The Rush video is long so I’ll quote the relevant passage here:
….Yes, I think in the Haiti earthquake, ladies and gentlemen — in the words of Rahm Emanuel — we have another crisis simply too good to waste. This will play right into Obama’s hands. He’s humanitarian, compassionate. They’ll use this to burnish their, shall we say, “credibility” with the black community — in the both light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country. It’s made-to-order for them. That’s why he couldn’t wait to get out there, could not wait to get out there.
This, ladies and gentlemen – is why we don’t deserve to lead.
*edit*
In my haste earlier I posted the wrong Limbaugh video. Here is the one I meant
A while ago, Andrew Ferguson discussed Billy Bob Gasket disease:
The man I call Billy Bob Gasket had been involved in Arkansas politics for thirty years or more. He was used to its homegrown scandals and the mostly harmless diversions enjoyed by members of its ruling class. In this spirit, back in the early 1970s, he became an energetic booster of the young Rhodes Scholar who’d come home from Oxford and Yale with the impressive hair and the glimmering eye and the semi-permanent catch in his voice.
Then, along about Clinton’s first term as governor, Gasket noticed something. Bill Clinton was different. He was not just another in the long line of amiable cads and genial roués who had grasped power in Arkansas since Reconstruction. The new governor was, Gasket came to believe, the least principled, sleaziest politician he had ever seen at work. That the lack of principle and sleaziness were lacquered over with twinkly charm and vaguely progressive politics made the situation, for Gasket, all the more maddening.
And maddening is the word. As Clinton was returned again and again to office, Gasket was at first disbelieving, then agog, and finally crazed. Why couldn’t his fellow Arkansans see the truth? Why couldn’t they penetrate the governor’s sheath of bogus empathy and concern to see the creature of seething ambition and power hunger and raw cynicism that writhed so self-evidently beneath? Gasket became a hair-puller, a lapel-grabber, a mid-sentence interrupter, a nut. When, in the late 1980s, national reporters began trickling into the state to look over the promising young governor with national ambitions, their search for knowledgeable Clinton watchers led them inevitably to Gasket, and they found a madman.
Clinton became president. Gasket Disease trailed him like a cloud. It laid waste to Republican ranks in Washington and far beyond, to vast stretches of the country at large–by the end, if I read the polls correctly, roughly a third of all Americans had succumbed. Those who caught the disease didn’t just dislike Clinton, as, say, they might have disliked Jimmy Carter. The crux of Gasket Disease was not contempt but unendurable frustration. They could not fathom why everyone else didn’t grasp his essential, transparent fraudulence: the phoniness of the lower-lip-bite, the moist insincerity of the smile, the vanity in every tilt of the carefully coifed head. As with syphilis, so with Gasket Disease: Some Republicans recovered, others were driven mad.
It appears that someone has now fallen victim to the Obama version of Billy Bob Gasket disease:
Recently we were uplifted when the president informed Chrysler’s secured creditors that they had agreed to donate their ownership stake in the company to the United Auto Workers. Just last week, we were enthralled to see a group of auto executives beaming with pride as the president announced that in order to reduce gas consumption, they would henceforth be scaling back on all those car lines that consumers actually want to buy.
These events have heralded a new era of partnership between the White House and private companies, one that calls to mind the wonderful partnership Germany formed with France and the Low Countries at the start of World War II. The press conferences and events marking this new spirit of cooperation have been the emotional highlights of the administration so far.
These events usually begin when the executives gather in the Oval Office, where they experience certain Enhanced Negotiating Techniques. I’m not exactly sure what the president does to inspire the business leaders’ cooperation and sense of public service, though those who remember the disembowelment scene in “Braveheart” will have a general idea.
Was this Mark Levin? Ann Coulter? Michael Savage?
No, this was David Brooks, once Obama’s biggest quasi-right supporter. Brooks is certainly right that Obama is abusing government power, but just about any undecided moderate who doesn’t follow politics too closely will take a look at Brooks’s column, smell the Billy Bob Gasket, and write him off.
Billy Bob Gasket disease is striking the right, and it needs to be contained quickly, so four years of Obama don’t become eight.
