A Revealing Quote by Rush
Apparently Rush Limbaugh said the following the other day:
But most people aren't in Limbaugh's position. Most people, including most Republicans, have livelihoods that are tied to the overall state of the economy and the country. If the banking system implodes, they'll be hurt. If the stock market collapses, they'll lose their savings. If we fail to adequately stimulate the economy, they may well lose their jobs (and with it their health insurance). In other words, unlike Limbaugh, most rank and file Republicans will suffer if Obama fails. And most of them realize this.
So Limbaugh is very wrong. Only diehard partisans who have no concern about their own personal financial well-being or that of the country as a whole (i.e. people like Limbaugh) are rooting for Obama's failure. Limbaugh is a not a good person, and he's projecting his own callousness onto others.
The dirty little secret ... is that every Republican in this country wants Obama to fail, but none of them have the guts to say so; I am willing to say it.This is a revealing bit of projection on Rush's part. I'm sure that it's true that there are many Republicans who want Obama to fail. The desire to say a "I told you so" is a strong one and partisan allegiances run deep. But the reality is that most actual Republican aren't in Rush's position. Rush Limbaugh is ridiculously wealthy and he has enormous job security. In fact, his interests are likely reverse-correlated with that of Obama and the country as a whole. The more Obama fails, the more Rush's influence will grow, even if the country as a whole is suffering. So, from a purely selfish perspective (which I strongly suspect is the only perspective Limbaugh is capable of), it makes perfect sense for him to root for Obama's failure.
But most people aren't in Limbaugh's position. Most people, including most Republicans, have livelihoods that are tied to the overall state of the economy and the country. If the banking system implodes, they'll be hurt. If the stock market collapses, they'll lose their savings. If we fail to adequately stimulate the economy, they may well lose their jobs (and with it their health insurance). In other words, unlike Limbaugh, most rank and file Republicans will suffer if Obama fails. And most of them realize this.
So Limbaugh is very wrong. Only diehard partisans who have no concern about their own personal financial well-being or that of the country as a whole (i.e. people like Limbaugh) are rooting for Obama's failure. Limbaugh is a not a good person, and he's projecting his own callousness onto others.
posted by A.L. at 1:40 PM
24 Comments:
I agree with this to a point, and that point is where you assume any number of actors -- Republicans, conservatives, or otherwise -- to be rationally motivated by their own actual self-interest, instead of by their perceived self-interest. There's little rationality obvious in what's kept most of the Mid-West, for instance, voting for the GOP all these years, so it may be too much to hope that they aren't secretly hoping for failure simply because they don't have an accurate picture of how failure will have an effect on them.
I agree that rational people will hope for the success of a president in a situation like this because they'll understand that their success is tied to the wider success of the country and the financial system. But there are those -- conservatives -- who see their success as completely self-built, not just independent of but in spite of the government, and for them it's much easier to cheer for a failure, like Rush says.
Not that I agree with him in any way, because -- ugh.
If the stock market collapses, they'll lose their savings.
Have you been paying attention?
Jan '06 (Dems re-take both houses of Congress)-Dow 14K.
July '08(Obama nomination)-Dow 11K.
Nov '08 (Obama election)-Dow 8500.
Feb '09 (Obama budget)-Dow 7K.
I'd really hate for the stock market to "collapse" on us now...
Has any other President seen a 20% drop in the market just 100 days after their election?
someone needs to tell sfletcher99 that this all jimmy carter's fault (snarky 'tee-hee' here); as usual, republican self-awareness=zero.
In sfletcher's world, obstetricians cause babies.
Given the way they voted on the stimulus, it appear House Republicans want both Obama and the country to fail.
Rush Limbaugh is an idiot.
But honestly we should be outraged not with Limbaugh, but with Obama who is embracing everything that infuriated us about Bush.
The Iraq plan is lame, and is one which Bush himself would have proposed. After all Obama is breaking his campaign promises and just sticking to the Bush SOFA agreement.
IMO The Afghanistan escalation is stupid.
But most egregious are a series of legal maneuvers from the Obama DOJ which are identical to what Bush would have done. And when Bush did it there was a much louder protest from liberals and progressives.
Sfletcher,
Not only did you miss the obvious meaning of my comment, you clearly have very little understanding of the causes of our current economic downturn. The stock market has tumbled because there was a major asset bubble (real estate) and a lot of people on wall street made very bad bets on those assets. That bubble was built up during the early part of this decade and was already in the process of popping in 2006. Another way to look at it is this: the stock market seems so much lower now because it was artificially high for many years. Nothing that happened from 2006 onward could have prevented this current correction. If you really want to blame Obama and the Democrats for our current economic state, go right ahead, but you're just deluding yourself.
sfletcher99's 'correlations' are absurdly laughable. By that logic, Bush *caused* 9/11 too. Actually there's very good evidence that Bush *allowed* it to happen - but that's a different conversation.
