Rush Limbaugh

I am inclined to agree with Peter Daou on this:

I don’t buy into this ‘brilliant’ strategy of elevating Rush Limbaugh in the hopes that it will tarnish Republicans.

Focus relentlessly on the disastrous Bush presidency to tarnish Republicans, yes.

Overturn every single illegal and unconstitutional Bush-era policy and show the country and the world that we’re reclaiming the moral high ground, yes.

Implement bold strategies and use soaring rhetoric to inspire Americans, yes.

Hew fiercely to Democratic principles, reassert the greatness of our American identity, demonstrate the true meaning of liberalism, of progressivism, providing opportunity, seeking justice and fairness, helping those in need, yes.

Spend our resources healing the sick, feeding the hungry, lifting the poor, cleaning the planet, rather than on war and more war, yes.

But expand Rush Limbaugh’s profile and platform? No.

It’s bad for the country and it’s bad politics. Limbaugh and his cohorts (Coulter, Hannity, Beck, Savage, and so on), are largely responsible for our toxic political environment. Given major media platforms to launch crude and brutal political and cultural attacks, to demonize liberals, and to use rage as a means of lining their own pockets, these ‘entertainers’ have poisoned our national discourse.

There’s precious little benefit in making Limbaugh more of a central player, in engaging him directly from the White House podium, in raising his stature, in stamping, sealing and approving the years he’s spent bashing his political opponents. There was a moment, a brief moment, after Barack Obama was elected president, a moment long gone, where the likes of Limbaugh and Hannity could have become marginalized, bit players rather than media movers and shakers, the detritus of a sorry era. But instead, they have been granted more power — out of some contrived political calculus. This, at a time when we don’t need political calculus, we need single-minded determination to get us out of this economic calamity and to restore sanity to our government.

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