Despite the fact that he is bat# crazy, Rush Limbaugh continues to reign supreme over the GOP. The conservative talk show host has styled himself as the voice of the Republican Party, even as he spews hate-filled rhetoric and brazenly reiterates his hope that the President fails in his attempt to rescue one of the worst financial crises in history.

His posturing is met with only quiet muttering by more moderate conservatives. Meanwhile, politicians who vocally challenge Limbaugh end up slimily backpedaling within one news cycle.

Why does Limbaugh inspire a strong enough following among many conservatives to warrant public respect by GOP heavyweights, who, undoubtedly, also privately think he’s bat# crazy?

In a recent article on AlterNet, Deepak Chopra suggests that Limbaugh’s popularity has little to do with what he’s actually saying. Instead, what keeps people tuning in is Limbaugh’s style -- that particular brand of loudly blared bile perfected by conservative talk show hosts in their decade of dominance over the airwaves.

According to Chopra, shock jocks like Limbaugh:

... exist purely as steam vents. The common citizen gets to be pissed off by the millions, unrelentingly, without cease or solution, and in return, he is praised. To be outraged is to be morally superior."

Your anger strips away tolerance, sympathy, and regard for "the other." Hence the almost imperial bearing of Limbaugh, the bland certainty that because he never stops being angry, he never stops being right.

Originally posted by virraszto
reply to post by grover

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The few times I have listened to him, he is so outrageous and full of arrogance, and spews so much crap, I wonder how anyone could listen to him. And yes, sometimes he sounds so ignorant, I do crack a smile.

There's a serious debate in this country as to how best to end the recession. The average recession will last five to 11 months; the average recovery will last six years. Recessions will end on their own if they're left alone. What can make the recession worse is the wrong kind of government intervention.

I believe the wrong kind is precisely what President Barack Obama has proposed. I don't believe his is a "stimulus plan" at all -- I don't think it stimulates anything but the Democratic Party. This "porkulus" bill is designed to repair the Democratic Party's power losses from the 1990s forward, and to cement the party's majority power for decades.




Keynesian economists believe government spending on "shovel-ready" infrastructure projects -- schools, roads, bridges -- is the best way to stimulate our staggering economy. Supply-side economists make an equally persuasive case that tax cuts are the surest and quickest way to create permanent jobs and cause an economy to rebound. That happened under JFK, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. We know that when tax rates are cut in a recession, it brings an economy back.

Recent polling indicates that the American people are in favor of both approaches.

Notwithstanding the media blitz in support of the Obama stimulus plan, most Americans, according to a new Rasmussen poll, are skeptical. Rasmussen finds that 59% fear that Congress and the president will increase government spending too much. Only 17% worry they will cut taxes too much. Since the American people are not certain that the Obama stimulus plan is the way to go, it seems to me there's an opportunity for genuine compromise. At the same time, we can garner evidence on how to deal with future recessions, so every occurrence will no longer become a matter of partisan debate.