Note that he also implies that the stock market index is a gauge of the economy - 'up' means Good Economy, 'down' means Bad Economy. AND that that gauge is occurring in response to Obama.
Sheesh there are just too many things wrong with sfletcher's canard to even start!
I suppose one could make the case that some investors were thinking "oh shit, Obama's not going to let us keep this scam going - better pull out now!", but even that's a stretch.
Anon: I'm not concerned about the DOJ thing. As president he can't be remotely seen as vindictive or vengeful (as much as I personally wouldn't mind some suitable - severe - vengeance). Right now this is about the courts and congress - let them work to establish precedent that discloses the crimes, rather than allow Bush & Co to use that lack of precedent to block any progress for decades.
Rush has some qualities, but even his friends say he is a fearfull man - an insecure man.
Guts?
Quite the opposite.
Rush is afraid. Most Republicans in the USA -- (maybe not the gruesome talker audience) want
Obama to do well.
Also - Rush uses football to sound macho and mask his obvious insecurity being unathletic and a draft dodger -
Why was Kerry's military heroism so threatning to Rush and his pals?
Is Rush a good man?
Recall, he used his maid as his drug buy cutout.
That's nasty.
"Limbaugh is a not a good person, and he's projecting his own callousness onto others."?
-AL, that has got to be the understatement of the year.
The guy is a gluttonous, pompous junkie. Everytime he goes off on a political opponent, his contract gets more lucrative and his waistline gets bigger.
For some unknown reason I feel impelled to add my two cents to this pointless discussion, so here goes: (1) Rush is a blowhard, who appears to be more interested in promoting his own brand than in achieving any particular policy or political goals, (2) it is probably better for Rush if Obama “succeeds,” at least in the sense of advancing a lot of left-wing policies that drive Rush’s listeners nuts, (3) hoping that Obama fails is not necessarily the same thing as hoping that America or the economy fails, (4) plenty of ideologues on both sides of the spectrum undoubtedly hope for bad things to happen in order to “prove” the correctness of their views or spur on political changes that they believe are necessary (ever hear of the “worse the better”?), and (5) many of the people criticizing Rush the loudest now were hoping that Bush failed.
I find Rush tiresome because he basically engages in an endless repetition of the theme “our side is good, the other side is bad.” Even if one accepts that this thesis is correct, I can’t really understand why it is interesting to listen to it over and over.
Still, I can understand why Rush does it, since it is obviously profitable for him. Why A.L. does it, I don’t get.
MLS,
Do name, specifically, all the people who, during the Bush years, were at a comparable level of media saturation. Because from where I sit, it looks like you are just making stuff up.
And when Rush says that he hopes Obama fails, he means in turning the economy around. How is failure to do that anything but bad for the US? Be specific, and I don't mean in the sense of "character building."
Conversly, many times,and on fundamental questions, I wish the Republicans had succeeded. When Reagan was elected and he said he would lower taxes and raise more government revenue by doing so I didn't believe him and didn't vote for him. But once he was in, if he had succeeded I would have been thrilled. If you could trust business without having to regulate them so they won't poison your food and steal your money, I would be thrilled. If you could go to war, conquer a country in a couple of weeks and have it spontaneously turn into a grateful democracy, I would have enjoyed eating crow. A world of low taxes and government surpluses, trustworthy businessmen and easily created burgeoning democracies would be wonderful and I would have not been spiteful about republicans success if they had been right.
C2H50H- I am not sure that I understood your first comment, but I will take a shot at it. You read some of the same blogs that I do so you are aware that there are a number of left-wing bloggers who view George Bush and his administration as not merely wrong-headed and incompetent, but actually evil. I will cite Charles Gittings, who is fond of saying that the Bush Administration was worse than Al Qaeda, as one example, but I don’t think that you will dispute that there are many others with basically the same mindset (if perhaps not quite so extreme). Indeed, you might number yourself among them. And there are certainly prominent media personalities, Keith Olbermann comes to mind, with that view.
Now it would be exceedingly odd if these people wanted George Bush to “succeed.” Why would you want someone who is evil to succeed? Maybe you would want his failure to occur with a minimum of harm to innocent third persons, but this is different from wanting him to succeed.
As for Rush’s comment, I don’t know that he was referring to the economy not turning around. Maybe he was, I have no idea. It wouldn’t make much sense to hope that the economy fails, because it is by no means clear that this would translate into Obama failing. Lets say that the unemployment rate a year from now is 10%. Obama and his administration will claim that it would be even higher had it not been for the stimulus package, and it is entirely possible that the public would buy that. A high unemployment rate might make it even easier to enact new programs that promote dependence on government. A quick turnaround, on the other hand, might work against the success of Obama’s agenda.
