Al Coholic
03-03-2009, 06:54 PM
Voice of the conservative movement or an ugly douche? I say some of the first and a lot of the second. But seriously, I can't turn on the cable tv news(which I like for background noise in my apartment) without hearing about the guy.
The speech he gave at the CPAC conference just pissed me off. It wasn't backed by any facts or hard evidence, though you wouldn't know it from the thundering applause. What really stuck out to me was when he told a room full of white, reasonably well to do, that the welfare system held down the poor, and they'd be better off liberated from it... nevermind disproportionate property taxes keep poor neighborhoods poor, nevermind circumstances like single-parenthood and un/underemployment, nevermind any of it. The guy told a room full of people who in all likelyhood would find their median income to be well above average exactly what they wanted to hear. An advocate of investor class tax breaks, Limbaugh would gladly see welfare cut to pay for corporate/upper class taxes cut, effectively CONCENTRATING wealth among the wealthy. Not only did he say they could do this, that they should do this, that it's a crime people aren't, but that the poor would be --- get this --- better off. Its those dame elitist democrats always trying to help the poor thats screwing it all up. Tax breaks for the wealthy, paid for by the masses, are better for everyone. It might just be me, but the lack of logic in that thinking, and the cheers it got was scary.
And how they cheered. How they boo'ed on que. Mention Joe biden and they'd laugh. Sometimes they were so happy to be involved in those speeches they seemed to boo/cheer pre-emptively. One guy, I believe touching on the subject of adavances in media technology that the party needs to catch up with, even began a sentence with "Newspapers are dying, and" but was cutoff with applause. Yay for the death of printed media?
I digress. The point was they ate that shit up. But nobody in the republican party can call Limbaugh out on the shit he says. Even the head of the RNC, Michael Steele, apologized for a comment he made about Rush's comments, within an hour of Rush criticizing him. Jesus castrated Christ. It seems to have come to the point where this guy can say almost anything, and if its in-line enough with a majority of the base Republicans can't disagree. The conservative base may be a quarter of this country, so all he needs by that logic is for about 15% to agree with him. Its turned the GOP into a gang of pussies, and nobody's got the nads to even respectfully disagree.
And some of the shit this guy says is atrocious. A lot of it I don't even think he believes, but he can sure rile up the base with talking points.
So what are your thoughts? His popularity is popularity is undeniable, but is he genuine? Is there something about this guy that conservatives identify with? Or is this guy a reflection of what conservatives want and are told to want? Maybe he's a product of our times, when we don't care if pundits are accurate or even factual...maybe we just seek comfort in our own rhetoric?
The speech he gave at the CPAC conference just pissed me off. It wasn't backed by any facts or hard evidence, though you wouldn't know it from the thundering applause. What really stuck out to me was when he told a room full of white, reasonably well to do, that the welfare system held down the poor, and they'd be better off liberated from it... nevermind disproportionate property taxes keep poor neighborhoods poor, nevermind circumstances like single-parenthood and un/underemployment, nevermind any of it. The guy told a room full of people who in all likelyhood would find their median income to be well above average exactly what they wanted to hear. An advocate of investor class tax breaks, Limbaugh would gladly see welfare cut to pay for corporate/upper class taxes cut, effectively CONCENTRATING wealth among the wealthy. Not only did he say they could do this, that they should do this, that it's a crime people aren't, but that the poor would be --- get this --- better off. Its those dame elitist democrats always trying to help the poor thats screwing it all up. Tax breaks for the wealthy, paid for by the masses, are better for everyone. It might just be me, but the lack of logic in that thinking, and the cheers it got was scary.
And how they cheered. How they boo'ed on que. Mention Joe biden and they'd laugh. Sometimes they were so happy to be involved in those speeches they seemed to boo/cheer pre-emptively. One guy, I believe touching on the subject of adavances in media technology that the party needs to catch up with, even began a sentence with "Newspapers are dying, and" but was cutoff with applause. Yay for the death of printed media?
I digress. The point was they ate that shit up. But nobody in the republican party can call Limbaugh out on the shit he says. Even the head of the RNC, Michael Steele, apologized for a comment he made about Rush's comments, within an hour of Rush criticizing him. Jesus castrated Christ. It seems to have come to the point where this guy can say almost anything, and if its in-line enough with a majority of the base Republicans can't disagree. The conservative base may be a quarter of this country, so all he needs by that logic is for about 15% to agree with him. Its turned the GOP into a gang of pussies, and nobody's got the nads to even respectfully disagree.
And some of the shit this guy says is atrocious. A lot of it I don't even think he believes, but he can sure rile up the base with talking points.
So what are your thoughts? His popularity is popularity is undeniable, but is he genuine? Is there something about this guy that conservatives identify with? Or is this guy a reflection of what conservatives want and are told to want? Maybe he's a product of our times, when we don't care if pundits are accurate or even factual...maybe we just seek comfort in our own rhetoric?