| If you read liberal blogs or receive communications from the Democratic Party, you're probably familiar with radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh publicly hoping for the failure of President Barack Obama and joking about the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy. With the American people tired of his sickening and hate-fueled rhetoric, a few Republican leaders - including new national chair Michael Steele - have rightfully criticized Limbaugh in recent weeks. However, they've quickly taken back their criticism and apologized to Limbaugh as soon as they realized they might become the next victims of his attacks.
This has proven to the American people that Limbaugh is the true leader of the Republican Party and it's shown the full extent to which his ugly style of politics has rotted the GOP to its very core. Recognizing this and finally ready to fight back, national Democrats have jumped at the opportunity to reveal the real face of the Republican Party.
Please allow me this self-congratulatory pat on the back as I re-run the following story that was just a little bit ahead of the curve when I wrote it more than three months ago. The specific issue may be a dead one after Sen. Chuck Hagel's retirement, but the mentality to which it speaks is very much alive. And, it's a very real problem.
To the article, I've added a few graphics linking to the various campaigns through which you can take action reminding Republican leaders they should be answering to the people - including the people of Nebraska - rather than to Rush Limbaugh.
Nebraska Republicans Refuse To Learn From National Failures
"Party Of Limbaugh" Has No Place For Moderates & Common Sense Conservatives
(as published November 25, 2008)
 Thinking they've survived the worst for their party and come out of the 2008 election generally unscathed, Nebraska Republicans are unreformed, unrepentant, and sowing the seeds for their own destruction by persisting in the embrace of the far-right fringe at the expense of common sense and moderate appeal. The clearest example of this has been their response to a speech by retiring Sen. Chuck Hagel at John Hopkins University last week in which he laid plain the ills plaguing the Republican Party that have cost them so dearly with the American public in the last two elections.
Foremost in Hagel's criticism was radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, the self-proclaimed "leader of the conservative movement."
I wish Rush Limbaugh and others like that would run for office...[T]hey try to rip everyone down and make fools of everybody but they don't have any answers....
Eighty-seven percent of the American people said America is going in the wrong direction....[S]o the election was pretty predictable. The American people don't like what's going on. They want us to start doing what leaders are expected to do. Address the problems, find some consensus to govern, get along. There will be differences; there should be. But in the end we can't continue to hold ourselves captive to this raw partisan political paralysis.
To this, Limbaugh responded:
[Hagel]'s making a speech on how tough it is to be a Senator today...his biggest problem as a Senator was not the real enemy, the Democrats in the Senate who were trying to forestall any progress. No, no, no, the enemy is me. The enemy is a guy on the radio....
I can't help it if you don't see the enemy in the same way I see them. I can't help it if you don't see liberalism the way I do. If you want to make all these deals with the people who stand in the way of genuine individual progress in this country, then you're going to come in for some criticism....
This is what is wrong with Senator Hagel. The other side is more partisan than any political party in my lifetime. The Democrat Party today, in conjunction with the American left, is as raw partisan as you can get. Compromise? Who does the compromising, Senator Hagel? Our side does the compromising, and when you compromise core principles, what have you advanced?....
[C]onsensus is the absence of leadership. Leadership is what has been sorely missing on our side, particularly in the House and Senate for quite a while, and the reason we lost this election is not because we didn't reach out. The reason we lost this election is because we did. 
Putting aside Limbaugh's blatant hypocrisy attacking the Democratic Party for its partisanship while referring to Democrats as "the enemy," it's his poisonous approach to politics that really stands out - an approach that flies totally in the face of good government, functioning democracy, and every great tradition in Nebraska politics.
It's no wonder Hagel and Limbaugh would clash. By speaking out against Limbaugh, Hagel is using his last few months in office to assert his place in the storied ranks of Nebraska's independent-minded political leaders. This is a standard to which Hagel often fell short in his Senate career, but one's inclined to forgive many of those failures after the scorn Hagel's received from his fellow Republicans just for speaking his mind and occasionally even voting his conscience.
One might expect that Hagel could at least take some refuge in the esteem of Nebraska Republicans who are more familiar with the proud tradition he's tried to uphold. Instead, Nebraska Republicans have been among Hagel's harshest critics, falling over themselves to demonstrate their allegiance to the diseased style of politics practiced by Limbaugh and perfected by the likes of Tom Delay, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove. |