I don’t know how reputable a site Newshounds is (although judging by their slogan I’m going to guess, not very), but the video clip at the end is damning enough.
Not only is Ingraham a horrible person, she gives conservatives a bad name with her intellectually substandard performances on both radio and televison.
How the hell did this woman get into such a position?
Are the Republican Party and Movement Conservatives so bereft of actual ideas that they have to result to namecalling? I thought this was the exclusive domain of idiotic left wing talk-show hosts Senators like Al Franken. Perhaps I’m behing too hard on Ingraham. Maybe I misunderstood the nuances of her arguments and positions…
I haven’t had a very high opinion of Ingraham since the time I called into her show after she made the absurd claim that all morality stems from Judeo-Christian Philosophy. Still, I never thought she would become so moronic that her only argument against a blogger would be to call her fat.
Oh who am I kidding, given the state of talk radio and the fact that they are now the apparent arbitors of Conservatism, I expected nothing less.
All of you from the shrill Coulter’s and Ingraham’s to the pompous Hannity’s to the mean spirited, raving Levine’s can go suck a…lemon.
Drudge is reporting that MAnn said she would vote for Hillary over McCain.
God I hate her.
Hey MAnn – the perfect is the enemy of the good.
And Michelle “Internment Rocks!” Malkin is in the usual hysterics about a McCain candidacy.
What is it about female conservative pundits that make me want to punch a kitten?
**UPDATE**
I think she (Hillary) would be stronger on the war on terrorism.
Hillary is absolutely more conservative. Moreover, she lies less than John McCain…she’s smarter than John McCain so that when she’s caught shamelessly lying, at least the Clintons know they’ve been caught lying.
Are you KIDDING ME! I’m so glad I don’t own a cat right now.
I tried to explain, for those whose feelings were so hurt they didn’t even crack the spine, that the title “Liberal Fascism” comes from a speech delivered by H.G. Wells, one of the most important and influential progressive and socialist intellectuals of the 20th century. He wanted to re-brand liberalism as “liberal fascism” and even “enlightened Nazism.” He believed these terms best described his own political views — views that deeply informed American progressivism and New Deal liberalism.
I’m reading through his book right now, and I think a better title would have been Worship of the State or perhaps No God But Government. Yes, the title Liberal Fascism may have a serious intellectual pedigree from H.G. Wells (who, incidentally, was attacked as a heretic by no other than one of Goldberg’s heroes, G.K. Chesterton). But I can’t blame contemporary liberals for dismissing the book as an attack. Conservatives are rightly upset when accused of fascism, and liberals have a right to be upset, too. Why did he make it so easy for others to dismiss him as a hack when he’s anything but?
Goldberg attempts to explain the main reason for picking the inflammatory title:
As much as it may shock some, I’m not the first person to set the record straight. Maybe those authors didn’t penetrate the public debate because they tend to write books titled “Illiberal Policymaking and Culture Formation, the Anglo-American Experience, 1912-2007.” If I’d followed their example, no one would be buying my book, reading it or discussing it. And, you can be sure, I wouldn’t have been invited on to “The Daily Show” to get smacked around for 20 minutes.
So far, the book is filled with useful correctives to the standard left-wing version of history (I have a few other issues with it that I’ll try to expand on once I’m finished). I still don’t think that the choice of title was a wise idea. A book cannot change minds if they’re too offended by the title to take it seriously. As it is, I expect Mr. Goldberg to sell lots of books to like-minded conservatives, but to change the minds of very few modern liberals. (Then again, his epilogue “The Tempting of Conservatism” hints that his primary audience might not be modern liberals but modern conservatives. Again, I’ll know better once I’ve finished.)
It’s one thing for a hack like Ann Coulter to write shoddy polemics with inflammatory titles like Godless or Treason. It’s something more serious and frustrating when thoughtful conservatives like Jonah Goldberg or Ramesh “The Party of Death” Ponnuru do the same. I don’t know why they’re cutting themselves off at the knees like this, but they need to start being more constructive.
