Thanks, Rush: Your Big Mouth May Have Saved America

If Jim Webb's lead in Virginia holds through the recount and the Democrats take over the Senate, we could have a Missourian to thank.

No, not Claire McCaskill, whose 43,000-vote margin over anti- embryonic stem cell religious idealogue Jim Talent got the Dems to the 50 seat level in the Senate.

Kudos would go to another Missourian, one Rush Limbaugh.

When Rush ridiculed Parkinson's Disease patient and stem-cell research advocate Michael J. Fox for not taking his medication before appearing on camera to advocate for state-funded stem cell research initiatives, he may have accomplished something he could not have anticipated.

Rush showed Missourians- and other Americans- the meanness that cuts through so much of the hard right's objections to this research.

In doing so, he may have galvanized pro-stem advocates to come out and vote for the initative, and for McCaskill as well.

It's also likely that Rush's mean words helped swing other close Senate and Congressional races where one candidate was opposed to government-funded stem cell research while the other was in favor.

Thanks, Rush, for baring your teeth. You showed Missourians as well as many other Americans the mean streak that runs through so much right-wing rhetoric.

Thanks, Rush, for energizing these voters to vote out enough of candidates favored by fright-wing talk radio and anti-choice extremist preachers to restore a balance of power to Washington.

So maybe the next time Bush wants to nominate a rigid idealogue to the Supreme Court- an idealogue who turns the clock back on privacy and reproductive freedom- there's someone playing defense. That'd be the Democratic committee chairs who are going to take over Jan.3.

It's a new dawn in America. Thanks, Rush.