A: Jesus knew how to make a cabinet.

I heard that one on TV last night. I think it’s pretty good.

In two years, if the answers to the above are in the negative Limbaugh, for all his fatuity, will Limbaugh will be saying I told you so. And people will agree with him.

Obama really doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing. So it’s almost a safe bet that a year from now the same people who have faith in Obama, will despise him.

Well, that’s possible, but as pointed out already, most folks who’ve bet that way for the last couple of years have lost their bets.

What everyone ought to pay attention to is the fact that Team Obama plays chess, not poker. They appear to be aiming their efforts several steps in advance. One way in which this plays out is the 24-hour news cycle. During the campaign and so far during the Presidency, Team Obama seemed to be constantly behind the chatterfests on TV. Team McCain exploited this, and Limbaugh is doing the same. TeeVee news is happy to oblige. But in the end, Obama was elected — not McCain. Obama’s stimulus package passed, largely the way he wanted it to. And now Limbaugh has been wrapped around the GOP’s neck, while the nominal elected party leaders look like fools or cowards.

So I would advise everyone to ignore the 24-hour cable news and step back a bit. Obama’s tactics will become a lot clearer.

I have no doubt that Limbaugh will come out ahead in the long term, just as he’s been coming out ahead lately. That’s because, for him, “coming out ahead” is measured in listeners and ad revenue, and he is an extraordinarily talented broadcaster, businessman and self-promoter. It doesn’t even matter if he’s right about Obama’s economic policies–he maintained his popularity throughout the Clinton era despite the relatively healthy economy.

His ability to maintain his popularity regardless of conditions in the country and the world, and regardless of whether he knows what he’s talking about, is certainly a mark in his favor when we consider Rush Limbaugh the product, but not when we consider Rush Limbaugh, guiding light of the GOP. If Obama struggles, and moderates and liberals become inclined to doubt his judgment and his ideas, one surefire way to alienate them from conservatism and the Republican Party will be to tell them, “Ha, ha, ha, Rush Limbaugh’s saying ‘I told you so!’”

No, I think Rush will be able to say I told you so in the not too distant future. I know I will.

Wishing something doesn’t make it true.

You may be right, but so far, everyone who has held that view has been proved wrong. At this point, I’ll take Obama and give the points.

Meanwhile, Obama is planning to spend about 27% of the national income in 2009. It seems this figure has been confirmed by anonymous ’senior members of the administration’. They claim it will go down to 22% in the out years, but I have my doubts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/opinion/06brooks.html?_r=1

Combine the next recession with a crushing load of taxes and debt, and the backlash against the Democrats could be ferocious.

Well, it’s even more than that, I think. The meta-narrative here is that the nation’s economy is in the sh*tter, Obama is trying to “do something” – and Limbaugh wants him to fail.

It’s Limbaugh and his allies which now need nuance on their side – no no, Rush is not saying he wants the country to fail, just Obama’s policies, because he thinks those policies are socialist, etc. Yeah. You’ve already lost the bulk of the country long before we get to the end of the “nuanced” explaination.

As noted in a previous thread, the Rushian “strategy” here, if it can be called that, is to wait/hope for Obama to fail, then say – see, we were right all along! And surely then, the American public will realize it was wrong to reject the movement/party, will beg for forgiveness, will implore those now in the wilderness to please come save the nation.

Well, Steele had it coming in that case. Otherwise, Charlie, you make good points about Limbaugh’s effectiveness. The only response is that in long-term it’ll pay off, which Gordianus has pointed out. He may be right on that. Limbaugh’s salad days were when he was in the opposition in the 90s. Whether Obama will provide the same target-rich environment as the Clintons did is another question.

But even if it were true it’s not relevant here. Rush Limbaugh couldn’t even talk his preferred candidate past a third-place showing in the GOP primaries, which is about all you need to know about his ability to rally an electorally-relevant number of people to the cause of Limbaugh-style “conservatism.” And Limbaugh, in his capacity as arbiter of conservative values and voice of the GOP base, thought that the party’s best hope was… Mitt Romney. Truly, in Limbaugh we have a rare combination of rock-solid conservative principles and keen political judgment.

If 60+% have a favorable view of the President, and some radio host says he wants the President to fail, wouldn’t the people, uninterested in nuance and substance as they are, react very negatively to the radio host and his allies? The only way to defend Limbaugh here is to insist that substance and ideas matter and then make the more implausible claim that Limbaugh is seriously interested in these things. If substance and nuance are irrelevant, Limbaugh seems to lose on all fronts.

The people don’t want nuance, substance, or even good ideas. They want something they can easily understand in sound-byte form, something that resonates with their simple, innate notions of justice, something they can repeat around the water cooler and feel good about.

This may or may not be true. If it is true it implies that conservatives and Republicans should do their best to marginalize Limbaugh, and should under no circumstances allow him to become the leader of or the spokesman for conservatism or the Republican Party.

If we’re throwing nuance, substance and ideas out the window, and dealing only in sound-bytes that appeal to people’s “simple” notions, then Limbaugh is easily caricatured as a hypocritical self-promoter, unable or unwilling to control his own appetites, who nevertheless spoon-feeds pablum about “values” and “ideas” to a credulous audience.

Does it resonate with anyone’s innate notion of justice when such a man bullies and berates other members of his own party, extracting from them groveling apologies and reveling in their toadyism? Is his prominence within the GOP and within conservatism easy for a Republican to explain to a Democrat in a two-minute chat at the water cooler?