Under the leadership of Democrats, the Congress has achieved something unprecedented: approval ratings that fluctuate between 18 percent (on good days) to 11 percent (on bad days). In the face of this massive unpopularity, what do they do? Why, they engage in a full-scale effort to smear the most successful radio talk show host in history.
It is quite a spectacle to behold.
I have written elsewhere on why Rush Limbaugh’s “phony soldiers” comment is a phony controversy. Any fair-minded reading will lead one to conclude that Limbaugh’s reference to “phony soldiers” had to do with, literally, phony soldiers—that is, those who had falsified their service records.
But Democrats, having watched the MoveOn.org attack of General David Petraeus blow up in their faces, were desperate to turn the tables. What it has led to are scenes that are almost comical, with Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senator Tom Harkin taking to the floor of the Senate—the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body—to say things like this (from Harkin):
What’s most despicable is that Rush Limbaugh says these provocative things to make more money. So he castigates our soldiers. . . . More people tune in. He makes more money. Well. I don’t know. Maybe he was just high on his drugs again.
The whole thing—from the faux outrage to the ad hominem attacks to the willful distortion of Limbaugh’s comments—radiates desperation. But there is a pernicious element as well.
Members of Congress, no matter how juvenile they behave, exercise real power. They have the capacity to shred reputations. And their antics can trivialize an admirable profession (politics) and deepen cynicism among the polity.
Democrats in Congress may have thought they could steamroll the man from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, but they are finding he fights back—and that he has a very large megaphone.
Rush Limbaugh is the target of their animus because he is an immense talent who has deep conservative beliefs. He single-handedly saved AM radio and has made the conservative movement stronger and more popular. It’s dawning on conservatives that this unfair attack on him is an attack on the movement, and that the effort to silence him is an effort to silence them.
Congressional Democrats, having remained (more or less) quiescent during the slander of the commanding general in Iraq, decide that the road to recovery is to smear a radio talk show host.
What a party.