The Party of Limbaugh

This is just incredible:

The new chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele, apologized to Rush Limbaugh on Monday after describing him in a television interview over the weekend as an “entertainer” who made incendiary and sometimes ugly remarks, party officials said.

Mr. Steele called Mr. Limbaugh after the radio host belittled Mr. Steele on his show, questioning his authority and saying the new Republican leader was off “to a shaky start.”

If Rush Limbaugh did not exist, the DNC would have to invent him. The guy's ego is the size of a overloaded freight train, and he has no idea how destructive he is to the GOP in its quest for relevance in the post housing-collapse world.

The sad thing, of course, is that Steele has just made Democratic critics' points for them. The GOP, right now, is a party whose actual head is Rush Limbaugh, a guy who's actively rooting for an economic depression to take hold so that Obama might be defeated in 2012.

And something just as disturbing emerges when we broaden our outlook and examine the Right's other contemporary heroes. Every one of them is a vulgar, sloganeering, intellectual lightweight. We've got Sarah Plain, former beauty queen turned fiscally irreponsible mayor of a small town, turned dishonest governor of a large, though sparsely populated state. You've got Joe Wurzelbacher, an unlicensed plumber and right-wing radio aficionado who was thrust on to the national stage when he challenged candidate Barack Obama on the merits of his tax plans by lying about his own economic situation. You've got a nameless mass of right-ring radio and TV commentators like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly who add nothing to the national debate but empty slogans and mean-spirited vituperation.

The right-wing blogs, meanwhile, are nothing but a collection of specious conspiracy theories regarding Barack Obama's citizenship and unhinged frothing at the mouth about the government's supposed turn to Communism in the face of an economic collapse that was occasioned by the very economic policies they've been mindlessly championing over the years.

And the others?

Bobby Jindal? FAIL: He was the great brown hope of the Republican party, the Barack Obama doppleganger who would, in one fell swoop, prove that the GOP was not a party of old, crotchety racists. Instead he delivered a laughable respone to Obama's State of the Union Address that was panned by commentators on the left as well as the right and was so riddled with misinformation and outright lies that one wonders: is Jindal Obama's evil twin or Sarah Palin's fraternal twin? So far it looks like Jindal is shaping up to be 2009's Fred Thompson.

Rick Santelli? FAIL: It really speaks to how out of touch the party faithful are that so many would hitch their wagon to a guy who's so politically tone-deaf that he hoped to spark a revolution by riling up a group of stock brokers against Barack Obama's mortgage rescue plan. After all, these are the people who, along with hedge fund managers and subprime mortgage originators, are probably the most reviled individuals in the nation what with their insatiable greed and the key role they played in destroying our once vibrant economy. Let's not even mention the $700 billion taxpayer dollars that flowed into their pockets after the first Wall Street bailout. They got theirs and now they want the rest of us to rise up against a president who has a plan to help keep ordinary Americans in their homes?

Joh Boehner? FAIL: This horse-faced, dour, sourpuss of a House Minority Leader has a personality that makes John Kerry look as wacky and fun loving as Spongebob Squarepants. Listening to him grumble about Obama's legislative agenda is about as compelling and informative as listening to your old grandpappy grumble about the poor job the dry-cleaners did the last time they cleaned his suspenders.

Mitch McConnell? FAIL: One word explains his FAIL, and that word is... "who?" I had to goole the phrase "Senate Minority Leader" just to remember who was leading the Senate GOP these days. Enough said.

Newt Gingrich? FAIL: Witnessing the complete evaporation of the intellectual core of the GOP, some of the party faithful are turning back the clock and dusting off old Newt Gingrich in hopes that the onetime wunderkid of the Right can put the spark back into their movement. But really, it's just like a particularly unwatchable VH1 nostalgia show. Remember the 90s? Remember when the GOP had the wind at its back and this guy Gingrich was leading a revolution that he himself would soon torpedo with his single minded and completely hypocritical sexual vendetta against a president who was even more popular than he was? And how many wives has he had since then, anyway?

So Limbaugh it is. He's the gasbag that rushed in to fill the vaccum created by the GOP's spectacular loss at the polls last year. He's the guy leading the GOP show. And the GOP is now oficially nothing more than the party of right-wing hate radio.

Enjoy your stay at the margins of political discourse, fellahs. It looks like you're in for a long stay.