The strategy took shape after Democratic strategists Stanley Greenberg and James Carville included Limbaugh’s name in an October poll and learned their longtime tormentor was deeply unpopular with many Americans, especially younger voters. Then the conservative talk-radio host emerged as an unapologetic critic of Barack Obama shortly before his inauguration, when even many Republicans were showering him with praise.
Soon it clicked: Democrats realized they could roll out a new GOP bogeyman for the post-Bush era by turning to an old one in Limbaugh, a polarizing figure since he rose to prominence in the 1990s.
Limbaugh is embracing the line of attack, suggesting a certain symbiosis between him and his political adversaries.
"The administration is enabling me,” he wrote in an e-mail to POLITICO. “They are expanding my profile, expanding my audience and expanding my influence. An ever larger number of people are now being exposed to the antidote to Obamaism: conservatism, as articulated by me. An ever larger number of people are now exposed to substantive warnings, analysis and criticism of Obama's policies and intentions, a ‘story’ I own because the [mainstream media] is largely the Obama Press Office.”
The bigger, the better, agreed Carville. “It’s great for us, great for him, great for the press,” he said of Limbaugh. “The only people he’s not good for are the actual Republicans in Congress.”
The problem with this line of attack, which the Democratic strategists will discover too late, is that while many moderates might give Barack Obama a chance, he has been squandering it by lying about cutting into earmarks and breaking campaign promises left and right, and Rush Limbaugh has been putting a bright spotlight on those broken pledges, which means that Limbaugh will be able to take full advantage of highlighting each and every thing, and the bright glare of the lights, giving him his soapbox will have been provided BY the Democrats.
Tony Campbell over at The Moderate Voice, points out the bait and switch the Democrats are trying to pull on the American people:
I am really, really going to try to write a column this week outside of the black hole of the Limbaugh, Steele, White House triangle of political death. The sad thing about all of this drama is that it doesn’t mean anything that positively impacts the life of one single American citizen. All this drama between Emanuel, Rush, George Stephanopoulos and Steele is a smoke screen to keep your minds off of what is really important: the fact that Obama and the Democrats have no clue on how to fix the economy and that the Democratic Congress is giving away BILLIONS of your tax dollars in pork in this stimulus package.
Guess we will see if this backfires... 2010 is not that far away.
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