Every now and then, you see something about somebody’s parents that makes you understand them better. Ann Coulter had one of those moments in her column today about her late father:
When Mother was in a rehabilitative facility briefly after surgery a few years ago and Father was not supposed to be driving, we were relieved that a snowstorm had knocked out the power to the garage door opener, so Daddy couldn’t get to the car. It would just be a week and then Mother would be home.
My brother came home to check on Father the first day of this arrangement to find that he had taken an ax to the side door of the garage, so he could drive to the rehab center and sit with Mother all day.
Miss Coulter’s preference for the battleaxe over the stiletto is apparently hereditary. John Vincent Coulter, RIP.
The Anchoress gets into a wonderful tussle with Ann Coulter apologists, who’ve dismissed her recent interview on Judaism with a shug and an “Oh, well, that’s Anne!:
Coulter obviously did NOT say Jews should be wiped off the planet, that was her host’s interpretation and the left, of course, will run with it. I don’t think she is an anti-semite at all, she is simply trying to express an idea, and doing it very badly, in an environment that is not going to help her do it better.
If you read that transcript to the end, you can see where Coulter tries to clarify her meaning, but she can’t, partly because a sound-bite forum is NO PLACE for that sort of deep and too-easily-misunderstood discussion, and partly because her host is, from his perspective as a Jew, unsurprisingly appalled by what he is hearing, by what he thinks Coulter is saying. This is a discussion best left to someone with a gift for diplomacy, a deft tongue and a loving, civil and collected mien. It is is absolutely not a discussion that should be undertaken by someone who has the deftness of a hammer and the mien of a German Shepherd.
…
What I have said here is that she was clumsy, unclear and incoherent in her expression of that idea – that a soundbite forum is no place to try to express it well – and in so being she has managed to give handfuls of red meat to people who have absolutely no intention of allowing clarification, are not interested in clarifying for her, and thus she has given Christian caricaturists a heavy dose of “see? See what they’re like” to back them up.
She then drives the point home with a wonderfully sarcastic post about how she “wishes” everyone were Catholic:
If all Americans were Catholic that means that all the government would be Catholic! Yaaaaay! Everyone would be pro-life! There would be Nativity creche’s and Ten Commandments in all the government buildings! The president would be a Catholic! We’d have Mass at the White House! And Bingo! Insurance companies would not have to cover birth control pills! And Jack Chick would no longer be publishing hate screeds because he’d be a Catholic too! Yaaaaay! The government would fix immigration policies so all our fellow Catholics down in Mexico can come on in and feel welcome and worship with us! Yaaaay! Then we’d go get those Canadians back into church too! And then England! We’d take back Westminster Abbey! Yaaaaay!
I mean, the Protestants – they’re okay now…as long as they’re you know, believing and stuff. But if all the Protestants would just come back to the Roman Catholic church from which they separated themselves, they would be really, really full Christians! America would be perfect!
Very, very well said. But I think she’s missing something which, to my chagrin, has also eluded otherwise smart people like Dennis Prager: many Christians ultimately beleive that if you don’t agree with them on a few points of theology, God hates you and will send you to burn in Hell for all eternity. That’s an ugly, despicable, elistist, mean-spirited, self-congratulatory view and there’s not a nice way of putting it. Contrast that with the Anchoress, who is delightful and respectful:
If they they want to, that’s very nice, and I’m happy to welcome them, but honestly, I don’t look for it. I think everyone finds their own way to God, and worships in the manner they best understand, are more opened to, etc. And that’s fine by me because I don’t have a need to decide who goes to heaven and who doesn’t, or who’s got the better way to get there. I have my way; I like it – if you have your’s, God bless you. I am ever a “live and let live” kind of girl.
MAnn Coulter’s personal fantasy is to deny women the right to vote?
What the hell did the right do to deserve this woman? I mean I know we have our faults – George W. isn’t exactly knocking things out of the park for us. Still, a scary, transvestite homophobe isn’t exactly the spokesman I’d want for our side. Then again maybe god really does have a sense of humor.
All our problems could be solved if MAnn gets struck by a bolt of lighting, bursts into flames and is greeted in the afterlife by a scary red man with horns. Sorry, just a personal fantasy of mine.