More on Right Wing Radio and John McCain

Naturally I'm not the only one to question the motives behind wingnut radio slinging mud at the man who has the lock on the Rethug nomination.

In Reading the Tea Leaves of Today's Biggest Broadcast Idiot, P M Carpenter rings in on what he calls "the biggest, fattest, most conservative broadcast idiot of them all" (Rush Dope-Addict Limp-Dick Limbaugh, in case you didn't already guess it):

I write, of course, of Rush Limbaugh, he of 13.5-million weekly listeners who, it would seem, wouldn't know serious political philosophy from botany. If you've ever been gripped by sufficient masochism to tune in, you know what I mean. There they are, the fawning, sycophantic dupes of dittodom, queued up on the switchboard, hankering to get at Rush so they can regurgitate his wretched unenlightenment from the Dark Ages.

. . .

Rush may in fact represent less of an actual, loosely organized mass movement than merely a massive intellectual bowel movement.

. . .

When it's all over, I'm venturing, this most reactionary of broadcast idiots will be found to have held only a negligible sway over his presumed legions of lapdogs -- and he may even soon go the way of his equally offensive and finally beyond-the-pale broadcasting forebear, Father Coughlin...

I am a devotee of so-called "Old Time Radio", so I have some recordings of the infamous Father Coughlin, and yes, I can see that there are some striking similarities between the fascist-apologizing freedom-hating Coughlin and the bloviating Missouri gasbag. In their respective times, they each were the biggest non-elected (and unelectable) demagogues in the nation.

Here's Carpenter again:

McCain, however, may wish that Limbaugh's voice grows even louder. Because returning again to the era of Father Coughlin, Rush represents what Franklin Roosevelt denounced as "government by organized money" -- "the old enemies of peace, business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism [and] war profiteering" who were aligned in rabid opposition to the New Deal. But rather than accommodating them, rather than seeking peace with them, rather than staging powwows of compromise, Roosevelt announced: "I welcome their hatred." He then cleaned their clocks in the '36 election.
If McCain is shrewd -- and I think he is -- he will return the same fire against the on-air reactionaries and extremists of today, and thereby gain the allegiance of moderates and independents who otherwise would quake at the thought of a presidential candidate in bed with the malignant likes of a Rush Limbaugh.
In short, as Rush himself has suggested, his alienation from McCain may be the best thing that could have happened to McCain. The extreme right is shrinking, and Rush's intimation would seem to verify that he even he knows that. It's out of whack with the times, an aging and dying ideological dinosaur whose cranky intrusion into this race could cause any candidate more injury than benefit.

Like I said before, this whole thing seems just a little too calculated, a little too neatly wrapped, for it to be what some of us out here in Left Blogistan would like to see, which is nothing short of an implosion in the Rethug Party. Keep watching.