BartBlog

Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America, February 12, 2008

Rush Limbaugh, the marauding Frankenstein’s monster of the Republican Party, is on the loose again, causing all kinds of political damage with his signature off-balance swings. But as has become his custom recently, the pain from Limbaugh’s rampage is being felt by his creators — his enablers — inside the GOP.

Limbaugh and the rest of his get-John McCain brain trust — Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin, and campus instigator Ann Coulter — have been tripping over themselves to get in front of a microphone (preferably a television one) to denounce the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee and to suggest that perhaps conservatives should even vote Democratic come November.

After years of watching Limbaugh and his various band of midnight riders within the Republican Noise Machine launch countless, hateful crusades against liberals and Democrats, it’s extraordinarily satisfying to watch the Republican Party leadership discover what it feels like when Limbaugh sets his venomous, factually challenged sights on their own front-runner.

For progressives, the sprawling GOP brawl is what blogger TRex would call a schadenfreude sundae. What could be more enjoyable than watching McCain get bogged down in the far-right swamp? Answer: Watching a handful of right-wing pundits come to the belated conclusion that Limbaugh is a dunce. Or, as one Weekly Standard blogger put it last week, the Limbaugh-led response to McCain was “unhinged — and at times spectacularly disgraceful.” And Dinesh D’Souza concluded, that, yes, Limbaugh is an “egomaniac” who “has grown accustomed to conservative bigwigs worshiping at the Shrine of Rush.” (Truth is, Limbaugh’s not that well liked among Republicans.)

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Paul Craig Roberts, CounterPunch, February 10, 2008

The Brownshirt Party has chosen John “hundred year war” McCain as its presidential candidate. Except for Cheney, Norman Podhoretz, and Billy Kristol, McCain is America’s greatest warmonger.

In a McCain Regime, Cheney will be back in office with another stint as Secretary of War. Norman “Bomb-bomb-bomb-Iran” Podhoretz will be Undersecretary for Nuclear War with General John “Nuke them” Shalikashvili as his deputy. Rudy Giuliani will be the Minister of Interior in charge of Halliburton’s detention centers into which will be herded all critics of war and the police state. Billy kristol will be chief White House spokesliar.

The whole gang will be back–Wolfowitz, Perle, Wurmster, Feith, Libby, Bolton. America will have a second chance to bomb the world into submission.

With the majority of voters sick of war, sick of lies, sick of fraud from the Federal Reserve and Wall Street, and sick of stagnant and falling incomes, McCain is poised to capture 20 per cent of the vote–the Christian Zionists, the rapture evangelicals, and the diehard macho flag-waving thugs who believe America is done for unless “Islamofacists” are exterminated.

The accumulated lies, deceptions, war crimes, the shame of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons, Bush’s police state assault on civil liberty, countless numbers of Iraqi and Afghan men, women, and children murdered for the sake of American and Israeli hegemony, and the collapsing US economy indicate a political wipeout for the Brownshirt Party. In a country with an informed and humane population, the Republican Party would be reduced to such a small minority that it could never recover.

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Wonkette, DC Gossip, February 10, 2008

It is a tragic day for the Ron Paul ReLOVEution or whatever they call it. Late Friday night, Dr. Congressman Ron Paul posted a letter to his fans basically saying it’s over, but he will continue talking about his message, and plus it would be completely embarrassing for him if he also lost his congressional seat. Gather the children and vodka so we can mourn the American Revolution that was lost.

The note was posted at 10:14 p.m., probably Central Time. It starts with an old-fashioned freedom-loving salutation (“Whoa!”) and ends with an angry attack on the very hippies (“socialists”) who elevated him from another nobody right-winger congressman running a quixotic presidential campaign to a hilarious national Internet fad.

Here’s the message:

Whoa! What a year this has been. And what achievements we have had. If I may quote Trotsky of all people, this Revolution is permanent. It will not end at the Republican convention. It will not end in November. It will not end until we have won the great battle on which we have embarked. Not because of me, but because of you. Millions of Americans – and friends in many other countries – have dedicated themselves to the principles of liberty: to free enterprise, limited government, sound money, no income tax, and peace. We will not falter so long as there is one restriction on our persons, our property, our civil liberties. How much I owe you. I can never possibly repay your generous donations, hard work, whole-hearted dedication and love of freedom. How blessed I am to be associated with you. Carol, of course, sends her love as well.

Let me tell you my thoughts. With Romney gone, the chances of a brokered convention are nearly zero. But that does not affect my determination to fight on, in every caucus and primary remaining, and at the convention for our ideas, with just as many delegates as I can get. But with so many primaries and caucuses now over, we do not now need so big a national campaign staff, and so I am making it leaner and tighter. Of course, I am committed to fighting for our ideas within the Republican party, so there will be no third party run. I do not denigrate third parties – just the opposite, and I have long worked to remove the ballot-access restrictions on them. But I am a Republican, and I will remain a Republican.

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