Currently, the lead story on Huffington Post's main page is entitled "Boss Battle." It links to an interesting, pot-stirring story by the HuffPo's own Arthur Delaney about Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele saying that he is the de facto leader of the Republican Party, not "entertainer" Rush Limbaugh. That's followed by Limbaugh's own words explicating that Steele is not, in fact, the party leader.
But with just a bit of thought, one can only come to the undeniable conclusion that the whole question of "who is the Republican Party leader, Steele or Limbaugh?" is a ridiculous one on its face. Let me rephrase this, relying only on descriptors instead of names, and you'll see what I mean.
Who is the de facto leader of the Republican Party -- a black man, or a fat, white, hypocritical liar with mountains upon mountains of cash and a penchant for hillbilly heroin? The answer's pretty obvious, no?
Rush Limbaugh is certainly the de facto leader of the uber-conservative base -- those same people who screamed at McCain rallies that Obama was a terrorist and transformed Sarah Palin into some weird, dumbed-down, latter-day version of Mrs. Robinson. Rush Limbaugh is the leader of this sizable portion of Republican voters because he is of them in a way that Michael Steele, with his tin-eared calls to hip-hop the GOP, will never understand.
HuffPo blogger Aemilia Scott offers a pretty good description of this breed of Republican voter in her latest post. Take that person in Scott's article, give him a few hundred million dollars, and you have Rush Limbaugh. That's why Limbaugh has always had such cachet among this conservative archetype. He represents the confirmation of their warped version of the American Dream, their belief that millions of dollars are sure to be theirs, if only they can stop the liberals and illegal immigrants from taking it all away.
And so I reject totally the argument that, even armed with his official title, Michael Steele is the de facto leader of the Republican Party. For while he may run the RNC, Rush Limbaugh has the mob. Having just lived through the last eight years, I know what it's like to be torches-and-pitchforks angry at the government. That rage is what dittoheads are going through right now, and it's Rush that goads them on, not Steele. It's Rush's tune to which they dance.
Which is not to say that the angry liberals of the Bush years are just the flip side of the coin to today's foam-mouthed conservatives. We were angry over a war based on lies that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Americans and countless more Iraqis. We were angry over torture and illegal wiretaps. They're angry over ... what exactly? The fact that they haven't become overnight millionaires the way they were supposed to? The blitheringly idiotic notions that Obama will take away their guns, or enforce mandatory abortions upon their dainty women folk?
I honestly can't say. But that's always been one of the big differences between liberal and conservative angst -- protesting what has actually occurred on one hand, versus protesting what people tell you might occur in the future on the other.
It doesn't matter what's true. What matters is that they get to blame all of their problems on someone else.
Rush Limbaugh and the others may know that they're completely full of it, but they don't care. They make a lot of money professionally fomenting hatred. There are few things more powerful than an oppressive majority which believes against all evidence that the minorities they are oppressing are the ones doing the oppressing.
Progressives fight for or against things that actually exist, or have happened in reality.....
CONservatives fight for or against imaginary demons that exist in their imaginations......
Very true.......I never thought about it that way.
Let's deal with problems that exist in reality.
republicans are merely seditious and menacing.
Best line I've seen anywhere today.
If you open up your worldview, you open yourself up to a world of injustice and inequality. You see struggle, and you start to think that maybe, just maybe you should try to do something about it. And then it's a downhill slide toward liberalism, complexity and a messy, untidy world.
This also explains why, when forced by titanic events to deal with the outside world, they inevitably turn it back into their own microcosm, as with immediate post-9/11 fears that terrorists would attack the local Walmart.
And, hey, that's another thing. If New York City isn't the "real America," how come all these Limbaugh types are the ones berating the rest of us for forgetting about 9/11? Why should they care? After all, the 9/11 attacks didn't happen to "real Americans," right?
Cheers,
Dan
Their definition of Democracy guarantees the right to amass as much wealth as they can, from whom ever, at whatever the cost. Wealth then equals power.
What the majority of American’s need to remember and start to fight for is: Democracy;
a political system in which the supreme power lies in the citizens which have the right to elect people to represent them and who are accountable to them.
It is pretty hard to be aware of the problems of the world and the economic struggles of those families down the street and not feel guilty for their excessive life styles. After all it is their fault they can’t afford that new BMW.
They have turned generosity into a dirty word called Welfare and Welfare has turned into an institution that teaches and rewards unproductively.
Only one who has lived in a world of working hard but having to decide between health care and keeping food in your family's mouth could understand. If everyone was prosperous and doing well in America, affording health care, able to find good paying jobs, able to send their children to great schools who would they be able to dominate over? After all our poor unfortunate families need someone to aspire to be, right? Something to strive for!
We have taught our society that being rich is everything! Amassing as much as you can before you die while your neighbor struggles is the American Dream. Now we see the fruit of our teachings.