MLS,
Amazing, you can read the mind of all of us and deduce unquestionably that we "wanted George Bush to fail" -- you might want to read the comment by anonymous just above your last one -- yet you can't seem to understand what, plainly ol' Rush meant.
Here's a clue: when you have to parse and pare someone's words in order to find that he didn't say what he plainly did, you don't have a strong case.
And when you have to put words into the mouths of people in order to make your argument work, you don't have a strong case.
Either find where Olbermann (or someone of similar stature on the left) said he wanted Bush to fail or admit to yourself that your comments are based on nothing (except possibly projection). Statements by myself or Charles Gittings do not count when lined up alongside Rush Limbaugh's.
I agree with Anonymous above, and I'll go farther. I'm very much afraid that the current situation in Iraq will remain stable precisely as long as we maintain, by force and bribery, a fragile peace. As soon as we stop, we will see the violence break out again, and the longer that is delayed, the more violent the result. Does that mean I want Iraq to fail? No, I wish with all I have that this will not happen, but I'm not able to believe that wishful thinking is a workable strategy.
BTW, no admission of anything is necessary here. I think your inability to provide evidence for your assertions speaks for itself.
Why does GOP hate America?
To really understand rush's dishonest rhetoric, you must watch this short video carefully:
http://thumbsnap.com/v/iHXucq4Z.gif
Anon: I'm not concerned about the DOJ thing. As president he can't be remotely seen as vindictive or vengeful (as much as I personally wouldn't mind some suitable - severe - vengeance). Right now this is about the courts and congress - let them work to establish precedent that discloses the crimes, rather than allow Bush & Co to use that lack of precedent to block any progress for decades.
I completely disagree. Or rather, I agree that it is better for Congress and the courts to take the lead here. The executive is WAY too powerful and needs reigning in. Better for the other branches to assert themselves than the President to exercise voluntary restraint that can always be taken back. But Obama can either cooperate with Congress or the Courts (actively or passively, I prefer passively) or he can do his best to thwart them. So far, he is doing his utmost to thwart them.
C2H50H- I am sure that this will have no impact on you, but here is an article by one of your fellow liberals who feels like stating the honest truth, rather than adopting the partisan pretense of the day.
Disloyal SOB.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lee-stranahan/why-limbaugh-is-right-to_b_170815.html
There are two models that Republicans are looking at. One is 1990, [President George H.W.] Bush gets together with the Democrats at Andrews Air Force Base, raises taxes and loses the next election. The other is 1993, Democrats have a series of proposals to spend and tax. Republicans vote no and regain the House and Senate,” - Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.
Wait and see how bad the flogging of Florida's Charlie Christ is going to be since he supported the Stimulus. These guys are team players first, and concerned about America second. 30 years of conservatisim - a black hole of war, unprecedented spending, greed raised to an infinite power-
Obama got elected--time to try something else
MLS,
Are you trying to pretend that, because you've managed to find some idiot I've never heard of before who said that he wanted Bush to fail, that you've somehow made any points?
I'm not impressed by someone who can't even spell "economics."
We're still waiting for any evidence of your assertion that "many of the people criticizing Rush the loudest now were hoping that Bush failed." So far, you haven't provided any. Please note that the idiot, Stranahan, explicitly doesn't criticize Limbaugh.
I suggest, on the issue of whether Bush, et al, were evil, you read Arendt.
What a predictable shame that no one here boohooed when lovely liberal lip-servicer James Carville went on the record hoping that George Bush failed. Unfortunately for JC, he was being filmed the early morning of September 11, 2001 -- gotta love the irony.
Had his boy, Bill Clinton, been doing his job rather than 'getting' one under his desk, 9/11 would've been just any other day.
And forget Rushie, he's an entertainer. Besides, Bin Laden wants Obama to succeed. Now THAT guy's not an entertainer.
Carrie,
It took the right-wing quote-miners three weeks to find this obscure statement, by an avowed Democratic party activist, which occurred where only a few people ever saw it -- why should we know about it? By the way, there's context which you appear unaware of, which make this quote a lot less definitive than you seem to think.
Here's a clue: it would have been patriotic and moral to oppose Bush's attempt to lower taxes on the rich. That would not have implied a wish for America to fail. On the other hand, if Obama's stimulus attempt fails, as Limbaugh hopes, then America will not be better off.
And even Carville, when he discovered the WTC attack, said "this changes everything."
There is no equivalence here, in spite of your pathetic attempt to generate one.
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