart in the Republican Party over the weekend challenging Rush Limbaugh as the leader of the Republican Party and referring to his show as 'incendiary' and 'ugly.' However, Chairman Steele's reversal this evening and his apology to Limbaugh proves the unfortunate point that Limbaugh is the leading force behind the Republican Party, its politics and its obstruction of President Obama's agenda in Washington. Just this weekend, Rush Limbaugh repeated his claim that he is rooting for the President to fail. The last time Rush Limbaugh said he wanted the President to fail, virtually every single Republican in Congress followed his lead and voted against the President's plan to create or save 3.5 million jobs."