Rush Weighs In

I normally don't have a habit of paying attention to what the drug addicted Rush Limbaugh says. He's a fat ass, draft dodging, chickenhawk, sleaze ball. But he does, somehow, have great influence on the right wing. If that's who they want as their spokesperson, then that's up to them. I'll take Josh Marshall any day. Any way, the point I want to make is that me and druggie might actually agree on something. To an extent that is.

"There was no figure in our roster of candidates who rose up to challenge him or galvanize conservative support," Limbaugh said on his daily radio program. "All the candidates on our side, for various reasons, are uninspiring or worse — and so, just as I predicted, the base has fractured."

The Ticker goes on:

"He is not the choice of conservatives, as opposed to the choice of the Republican establishment — and that distinction is key," Limbaugh continued. "The Republican establishment, which has long sought to rid the party of conservative influence since Reagan, is feeling a victory today as well as our friends in the media. But both are just far-fetched and wrong.”

Where I'm going to depart from druggie is when he says that Republicans are seeking to rid the party of "conservatives." I totally disagree with that. I agree with Limbaugh that the party is fractured and that the whole slew of candidates were uninspiring or worse, but the Republican Party has never had a monopoly on conservatism no matter what Rush says. What the party is trying to distance itself from is neoconservatism rather than conservatism. And the biggest brand of that is the fact that Rush's home state of Florida went against his advice and still chose McCain.

The conservatives are still there. What we are witnessing is a shift away from neoconservatives, or the crazies in the basement. Republican exit polls from both South Carolina and Florida show a very moderate Republican base showing up. To me that's a good thing. It's very possible to be Republican, conservative and still be progressive. Suggesting that anything close to center, like Limbaugh is doing, is ultimately the death of a party, or worse the death of America is tiresome tripe from a delusional talking head. People want change.